History of The Flowers of Evil. Humiliation through misunderstanding, and my trial.
History of my relations with all the famous men of the day.
Pretty portraits of a few imbeciles:
Clément de Ris.
Castagnary.
Portraits of magistrates, officials, newspaper directors, etc.
Portrait of the artist, in general.
On the editor in chief and schoolmastering. The whole French people’s immense taste for schoolmastering and dictatorship. It is the cry If I were king!
Portraits and anecdotes.
François Buloz,—Houssaye,—the famous Rouy,—de Calonne,—Charpentier, who corrects his authors, by virtue of the equality granted to all men by the immortal principles of [17]89.—Chevalier, a true editor in chief by the Empire’s standards.
On George Sand. — The woman Sand is the Prudhomme of immorality.
She has always been a moralist.
Only, she used to practise counter-morality.
So she has never been an artist. She has the famous flowing style so dear to the bourgeois.
She is stupid, she is ponderous, she is a chatterbox. In moral ideas, she has the same depth of judgment and delicacy of feeling as concierges and kept women.
What she says about her mother.
What she says about poetry.
Her love for workers.
That some men could have fallen in love with this latrine is proof enough of the degradation of the men of this century.
See the preface to Mademoiselle La Quintinie, where she claims that true Christians do not believe in Hell.
Sand is for the God of good people, the god of concierges and thieving servants.
She has good reasons for wanting to abolish Hell.
The Devil and George Sand. — One must not believe that the devil tempts only men of genius. No doubt he despises imbeciles, but he does not disdain their assistance. Quite the contrary: he rests his great hopes on them.
Look at George Sand. Above all, and more than anything else, she is a great fool; but she is possessed. It is the devil who has persuaded her to trust her good heart and her common sense, so that she might persuade all the other great fools to trust their good hearts and their common sense.
I cannot think of that stupid creature without a certain shudder of horror. If I met her, I could not help throwing a holy-water basin at her head.
George Sand is one of those old ingénues who never want to leave the stage. ! I recently read a preface (the preface to Mademoiselle La Quintinie) in which she claims that a true Christian cannot believe in Hell. She has good reasons for wanting to abolish Hell.
I am bored in France, chiefly because everyone there resembles Voltaire.
Emerson forgot Voltaire in his Representative Men. He could have written a pretty chapter entitled: Voltaire, or the anti-poet, the king of gawkers, the prince of the superficial, the anti-artist, the preacher to concierges, the Father Gigogne of the Siècle’s editors.
In The Ears of the Count of Chesterfield, Voltaire jokes about that immortal soul which dwelt for nine months between excrement and urine. Voltaire, like all idlers, hated mystery.
Unable to abolish love, the Church wanted at least to disinfect it, and it created marriage.
[In a note]. At least he might have discerned in this location a piece of mischief or a satire by Providence against love, and, in the manner of procreation, a sign of original sin. In fact, we can make love only with excremental organs.
Portrait of the literary Rabble.
Doctor Estaminetus Crapulosus Pedantissimus. His portrait done in the manner of Praxiteles.
His pipe,
His opinions,
His Hegelianism,
His filth,
His ideas on art,
His bile,
His jealousy.
A pretty picture of modern youth.
A drug-grinder, and one of those who rear snakes for ⟨shows⟩.
AELIAN (?)
Theology.
What is the fall?
If it is unity become duality, then it is God who has fallen.
In other words, would creation not be the fall of God?
Dandyism. — What is the superior man?
It is not the specialist.
It is the man of leisure and general Education.
To be rich and love work.
Why does a man of wit prefer prostitutes to society women, though they are equally stupid? — Find out.
There are certain women who resemble the ribbon of the Legion of Honour. One no longer wants them because they have soiled themselves through contact with certain men.
It is for the same reason that I would not put on the breeches of a man with the itch.
What is tiresome about love is that it is a crime in which one cannot do without an accomplice.