Diotimos Library · Journals, Notebooks & Fragments Collection · Bilingual Edition
Intimate Journals
Flares and My Heart Laid Bare · French with an independent English translation.
Explore the LexiconSwipe or use the arrow keys.
Facing Pages · Branch 19 of 118
Flares · XVIII
French
p. 37Fusées. — Ne méprisez la sensibilité de personne. La sensibilité de chacun, c’est son génie.
Il n’y a que deux endroits où l’on paye pour avoir le droit de dépenser : les latrines publiques et les femmes.
Par un concubinage ardent, on peut deviner les jouissances d’un jeune ménage.
. Le goût précoce des femmes. Je confondais l’odeur de la fourrure avec l’odeur de la femme. Je me souviens... Enfin j’aimais ma mère pour son élégance. J’étais donc un dandy précoce.
Mes ancêtres, idiots ou maniaques, dans des appartements solennels, tous victimes de terribles passions.
Les pays protestants manquent de deux éléments indispensables au bonheur d’un homme bien élevé, la galanterie et la dévotion.
Le mélange du grotesque et du tragique est agréable à l’esprit, comme les discordances aux oreilles blasées.
Ce qu’il y a d’enivrant dans le mauvais goût, c’est le plaisir aristocratique de déplaire.
L’Allemagne exprime la rêverie par la ligne, comme l’Angleterre par la perspective.
Il y a, dans l’engendrement de toute pensée sublime, une secousse nerveuse qui se fait sentir dans le cervelet.
L’Espagne met dans la religion la férocité naturelle de l’amour.
Style. — La note éternelle, le style éternel et cosmopolite. Chateaubriand, Alph. Rabbe, Edgar Poe.
Intimate Journals: Flares
p. 38Flares. — Do not despise anyone’s sensibility. Each person’s sensibility is his genius.
There are only two places where one pays for the right to spend: public latrines and women.
Through ardent cohabitation, one can guess at the pleasures of a young married couple.
. An early taste for women. I confused the scent of fur with the scent of woman. I remember… In short, I loved my mother for her elegance. I was therefore a precocious dandy.
My ancestors, idiots or maniacs, in solemn apartments, all victims of terrible passions.
Protestant countries lack two elements indispensable to the happiness of a well-bred man: gallantry and devotion.
The mixture of the grotesque and the tragic is pleasing to the mind, as dissonances are to jaded ears.
What is intoxicating in bad taste is the aristocratic pleasure of displeasing.
Germany expresses reverie through line, as England does through perspective.
In the birth of every sublime thought there is a nervous shock that is felt in the cerebellum.
Spain puts the natural ferocity of love into religion.
Style. — The eternal note, the eternal and cosmopolitan style. Chateaubriand, Alph. Rabbe, Edgar Poe.
Socrates
Reading Intimate Journals · Flares · Flares · XVIII
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.