My Heart Laid Bare
XXIII
Of the vaporization and centralization of the Ego. Everything depends on that.
Of a certain sensual pleasure in the company of those who behave extravagantly.
(I intend to begin My Heart Laid Bare, no matter where and how, and to continue it from day to day, following the inspiration of the day and the circumstances, provided that the inspiration is vital.)
XXIV
Anyone, provided he can be amusing, has the right to talk of himself.
XXV
I understand how one can desert a cause in order to experience the sensation of serving another.
It would perhaps be pleasant to be alternately victim and executioner.
XXVI
Stupidities of Girardin:
"We are accustomed to take the bull by the horns. Let us therefore take the speech by its conclusion" (November 7, 1861).
Then Girardin believes that the horns of bulls are set in their behinds. He confounds the horns with the tail.
"Before imitating the Ptolemies of French journalism, the Belgian journalists have taken the trouble to meditate upon the problem which I have been studying for the last thirty years in all its aspects - as the volume which will shortly appear, entitled 'Questions de presse', will prove - with the result that they are in no hurry to treat as a matter for superlative ridicule (panu geloiotaton) [There are those who pretend to have no difficulty in believing that the earth turns upon its own axis, the sky remaining stationary. These persons do not perceive that, when all which takes place around us is considered, their opinion is a matter for 'superlative ridicule'. Ptolemy ('Almagest', Book I, Chapter VI). 'Et habet mea mentrita mentum'. GIRADIN] an opinion which is as indisputable as the statement that the earth revolves and that the sun does not revolve."
EMILE DE GIRADIN
XXVII
Woman is the opposite of the Dandy. Therefore she should inspire horror.
Woman is hungry, and she wants to eat; thirsty, and she wants to drink.
She is in rut and she wants to be possessed.
What admirable qualities!
Woman is natural, that is to say abominable.
Thus she is always vulgar; the opposite, in fact, of the Dandy.
Concerning the Legion of Honour. The man who solicits the Cross has the air of saying: If I am not decorated for having done my duty, I shall cease to do it.
If a man has merit, what is the good of decorating him? If he has none, he can be decorated, since it will give him distinction.
To consent to being decorated is to recognize that the State or a prince has the right to judge of your merits, to dignify you, etc....
Besides, Christian humility forbids the Cross, even if pride does not.
Calculation in favour of God. Nothing exists without purpose.
Therefore my existence has a purpose.
What purpose? I do not know.
Therefore, it is not I who have appointed that purpose. It is someone wiser than I.
It is therefore necessary to pray to this someone to enlighten me. That is the wisest course.
The Dandy should aspire to be uninterruptedly sublime. He should live and sleep in front of a mirror.
XXVIII
Analysis of the counter-religions. Example: sacred prostitution.
What is sacred prostitution?
Nervous excitement.
The mystery of Paganism. Mysticism: the common feature of Paganism and Christianity.
Paganism and Christianity confirm each other.
The Revolution and the Cult of Reason confirm the doctrine of Sacrifice.
Superstition is the well of all truths.
XXIX
There is in all Change something at once sordid and agreeable, which smacks of infidelity and household removals. This is sufficient to explain the French Revolution.
XXX
My wild excitement in 1848.
What was the nature of that excitement?
The taste for revenge. Natural pleasure in destruction. Literary excitement; memories of my reading.
The 15th of May. Still the pleasure in destruction. A legitimate pleasure, if what is natural be legitimate.
The horrors of June. Madness of the People and madness of the Bourgeoisie. Natural delight in crime.
My fury at the Coup d'Etat. How many gunshots have I endured! Another Bonaparte! What infamy!
And, meanwhile, all is quiet. Has not the President some right to invoke?
What Napoleon III is. What he is worth. To find the explanation of his nature and of his mission under Providence.
XXXI
To be a useful person has always appeared to me something particularly horrible.
1848 was amusing only because of those castles in the air which each man built for his Utopia.
1848 was charming only through an excess of the ridiculous.
Robespierre can only be admired because he has made several beautiful phrases.
XXXII
Revolution confirms Superstition, by offering sacrifice.
XXXIII
Politics. I have no convictions, as men of my century understand the word, because I have no ambition. There is no basis in me for a conviction.
There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk.
Only brigands are convinced - of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed.
How should I succeed, since I have not even the desire to make the attempt.
Glorious empires may be founded upon crime and noble religions upon imposture.
Nevertheless, I have some convictions, in a higher sense, which could not be understood by the people of my time.
