Tendre est la nuit obscur Majda Bekkali 2013

... don't wake me up...! Let me dream of
wild furry animals incense feathers
immortally calling immortelles in cinnamon spice powder
as tender as the night... - Yes, darkness and opacity can be very salvaging, protective, even philanthropic.
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Her great wish was clarity. Everything in her life had become too opaque. So that afternoon she had climbed the mountain alone and looked for a place down in the extinct volcanic crater. It had been her wish to be sucked in and spat out again with new clarity. At dusk, the stars and the moon appeared in the clear sky. Small animals and unfamiliar birds made strange sounds. She watched the first stars and the moon set again at the edge of the crater as she was catapulted into eternity. Suddenly she was very, very, very far away, in nothingness, in eternity, in space. Everything was absolutely bright and clear and mercilessly bare, a place where there was no movement, no life, no polarity. In this merciless clarity, there was also no you that could have been asked anything. This standstill in clarity and eternity was merciless, horrible and very exhausting. It was merciless, but she was not afraid: she thought about life on earth, about how she did not understand that so much remained dark, but she realized how wonderful it all was... - Only the beginning dawn ended this struggle, and still in the dark she descended the mountain again and returned to the world of the living with tears streaming down her face. Small yellow flowers entrusted themselves to the darkness like little stars. Since then, she has cherished the knowledge of how valuable even the sometimes unclear and opaque is and that she can bring clarity into the world because she also knows how terribly brutal clarity can be.
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Let me travel into my dreams... Guard my dreams, my small and great desires, my secret wishes. They are completely innocent as desires, almost childlike, yet grown-up, because I have already seen everything... In the darkness, into which I can flee from myself and yet at the same time to myself... This is where the all-too-sharp boundaries created by the bright light of day become blurred. And if many a clarity proves to be merely apparent, the night, in which boundaries blur, reveals much more important things than the glaring brightness.
"O sleep, why dost thou leave me,
why thy visionary joys remove?
O sleep, again deceive me,
to my arms restore my wand'ring love!"
(from Handel's "Semele")
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Both fragrance variants (obscur and clair) of "Tendre est la nuit" were named after F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "Tender is the Night", which deals, among other things, with the meaninglessness of a superficial lifestyle and the relationship crises and excesses of the "Roaring Twenties", but also with the important meaning of everything that is repressed from the light of day into the dark, but still manages to find justification again and again.

Delphine Thierry has once again created a fragrance of great subtlety and depth.
For me, it begins directly with animalic notes: I perceive both civet and castoreum, as well as Szechuan pepper and ambrette seeds, which I like very much. Immortelle and carrot are also present, but I find them rather restrained. (This may have something to do with the fact that I've been testing leftover samples here - I'm really looking forward to testing the bottle) Davana has a very slightly liqueur-like floral quality, like small yellow flowers that close themselves off from the overly bright daylight but dare to open up in the darkness of the night. I have never consciously noticed Cabreuva before; it is said to smell warm, soft, sweet, woody and slightly floral, with some references to rosewood and sandalwood - I can't sniff these out individually, but they fit in well with the overall impression. In any case, a very fine, delicately sweet and powdery amber base unfolds later, which then releases incense and labdanum. I really like patchouli, but I don't find it here as a single prominent note.
For me, the overall development is quite linear and calm, but still moving and not monotonous.
This fragrance celebrates life - but not loud and garish and big, but delicate and tender and philanthropic.

With thanks to @Midnights. and @Floyd , who arranged or, as a surprise, made it possible for me to test it extensively. In the meantime, it extends my wish list...