Diotimos Library · Journals, Notebooks & Fragments Collection · Bilingual Edition
Intimate Journals
Flares and My Heart Laid Bare · French with an independent English translation.
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French Page · Branch 49 of 118
My Heart Laid Bare · Mon cœur mis à nu · XLVIII
French
p. 97Sur George Sand. — La femme Sand est le Prudhomme de l’immoralité.
Elle a toujours été moraliste.
Seulement elle faisait autrefois de la contre-morale.
Aussi elle n’a jamais été artiste. Elle a le fameux style coulant, cher aux bourgeois.
Elle est bête, elle est lourde, elle est bavarde. Elle a, dans les idées morales, la même profondeur de jugement et la même délicatesse de sentiment que les concierges et les filles entretenues.
Ce qu’elle dit de sa mère.
Ce qu’elle dit de la poésie.
Son amour pour les ouvriers.
Que quelques hommes aient pu s’amouracher de cette latrine, c’est bien la preuve de l’abaissement des hommes de ce siècle.
Voir la préface de Mademoiselle La Quintinie, où elle prétend que les vrais chrétiens ne croient pas à l’Enfer.
La Sand est pour le Dieu des bonnes gens, le dieu des concierges et des domestiques filous.
Intimate Journals: My Heart Laid Bare
p. 98On 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.
Socrates
Reading Intimate Journals · My Heart Laid Bare · My Heart Laid Bare · XLVIII
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Charles Baudelaire’s private fragments turn from art, love, and crowds to prayer, anger, work, and the discipline of writing. This complete bilingual edition presents all 117 sections of Flares and My Heart Laid Bare, including Hygiène, with an introduction and 104 explanatory notes.
Historical Text and Translation
The French follows Adolphe van Bever’s 1920 edition of Journaux intimes, printed pages 3–42 and 45–112. Its 117 Roman-numbered sections contain the complete Fusées and Mon cœur mis à nu, including Hygiène. These fragments were arranged after Baudelaire’s death; their printed sequence preserves that edition’s organization of loose sheets. The separate selection of maxims on love and the editor’s backmatter are outside this volume.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this independent English translation directly from the French. Flares and My Heart Laid Bare retain the fragments’ abrupt turns, repetitions, images, and unfinished projects. French and English paragraphs remain paired, with verse, italics, and printed annotations preserved. The introduction places the notebooks in context; translator’s notes clarify references, ambiguities, and uncertain readings. All 104 notes meet the reader’s Essential criterion and remain available beside their passages.
Rights
Baudelaire’s historical French text and the 1920 printing are in the public domain in the United States. The independent English translation, introduction, and new editorial notes are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. The linked facsimile and catalogue identify the printed source, while a historical transcription supplies a comparison witness. Original annotations retain their attribution, and source references distinguish the printed arrangement from the surviving manuscript sheets.