XXXIV
The sense of solitude, since my childhood. In spite of my family, above all when surrounded by my comrades - the sense of a destiny eternally solitary.
Yet a taste for life and for pleasure which is very keen.
XXXV
Nearly our whole lives are employed in foolish inquiries. Nevertheless, there are questions which should excite man's curiosity in the highest degree, and which, to judge from his customary mode of life, do not inspire him with any.
Where are our dead friends?
Why are we here?
Do we come from some other place?
What is free will?
Can it be reconciled with the laws of Providence?
Is there a finite or an infinite number of souls?
What of the number of habitable lands? Etc., etc....
XXXVI
Nations only produce great men in spite of themselves. Thus the great man is the conqueror of his whole nation.
The ridiculous modern comic religions:
Molière.
Béranger.
Garibaldi.
XXXVII
Belief in Progress is a doctrine of idlers and Belgians. It is the individual relying upon his neighbours to do his work.
There cannot be any Progress (true progress, that is to say, moral) except within the individual and by the individual himself.
But the world is composed of people who can think only in common, in the herd. Like the Sociétés belges.
There are also people who can only take their pleasures in a flock. The true hero takes his pleasure alone.
XXXVIII
Eternal superiority of the Dandy.
What is the Dandy?
XXXIX
My views on the theatre. In childhood and still today, the thing which I have always thought most beautiful about the theatre is the chandelier - a fine, luminous, crystalline object with a complex spherical symmetry.
Meanwhile, I do not entirely deny the value of dramatic literature. Only I should like the actors mounted on very high pattens, wearing masks more expressive than the human face and speaking through megaphones; also the female parts should be played by men.
But, after all, whether seen through the big or the little end of the opera glass, the chandelier has always appeared to me to be the protagonist.
XL
One must work, if not from inclination at least from despair, since, as I have fully proved, to work is less wearisome than to amuse oneself.
XLI
There are in every man, always, two simultaneous allegiances, one to God, the other to Satan.
Invocation of God, or Spirituality, is a desire to climb higher; that of Satan, or animality, is delight in descent. It is to this last that love for woman and intimate conversation with animals, dogs, cats, etc.... must be ascribed. The joys which derive from these two loves are appropriate to the nature of these two loves.
XLII
Intoxication of humanity: a great picture to paint:
From the aspect of Charity.
From the aspect of licentiousness.
From the aspect of literature or of the actor.
XLIII
The Question (torture), when discovered as the art of discovering the truth, is a barbarous stupidity; it is the application of a material means to a spiritual end.
The penalty of death is the expression of a mystical idea, totally misunderstood today. The penalty of death does not attempt to save Society, that is, in the material sense. It attempts to save spiritually Society and the guilty person. That the sacrifice may be perfect there should be joy and consent on the part of the victim. To give chloroform to a person condemned to death would be impious, for he would thereby be deprived of his consciousness of grandeur as a victim and of his hopes of attaining Paradise.
As for torture, it has been devised by the evil half of man's nature, which is thirsty for voluptuous pleasures. Cruelty and sensual pleasure are identical, like extreme heat and extreme cold.
XLIV
My opinion of the vote and of the right of election. Of the rights of man.
The element of baseness in any sort of government employment.
A Dandy does nothing. Can you imagine a Dandy addressing the common herd, except to make game of them?
There is no form of rational and assured government save an aristocracy.
A monarchy or a republic, based upon democracy, are equally absurd and feeble.
The immense nausea of advertisements.
There are but three beings worthy of respect: the priest, the warrior and the poet. To know, to kill and to create.
The rest of mankind may be taxed and drudged, they are born for the stable, that is to say, to practise what they call professions.
XLV
We should observe that the abolishers of the death penalty must be more or less interested in its abolition.
Often they are guillotiners. Their attitude may be thus expressed: "I want to be able to cut off your head, but you shan't touch mine."
The abolishers of the Soul (materialists) are necessarily abolishers of hell; they, certainly, are interested.
At all events, they are people who fear to live again - laze people.
XLVI
Madame de Metternich, although she is a princess, has forgotten to answer me, regarding what I said about her and Wagner.
Nineteenth-century manners.
XLVII
The story of my translation of Edgar Poe.
The story of the Fleurs du Mal. The humiliation of being misunderstood and my lawsuit.
The story of my relations with all the celebrated men of the age.
Some amusing portraits of certain imbeciles:
Clément de Ris.
Castagnary.
Portraits of magistrates, officials, newspaper editors, etc.
Portraits of artists in general.
