Près de ton âme tout l'été,
Je me suis nourri de lumière,
J’ai bu, j’ai mangé ta beauté,
J’ai bu ta clarté printanière !

Text Authorship:

• by Henri Cazalis (1840 - 1909), as Jean Lahor, no title, written 1907, appears in En Orient, in 1. Les Quatrains d'Al-Ghazali, in 1. Les amours, in 1. L'Amour de la Femme, no. 62, Paris, Éd. Alphonse Lemerre, first published 1907

Based on:

• a text in Arabic (العربية) by Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad aṭ-Ṭūsiyy al-Ġazzālīy (c1058 - 1111) [text unavailable]
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Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Joost van der Linden [Guest Editor]

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La lune avec son pâle enchantement
Extasiait la terre et charmait toutes choses ;
Les rossignols pleuraient dans le harem des roses,
Et nos cœurs dans la nuit se fondaient en aimant.

Text Authorship:

• by Henri Cazalis (1840 - 1909), as Jean Lahor, no title, appears in En Orient, in 1. Les Quatrains d'Al-Ghazali, in 1. Les amours, in 1. L'Amour de la Femme, no. 38, Paris, Éd. Alphonse Lemerre, first published 1907

See other settings of this text.

Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):

• DUT Dutch (Nederlands) (Joost van der Linden) , copyright © 2023, (re)printed on this website with kind permission

Note for line 1: in Fairchild's setting, in the repetition, "avec son pâle enchantement" is omitted.

Note: This is not a translation. Al-Ghazali left no known poetry; these quatrains were written by Jean Lahor (pseudonym of Henri Cazalis), who imagined himself into Al-Ghazali's life and thought, adopting the quatrain form because it was current in Omar Khayyam's era.

Research team for this page: Emily Ezust [Administrator] , Johann Winkler

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