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 2 of 118
Flares · Fusées · I
French
p. 3Quand même Dieu n’existerait pas, la religion serait encore sainte et divine.
Dieu est le seul être qui, pour régner, n’ait même pas besoin d’exister.
Ce qui est créé par l’esprit est plus vivant que la matière.
L’amour, c’est le goût de la prostitution. Il n’est même pas de plaisir noble qui ne puisse être ramené à la prostitution.
Dans un spectacle, dans un bal, chacun jouit de tous.
Qu’est-ce que l’art ? Prostitution.
Le plaisir d’être dans les foules est une expression mystérieuse de la jouissance de la multiplication du nombre.
Tout est nombre. Le nombre est dans tout. Le nombre est dans l’individu. L’ivresse est un nombre.
Le goût de la concentration productive doit remplacer, chez un homme mûr, le goût de la déperdition.
L’amour peut dériver d’un sentiment généreux : le goût de la prostitution ; mais il est bientôt corrompu par le goût de la propriété.
L’amour veut sortir de soi, se confondre avec sa victime, comme le vainqueur avec le vaincu, et cependant conserver des privilèges de conquérant.
Les voluptés de l’entreteneur tiennent à la fois de l’ange et du propriétaire. Charité et férocité. Elles sont même indépendantes du sexe, de la beauté et du genre animal.
Les ténèbres vertes dans les soirs humides de la belle saison.
Profondeur immense de pensée dans les locutions vulgaires, trous creusés par des générations de fourmis.
Anecdote du Chasseur, relative à la liaison intime de la férocité et de l’amour.
Intimate Journals: Flares
p. 4Even if God did not exist, religion would still be holy and divine.
God is the only being who does not even need to exist in order to reign.
What the mind creates is more alive than matter.
Love is a taste for prostitution. There is not even a noble pleasure that cannot be reduced to prostitution.
At a performance, at a ball, everyone takes pleasure in everyone else.
What is art? Prostitution.
The pleasure of being in crowds is a mysterious expression of the delight in the multiplication of number.
Everything is number. Number is in everything. Number is in the individual. Intoxication is a number.
In a mature man, a taste for productive concentration must replace a taste for dissipation.
Love may spring from a generous feeling: a taste for prostitution; but it is soon corrupted by a taste for ownership.
Love wants to go outside itself, to merge with its victim as the victor with the vanquished, and yet to retain the privileges of a conqueror.
The sensual pleasures of the man who keeps a mistress partake of both the angel and the property owner. Charity and ferocity. They are even independent of sex, beauty, and animal kind.
The green darkness on damp evenings in the warm season.
Immense depth of thought in common expressions, holes dug by generations of ants.
Anecdote of the Hunter, concerning the intimate connection between ferocity and love.
Socrates
Reading Intimate Journals · Flares · Flares · I
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.