Of the chief editor and of the rank and file. The immense pleasure which the French people take in being regimented. It is the If I were King!
Portraits and Anecdotes.
François Buloz - Houssaye - the precious Rouy - de Calonne - Charpentier, who corrects his authors, by virtue of the equality bestowed on all men by the immortal principles of (17)89 - Chavalier, a really typical editor-in-chief under the Empire.
XLVIII
On George Sand. The woman Sand is the Prudhomme of immorality.
She has always been a moralist.
Only she used to work as an anti-moralist.
She has never been an artist. She has that celebrated flowing style, so dear to the bourgeois.
She is stupid, she is clumsy, and she is a chatterbox. She has, in her moral concepts, the same profundity of judgement and delicacy of feeling as a concierge or a kept woman.
What she says about her mother.
What she says about Poetry.
Her love for the working classes.
It is indeed a proof of the degradation of the men of this century that several have been capable of falling in love with this latrine.
See the preface to Mademoiselle La Quintinie, in which she pretends that true Christians do not believe in Hell.
Sand represents the God of decent folk, the god of concierges and thieving servants.
She has good reasons for wishing to abolish Hell.
XLIX
The Devil and George Sand. It must not be supposed that the Devil only tempts men of genius. Doubtless, he despises imbeciles, but he does not disdain their co-operation. Quite the reverse; it is upon them that he builds his greatest hopes.
Consider George Sand. She is, first and last, a prodigious blockhead, but she is possessed. It is the Devil who has persuaded her to trust in her good-nature and common-sense, that she may persuade all other prodigious blockheads to trust in their good-nature and common-sense.
I cannot think of this stupid creature without a certain shudder of horror. If I were to meet her, I should not be able to resist throwing a stoup of holy water at her head.
L
George Sand is one of those decayed ingénues who will never leave the boards. I have lately read a preface (the preface to Mademoiselle La Quintinie) in which she pretends that the true Christian cannot believe in Hell. She has good reasons for wishing to abolish Hell.
LI
I am sick of France; chiefly because everybody is like Voltaire.
Emerson has forgotten Voltaire in his Representative Men. He could have written a fine chapter entitled Voltaire, or the Anti-Poet, the king of loungers, the prince of triflers, the anti-artist, the preacher to concierges, the Father Gigogno of the Editors of Le Siècle.
LII
In Les Oreilles du Comte de Chesterfield, Voltaire jests about our immortal soul, which has dwelt for nine months amidst excrement and urine. Voltaire, like all loafers, hates mystery.
Being unable to abolish Love, the Church has desired at least to disinfect it, and has invented marriage.
Note - He might at least, have traced, in this localization, a malicious and satirical intent of Providence against Love, and, in the mode of generation, a symbol of original sin, since we can only make love with our excretory organs.
LIII
Portrait of the literary rabble.
Doctor Estaminetus Crapulosus Pedantissimus. His portrait executed in the manner of Praxiteles.
His pipe.
His opinions.
His Hegelism.
His foulness.
His ideas on art.
His spleen.
His jealousy.
A fine portrait of modern youth.
LIV
ΦarmacotridhV, anhr kai tvn touV dyeiV eV ta daumata treyontwn.
AELIAN (?)
LV
Theology. What is the Fall?
If it is unity become duality, it is God who has fallen.
In other words, would not creation be the fall of God?
Dandyism. What is the superior man?
He is not a specialist.
He is a man of leisure and of liberal education.
To be rich and to love work.
LVI
Why does the man of parts prefer harlots to Society women, although they are equally stupid?
To discover this.
LVII
There are certain women who are like the red ribbon of the Legion of Honour. They are no longer desired because they have been contaminated by certain men.
It is for the same reason that I would not put on the breeches of a man with the itch.
What is annoying about Love is that it is a crime in which one cannot do without an accomplice.
LVIII
Study of the great malady, horror of one's home. Causes of the malady. Progressive growth of the malady.
Indignation aroused by the universal fatuity of all classes, all persons, of both sexes, at all ages.
Man loves man so much that, even when he flees from the town, he is still in search of the mob; he wishes, in fact, to rebuild the town in the country.
LIX
Lecture by Durandeau on the Japanese. ("I am, before all else, a Frenchman.") The Japanese are monkeys, Darjon it was who told me so.
Lecture by a doctor, a friend of Mathieu, on the art of not having children, Moses, and the immortality of the Soul. Art is a civilizing influence (Castagnary).
LX
The faces of a sage man and his family, who live on the sixth floor, drinking café au lait.
