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These beautiful, large ships, imperceptibly rocked (swayed) on tranquil waters, these sturdy ships with their idle, nostalgic air, do they not say to us in a silent language: When do we set out for happiness?
Do not forget, in drama, the marvellous element, sorcery, and romance.
The settings, the atmospheres, in which an entire narrative must be steeped. (See Usher, and refer back to the deep sensations of hashish and opium).
Is there such a thing as mathematical madness, and are there madmen who think that two and two make three? In other words, can hallucination, if these words do not shriek [at being coupled together], invade matters of pure reasoning? If, when a man grows accustomed to laziness, reverie and idleness, to the point of continually putting off the important task until tomorrow, another man were to wake him one morning with heavy strokes of a whip and whip him mercilessly until, unable to work for pleasure, he worked out of fear, would that man, the whipper, not truly be his friend, his benefactor? Besides, one may affirm that pleasure would come afterwards, with far better reason than when people say: love comes after marriage.
So too, in politics, the true saint is the one who whips and kills the people for the people’s good.
Tuesday, 13 May 1856.
Collect copies from Michel.
Write to Moun,
to Urriès,
to Maria Clemm.
Send someone to Mme Dumay’s to find out whether Mirès…
Whatever is not slightly misshapen seems unfeeling; from this it follows that irregularity, that is, the unexpected, surprise, astonishment, is an essential part and the distinguishing mark of beauty.
Notes. Flares. — Théodore de Banville is not exactly a materialist; he is luminous.
His poetry represents hours of happiness.
With every letter from a creditor, write fifty lines on a subject beyond this world and you will be saved.
Broad smile on a giant’s beautiful face.
On Suicide and Suicidal Madness Considered in Their Relations to Statistics, Medicine and Philosophy.
Briere de Boismont.
Find the passage: “To live with a being who has nothing but aversion for you…”
The portrait of Serenus, by Seneca. That of Stagirius, by Saint John Chrysostom. Acedia, the monks’ illness.
Flares. — Translation and paraphrase of Passion relates everything to itself.
Spiritual and physical delights caused by storms, electricity and lightning, the alarm bell of dark memories of love from bygone years.
Flares. — I have found the definition of the Beautiful, of my Beautiful.
It is something ardent and sad, something a little vague, leaving room for conjecture. I shall, if you like, apply my ideas to an object perceived by the senses, to the most interesting object in society, for example: a woman’s face. A seductive and beautiful head, a woman’s head, I mean, is one that makes us dream at once—though confusedly—of sensual pleasure and sadness; that conveys an idea of melancholy, weariness, even satiety—or the opposite idea, that is, ardour, a desire to live, joined with a bitterness that flows back, as though arising from deprivation or despair. Mystery and regret are also qualities of the Beautiful.
A beautiful man’s head need not convey, in a man’s eyes of course—except, perhaps, in a woman’s—that idea of sensual pleasure which, in a woman’s face, is a provocation generally all the more alluring the more melancholy the face is. But this head will also contain something ardent and sad—spiritual needs—darkly repressed ambitions—the idea of a growling, unused power—sometimes the idea of a vengeful absence of feeling (for the ideal type of the dandy must not be neglected in this subject), sometimes also—and this is one of the most interesting qualities of beauty—mystery, and finally (so that I may have the courage to admit how modern I feel in matters of aesthetics), misfortune. I do not claim that Joy cannot be associated with Beauty, but I say that Joy is one of its most vulgar adornments, whereas Melancholy is, so to speak, its illustrious companion, to such a degree that I can scarcely conceive (could my brain be a bewitched mirror?) a type of Beauty in which there is no Misfortune. Supported by—others would say: obsessed by—these ideas, it is understandable that I would find it difficult not to conclude that the most perfect type of virile Beauty is Satan—in Milton’s manner.