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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Facing Pages · Branch 104 of 118
My Heart Laid Bare · CIII
French
p. 207Il est impossible de parcourir une gazette quelconque, de n’importe quel jour, ou quel mois, ou quelle année, sans y trouver, à chaque ligne, les signes de la perversité humaine la plus épouvantable, en même temps que les vanteries les plus surprenantes de probité, de bonté, de charité, et les affirmations les plus effrontées, relatives au progrès et à la civilisation.
Tout journal, de la première ligne à la dernière, n’est qu’un tissu d’horreurs. Guerres, crimes, vols, impudicités, tortures, crimes des princes, crimes des nations, crimes des particuliers, une ivresse d’atrocité universelle.
Et c’est de ce dégoûtant apéritif que l’homme civilisé accompagne son repas de chaque matin. Tout, en ce monde, sue le crime : le journal, la muraille et le visage de l’homme.
Je ne comprends pas qu’une main pure puisse toucher un journal sans une convulsion de dégoût.
Intimate Journals: My Heart Laid Bare
p. 208It is impossible to look through any newspaper, from any day, or any month, or any year, without finding, in every line, signs of the most appalling human perversity, alongside the most astonishing boasts of probity, goodness, charity, and the most brazen assertions about progress and civilisation.
Every newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a fabric of horrors. Wars, crimes, thefts, indecencies, tortures, crimes of princes, crimes of nations, crimes of individuals, an intoxication of universal atrocity.
And it is with this disgusting apéritif that civilised man accompanies his meal each morning. Everything in this world sweats crime: the newspaper, the wall, and the face of man.
I cannot understand how a pure hand can touch a newspaper without a convulsion of disgust.
Socrates
Reading Intimate Journals · My Heart Laid Bare · My Heart Laid Bare · CIII
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.