Lord Nacquart senior and Lord Nacquart junior.
How the Nacquart son has come to be a counsel in the Court of Appeal.
LXI
Of the delight in and preference for military metaphors shown by the French. Here every metaphor wears moustaches.
Militant literature.
To hold the breach.
To keep the flag flying.
To emerge with flying colours.
To plunge into the fray.
One of the old brigade.
All these glorious phrases are commonly applied to drunkards and bar-flies.
LXII
French metaphors.
A soldier of the judicial press (Bertin).
The militant press.
LXIII
To be added to the military metaphors:
The fighting poets.
The literary vanguard.
This use of military metaphor reveals minds not militant but formed for discipline, that is, for compliance; minds born servile, Belgian minds, which can think only collectively.
LXIV
Desire for Pleasure attaches us to the Present. Care for our safety makes us dependent upon the Future.
He who clings to Pleasure, that is, to the Present, makes me think of a man rolling down a slope who, in trying to grasp hold of some bushes, tears them up and carries them with him in his fall.
To be, before all else, a great man and a saint according to one's own standards.
LXV
Of the people's hatred of Beauty. Examples: Jeanne and Mme. Muller.
LXVI
Political. After all, the supreme glory of Napoleon III, in the eyes of History and of the French people, will have been to prove that anybody can govern a great nation as soon as they have got control of the telegraph and the national press.
They are imbeciles who believe that such things can be accomplished without the permission of the People - and that glory can only be founded upon virtue!
Dictators are the servants of the People - nothing more; a damnable job, the glory and the result of adapting a brain to the requirements of the national idiocy.
LXVII
What is Love?
The need to emerge from oneself.
Man is an animal which adores.
To adore is to sacrifice and prostitute oneself.
Thus all Love is prostitution.
LXVIII
The most prostitute of all beings is the Supreme Being, God Himself, since for each man he is the friend above all others; since he is the common, inexhaustible fount of Love.
PRAYER
Do not punish me through my Mother and do not punish my Mother on my behalf - I entrust to your keeping the souls of my father and of Mariette - Give me the strength immediately to perform my daily task and thus to become a hero and a saint.
LXIX
A chapter on the indestructible, eternal, universal, and ingenious ferocity of Men.
Of delight in bloodshed.
Of the intoxication of bloodshed.
Of the intoxication of the mob.
Of the intoxication of the tortured (Damiens).
LXX
There are no great men save the poet, the priest, and the soldier.
The man who sings, the man who offers up sacrifice, and the man who sacrifices himself.
The rest are born for the whip.
Let us beware of the rabble, of common-sense, good-nature, inspiration, and evidence.
LXXI
I have always been astonished that women are allowed to enter churches. What conversation can they have with God?
The Eternal Venus (capricious, hysterical, full of whims) is one of the seductive shapes of the Devil.
On the day when a young writer corrects his first proof-sheet he is as proud as a schoolboy who has just got his first dose of pox.
Do not forget a long chapter on the art of divination by water, by the cards, by chiromancy, etc.
LXXII
Woman cannot distinguish between her soul and her body. She simplifies things, like an animal. A cynic would say that it is because she has nothing but a body.
A chapter on The Toilet.
Morality of the toilet, the delights of the toilet.
LXXIII
Of nincompoops.
Of professors.
Of judges.
Of priests.
And of Cabinet Ministers.
The precious little great men of the day.
Renan.
Feydeau.
Octave Feuillet.
Scholl.
The editors of newspapers, François Buloz, Houssaye, Rouy, Girardin, Texier, de Calonne, Solar, Turgan, Dalloz.
A list of guttersnipes. Solar first of all.
LXXIV
To be a great man and a saint by one's own standards, that is all that matters.
LXV
Nadar is the most astounding example of vitality. Adrien used to tell me that his brother Felix had all his viscera double. I have been jealous of him, seeing him succeed so well in everything which is not abstract.
Veuillot is so uncouth and such an enemy of the arts that one might suppose the whole democracy of the world had taken refuge in his breast.
Development of the portrait. Supremacy of the pure idea over the Christian and the babouviste communist.
The fanaticism of humility. Not even to aspire to understand religion.
LXXVI
Music.
Of slavery.
Of Society women.
Of prostitutes.
Of magistrates.
Of the sacraments.
The man of letters is the enemy of the world.
Of bureaucrats.
