An Immortal Love Letter

The day of love is like the Christ-flower in the crevices of Lebanon’s rocks, or like the oleander on the banks of rivers, or like the damask rose amid the thickets.

— Rihani

.. And the most beautiful love is the love of those great ones among writers and poets and artists .. for in their love there is an unruliness the worldly among men do not know.

And in their letters there is a flame that burns, and soft murmurings of longing ..

And Ameen Rihani loved, too. Who was she whom he loved? Who is this woman whom he addresses in this beautiful letter with such warm, tender affection and such burning heat?

We have searched through all of Rihani’s letters, and we have found no love letter of his but this one.

Can this be the only letter Ameen wrote in his whole life? Or are there letters that the hands of men have not yet reached? Where might those letters be?

The emotional side of Rihani is almost wholly unknown. Will it be given to anyone to uncover this side of Ameen’s life?

— The Editors

12 o’clock, Paris

How beautiful are the days of love, beloved of my heart, and how short; and how sweet are the intoxications of love, light of my life, and how clear-sighted is he who loves. For he sees what men do not see; he sees what none but the gods see. Blessed are the eyes of love — I look through them at all things, and they show me the world a paradise beyond the paradises of the masters of prophecy. Blessed is an hour that time pardons, so that it remains for us and we remain for it to the end of days.

The day of love on the brow of time is like a rainbow in the heart of the sky, or like the Christ-flower in the crevices of the rocks in Lebanon, or like the oleander on the banks of rivers, or like the damask rose amid the thickets. And your love, beloved of my heart, is a rainbow in my sky; it is the safflower in the field of my soul, and it is the rose amid the thickets of my fortune.

Today I kissed your body with the kisses of a love that is of the earth — of the soil of my country. And tonight I kiss your soul with the kisses of a love that is of heaven — of the heaven of my dreams. How beautiful is love, and how glorious, when heart and soul and body share in it together. And no love was ever more beautiful than our love, nor any more glorious, neither on earth nor in heaven.

We met as the waves meet, and we greeted each other as believers greet (and we profess the religion of love), and we talked as the gods talk, and we embraced as the trellised vines and the branches embrace, and our breaths mingled one with the other as light mingles with flowers. We were in a world in which there were no human beings but ourselves. We loved with the love of two gods, in a kingdom where there is no dream but for a single heart compounded of your heart and mine. In this great city you were all that the city held. I walked through the streets, and among the beauties of Paris my eye saw none but you; and in the music of fancy and the music of the theaters, and in the voices of the mistresses of pleasure, my ear heard nothing but the voice of your love.

I stood before the institutes of Paris and in her museums, and I heard them all say: the mind built me with the hands of love, and adorned me with the hands of love, and lit me with the sun of love, and enriched me with the treasures of love.

How beautiful is love, and how sweet, from your heart and from your soul; how delicious from your eye, and from your hand, and from your mouth, and from your breast, and from every atom of your heavenly body. I have returned at this hour to my room — the room our love has consecrated — and I have kissed the chair in which you used to sit, and kissed the floor you trod with bare feet, and kissed the place you perfumed with your scents and with the fragrance of your soul. And tomorrow morning I shall kiss the door you used to knock and open with your beautiful hand, and I shall leave a room we filled with love and light and incense.

Paris, October 1911