LXXVII
In Love, as in nearly all human affairs, a satisfactory relationship is the result of a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding constitutes pleasure. The man cries: Oh, my angel. The woman coos: Mamma! Mamma! And these two imbeciles are persuaded that they think alike. The unbridgeable gulf - the cause of their failure in communication - remains unbridged.
XXVIII
Why is the spectacle of the sea so infinitely and eternally agreeable?
Because the sea presents at once the idea of immensity and of movement. Six or seven leagues represent for man the radius of the infinite. An infinite in little. What matter, if it suffices to suggest the idea of all infinity? Twelve or fourteen leagues of liquid in movement are enough to convey to man the highest expression of beauty which he can encounter in his transient abode.
LXXIX
Nothing upon the earth is interesting except religions.
What is the universal religion? (Chateaubriand, de Maistre, the Alexandrines, Capé.)
There is a universal religion devised for the alchemists of thought, a religion which has nothing to do with Man, considered as a divine memento.
LXXX
Saint-Marc Girardin has uttered one phrase which will endure: "Let us be mediocre!"
Let us put this beside the words of Robespierre: "Those who do not believe in the immortality of their being pass judgement upon themselves".
This phrase of Saint-Marc Girardin implies an immense hatred of the sublime.
Whoever sees Saint-Marc Girardin walking in the street is reminded immediately of a fat goose, full of self-conceit, but bewildered and waddling along the high road in front of the stagecoach.
LXXXI
Theory of the true civilization. It is not to be found in gas or steam or table-turning. It consists in the diminution of the traces of original sin.
Nomad peoples, shepherds, hunters, farmers and even cannibals, may all, by virtue of energy and personal dignity, be the superiors of our races of the West.
These will perhaps be destroyed.
Theocracy and communism.
LXXXII
I have grown, for the most part, by means of leisure.
To my great detriment; for leisure without fortune breeds debts and the insults which result from debts.
But to my great profit also, so far as sensibility is concerned and meditation and the faculty of dandyism and dilettantism.
Other men of letters are, for the most part, common, ignorant earth-grubbers.
LXXXIII
The modern girl according to the publishers.
The modern girl according to the editors-in-chief.
The modern girl as a bugbear, a monster, an assassin of art.
The modern girl as she is in reality.
A little blockhead and a little slut. The extreme of imbecility combined with the extreme of depravity.
There are in the modern girl all the despicable qualities of the footpad and the schoolboy.
LXXXIV
Warning to non-communists:
All is common property, even God.
LXXXV
The Frenchman is a farmyard animal, so well domesticated that he dares not jump over any fence. Witness his tastes in art and literature.
He is an animal of the Latin race; he does not object to filth in his place of abode; and in literature he is scatophagous. He dotes on excrements. That is what pothouse men of letters call the Gallic salt.
A choice example of French depravity: of the nation which pretends to be independent above all others.
(Here a paragraph cut out from a newspaper is fastened to the manuscript.)
The following extract from M. de Vaulabelle's fine book will suffice to give an idea of the impression made by Lavalette's escape upon the least enlightened section of the Royalist party:
'The tide of Royalism, at this period of the Second Restoration, was rising almost to the point of madness. The young Josephine de Lavalette was receiving her education at one of the principal convents of Paris (l'Abbaye-au-Bois). She had left it merely to come to kiss her father. When she returned after the escape, and when the very modest part she had played in it was known, an immense outcry was raised against the child; the nuns and her companions avoided her and a number of the parents declared that they would remove their daughters if she were allowed to remain there. They did not wish, they said, to allow their daughters to come into contact with a young person who had been guilty of such conduct and such an example. When Madame de Lavalette recovered her liberty, six weeks later, she was obliged to take away her daughter.'
LXXXVI
Princes and generations. It is equally unjust to attribute to reigning princes the merits or the vices of those whom they actually govern.
These merits and these vices are almost always, as statistics and logic can prove, attributable to the influence of the preceding government. Louis XIV inherits from the men of Louis XIII: glory. Napoleon I inherits from the men of the Republic: glory. Napoleon inherits from the men of Louis-Philippe: dishonour.
It is always the preceding government which is responsible for the morals of its successor, in so far as a government can be responsible for anything.
The sudden cutting short of a reign by circumstance prevents this law from being quite exact as regards time. One cannot mark exactly where an influence ends, but this influence will survive throughout the whole generation which has undergone it in youth.
LXXXVII
Of youth's hatred of the quoters of precedents. The quoter is its enemy.
"Even spelling I would hand over to the hangman."
THEOPHILE GAUTIER.
A fine picture to paint: the literary riff-raff.
Not to forget a portrait of Forgues, the plagiarist, the cream-skinner of letters.
Ineradicable desire for prostitution in the heart of man, whence is born his horror of solitude. He wants to be two. The man of genius wants to be one, and therefore solitary. Glory is to remain one, and to prostitute oneself in an individual manner.
It is this horror of solitude, this need to lose his ego in exterior flesh, which man calls grandly the need for love.
Two fine religions, immortalized upon walls, the eternal obsessions of the People: a p- (the antique phallus) and 'Long live Barbès!' or 'Down with Philippe!' or 'Long live the Republic!'
LXXXVIII
To study in all its modes, in the works of nature and in the works of man, the universal and eternal law of gradation, of the little by little, of the by degrees, with forces progressively increasing, like compound interest in money matters.
It is the same with literary and artistic talents; it is the same with the variable treasures of the will.
LXXXXIX
The crush of minor literary men whom one sees at funerals, distributing handshakes and trying to catch the eye of the writer of the obituary notice.
Of the funerals of famous men.
XC
Molière. My opinion of Tartuffe is that it is not a comedy but a pamphlet. An atheist, if he is simply a well-educated man, would reflect, in thinking about this piece, that there are certain serious questions which must never be referred to the rabble.
XCI
To glorify the cult of pictures (my great, my unique, my primitive passion).
To glorify vagabondage and what may be called bohemianism. Cult of the multiple sensations expressed by music. Refer here to Liszt.
Of the necessity of thrashing women.
One can chastise those whom one loves. As in the case of children. But that implies the sorrow of despising those whom one loves.
Of cuckolds and cuckoldom.
The sorrows of the cuckold.
They are born of his pride, of false reasoning concerning honour and happiness, and of a love which has been foolishly withdrawn from God to be bestowed upon his fellow-creatures. It is always the animal idolater being deceived by his idol.
XCII
Analysis of insolent imbecility. Clément de Ris and Paul Pérignon.
XCIII
The more a man cultivates the arts the less he fornicates. A more and more apparent cleavage occurs between the spirit and the brute.
Only the brute is really potent. Sexuality is the lyricism of the masses.
To fornicate is to aspire to enter into another; the artist never emerges from himself.
I have forgotten the name of that slut. Bah! I shall remember it at the last judgement.
Music conveys the idea of space.
So do all the arts, more or less; since they are number and since number is a translation of space.
To will every day to be the greatest of men!
XCIV
When I was a child I wanted sometimes to be pope, but a military pope, and sometimes to be an actor.
The pleasures that I derived from these two phantasies.
XCV
Even when quite a child I felt two conflicting sensations in my heart: the horror of life and the ecstasy of life.
That, indeed, was the mark of a neurasthenic idler.
XCVI
Nations produce great men only in spite of themselves.
Speaking of the actor and of my childish dreams, a chapter upon what constitutes, in the human soul, the vocation of the actor, the glory of the actor, the art of the actor and his situation in the world.
The theory of Legouvé. Is Legouvé a dispassionate joker, a Swift, who has tried to make France swallow a new absurdity?
His choice. Good, in the sense that Samson is not an actor.
Of the true grandeur of pariahs.
It is possible, indeed, that virtue would injure the talents of pariahs.
XCVII
Commerce is, in its very essence, satanic. Commerce is return of the loan, a loan in which there is the understanding: give me more than I give you.
The spirit of every businessman is completely depraved.
Commerce is natural, therefore shameful.
The least vile of all merchants is he who says: "Let us be virtuous, since, thus, we shall gain much more money than the fools who are dishonest".
For the merchant, even honesty is a financial speculation.
Commerce is satanic, because it is the basest and vilest form of egoism.
XCVIII
When Jesus Christ says, "Blessed are they that hunger, for they shall be filled," Jesus Christ is calculating on probabilities.
XCIX
The world only goes round by misunderstanding.
It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree.
For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree.
The man of intelligence, who will never agree with anyone, should cultivate a pleasure in the conversation of imbeciles and the study of worthless books. From these he will derive a sardonic amusement which will largely repay him for his pains.
C
Any official, whether a minister, a theatre manager or a newspaper editor, can sometimes be an estimable individual, but he is never a man of distinction. They are persons without personality, unoriginal, born for office, that is, for domestic service to the public.
CI
God and His profundity. It is possible even for the intelligent man to seek in God that helper and friend whom he can never find. God is the eternal confidant in that tragedy of which each man is hero. Perhaps there are usurers and assassins who say to God: "Lord, grant that my next enterprise may be successful!" But the prayers of these vile persons do not mar the virtue and joy of my own.
CII
Every idea is endowed of itself with immortal life, like a human being. All created form, even that which is created by man, is immortal. For form is independent of matter: molecules do not constitute form.
Anecdotes of Emile Douay and Constantin Guys, and how they destroyed, or believed that they destroyed, their works.
CIII
It is impossible to glance through any newspaper, no matter what the day, the month or the year, without finding on every line the most frightful traces of human perversity, together with the most astonishing boasts of probity, charity, and benevolence and the most brazen statements regarding the progress of civilization.
Every journal, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a tissue of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, lecheries, tortures, the evil deeds of princes, of nations, of private individuals; an orgy of universal atrocity.
And it is with this loathsome appetizer that civilized man daily washes down his morning repast. Everything in the world oozes crime: the newspaper, the street wall, and the human countenance.
I am unable to comprehend how a man of honour could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.
CIV
The power of the amulet as displayed by philosophy. The sous with holes bored in them, the talismans, each man's souvenirs.
Dissertation on the moral dynamic. Of the virtue of the sacraments.
A tendency to mysticism since my childhood. My conversations with God.
CV
Of Obsession, of Possession, of Prayer and Faith.
The dynamic Ethic of Jesus.
Renan finds it ridiculous that Jesus should believe in the omnipotence, even over matter, of Prayer and Faith.
The sacraments are the modes of this dynamic.
Of the infamy of the press, a great obstacle to the development of the Beautiful.
The Jews who are librarians and bear witness to the Redemption.
CVI
All these imbecile bourgeois who ceaselessly utter the words: immoral, immorality, morality in art, and other idiotic phrases, make me think of Louise Villedieu, the five-franc whore, who, having accompanied me one day to the Louvre, where she had never been before, began blushing and covering her face with her hands. And as we stood before the immortal statues and pictures she kept plucking me by the sleeve and asking how they could exhibit such indecencies in public.
The fig-leaves of Mr. Nieuwerkerke.
CVII
In order that the law of Progress could exist each man would have to be willing to enforce it; for it is only when every individual has made up his mind to move forward that humanity will be in a state of progress.
This hypothesis may serve to show that two contradictory ideas - free-will and destiny - are identical. Not only will there be identity between free-will and destiny in Progress, but this identity has always existed. This identity is history - the history of nations and of individuals.
CVIII
A sonnet to be quoted in My Heart Laid Bare. Quote also the poem of Roland:
I dreamt that night that Philis had returned
Fair as she was in the brightness of day,
And I desired once again to possess her as ghost
And, like Ixion, to embrace a cloud.
Her naked shadow stole into my bed,
Saying, "Dear Damon, see, I have come back;
Only grown fairer in my sad abode
Where fate has held me since my departure.
"I am come to kiss again the most beautiful of lovers;
I am come to die again within thine embraces."
Then, when my idol had abused my flame,
She said, "Adieu. I must return to the dead.
As thou hast bragged of having - my body,
So also canst thus boast of having - my soul."
PARNASSE SATYRIQUE
I believe that this sonnet is by Maynard.
Malassis pretends that it is by Théophile.
CIX
Hygiene. Projects. The more one desires, the stronger one's will.
The more one works, the better one works and the more one wants to work.
The more one produces, the more fecund one becomes.
After a debauch, one feels oneself always to be more solitary, more abandoned.
In the moral as in the physical world, I have been conscious always of an abyss, not only of the abyss of sleep, but of the abyss of action, of daydreaming, of recollection, of desire, of regret, of remorse, of the beautiful, of number ... etc.
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
CX
Hygiene. Morality. To Honfleur! as soon as possible, before I sink further.
How many have been the presentiments and signs sent me already by God that it is high time to act, to consider the present moment as the most important of all moments and to take for my everlasting delight my accustomed torment, that is to say, my work!
CXI
Hygiene. Conduct. Morality. We are weighed down, every moment, by the conception and the sensation of Time. And there are but two means of escaping and forgetting this nightmare: Pleasure and work. Pleasure consumes us. Work strengthens us. Let us choose.
The more we employ one of these means, the more the other will inspire us with repugnance.
One can only forget Time by making use of it.
Nothing can be accomplished save by degrees.
De Maistre and Edgar Poe have taught me to reason.
No task seems long but that which one dares not begin. It becomes a nightmare.
CXII
Hygiene. In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it. In refusing instant conversion one risk damnation.
To heal all things, wretchedness, disease or melancholy, absolutely nothing is required but an inclination for work.
CXIII
Precious notes. Do, every day, what duty and prudence dictate.
If you worked every day your life would be more supportable. Work six days without relaxing.
To find subjects, Gnwdi seautsn.
Always be a poet, even in prose.
The grand style (nothing more beautiful than the commonplace).
First make a start, then apply logic and analysis. Every hypothesis demands a conclusion.
To achieve a daily madness.
CXIV
Hygiene. Conduct. Morality. Two parts. Debts. (Ancelle).
Friends (my mother, friends, myself).
Thus 1,000 francs should be divided into two parts of 500 francs each, and the second divided into three parts.
At Honfleur. To go through and classify all my letters (two days) and all my debts (two days). (Four categories: notes of hand, large debts, small debts, friends.) A classification of my engravings (two days). A classification of my notes (two days).
CXV
Hygiene. Morality. Conduct. Too late, perhaps! - My mother and Jeanne - My health, for pity's, for duty's sake! - The maladies of Jeanne. My mother's infirmities and loneliness.
To do one's duty every day and trust in God for the morrow.
The only method of earning money is to work in a disinterested manner.
A summary of wisdom. Toilet. Prayer. Work.
Prayer: charity, wisdom and strength.
Without charity I am no more than a resounding cymbal.
My humiliations have been the graces of God.
My phase of egoism - is it passed?
The faculty of being able to meet the need of the moment; exactitude, in other words, must infallibly obtain its reward.
Prolonged unhappiness has upon the soul the same effect as old age upon the body: one cannot stir, one takes to one's bed....
Extreme youth, on the other hand, finds reasons for procrastination; when there is plenty of time to spare, one is persuaded that years may be allowed to pass before one need play one's part.
CHATEAUBRIAND
CXVI
Hygiene. Conduct. Morality. Jeanne 300, my mother 200, myself 300 - 800 francs a month. To work from six o'clock in the morning, fasting at midday. To work blindly, without aim, like a madman. We shall see the result.
I believe that I stake my destiny upon hours of uninterrupted work.
All may be redeemed. There is still time. Who knows, even, if some new pleasure...?
Fame, payment of my debts. Wealth of Jeanne and my mother.
I have never yet tasted the pleasure of an accomplished design.
Power of the fixed idea, power of hope.
The habit of doing one's duty drives out fear.
One must desire to dream and know how to dream. The evocation of inspiration. A magic art. To sit down at once and write. I reason too much.
Immediate work, even when it is bad, is better than daydreaming.
A succession of small acts of will achieves a large result.
Every defeat of the will forms a portion of lost matter. How wasteful, then, is hesitation! One may judge this by the immensity of the final effort necessary to repair so many losses.
The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.
Dreams and warnings of death.
Up to the present I have only enjoyed my memories alone; I must enjoy them in the company of another. To make the pleasures of the spirit one's passion.
Because I can understand the nature of a glorious existence, I believe myself capable of its realization. Oh, Jean-Jacques!
Work engenders good habits, sobriety and chastity, from which result health, riches, continuous and strengthening inspiration and charity. Age quod agis.
Fish, cold baths, showers, moss, pastilles occasionally, together with the abstinence from all stimulants.
Iceland moss ... 125 grammes.
White sugar ... 250 grammes.
Soak the moss for twelve to fifteen hours in a sufficient quantity of cold water, then pour off the water. Boil the moss in two litres of water upon a slow and constant fire until these two litres are reduced to one, skim the froth off once, then add the 250 grammes of sugar and let it thicken to the consistency of syrup. Let it cool off. Take three very large tablespoonfuls daily, in the morning, at midday and in the evening. One need not be afraid to increase the doses if the crises are too frequent.
CXVII
Hygiene. Conduct. Method. I swear to observe henceforth the following rules as immutable rules of my life:
To pray every morning to God, the source of all power and all justice; to my father, to Mariette and to Poe, as intercessors; that they may give me the necessary strength to fulfil all my appointed tasks and that they may grant my mother a sufficient span of life in which to enjoy my transformation; to work all day long, or as long, at any rate, as my strength allows me; to put my trust in God, that is, in Justice itself, for the success of my plans; to offer, every evening, a further prayer, asking God for life and strength for my mother and myself; to divide all my earnings into four parts - one for current expenses, one for my creditors, one for my friends and one for my mother - to obey the strictest principles of sobriety, the first being the abstinence from all stimulants whatsoever.