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I should like to see all the old men there; they are the majesty of the people.
Order that all the old men born under Louis 14, when they present themselves at the doors of the hall where... shall be admitted there.
It is not facts but rumors that cause popular unrest. What is believed does everything.
Extension is the body of God, Newton would readily have said.
April 25, 1789.
Just as, in music, pleasure arises from the mingling of sounds and silences, of rests and noise, so in architecture it arises from the well-arranged mingling of voids and solids, of intervals and masses.
April 27.
Mixture of the dry and the moist. Water swells before boiling.
June 15, 1789.
To the love of pleasure, the love of beauty.
May 1, 1789.
To write history...
May 2...
Resounding announcements. (At 9 in the evening.)
Every man is free and cannot lose his freedom. He cannot lose it by his own will, for that would be madness, nor by another’s will, for that would be oppression. Whoever takes away a man’s freedom for his whole life deserves death. Freedom consists in being able to do and say everything not forbidden by law.
[Tasso.]
This is the first work of Tasso’s youth. Those who have lately wished to rob this poem of the glory of having that immortal poet as its author have been strangely mistaken. To undeceive themselves, they need only read the prefaces to Rinaldo in the editions of 1500, etc. They will see the whole history of the book there. It is there they will learn that Tasso was studying law at the University of Padua under X... when, on the advice of etc. It is there that he recounts...
He was then seventeen, and Renaud took only ten months; yet it seems to bear the marks neither of the... of that age nor of that haste. One would sooner find in the [ ] the character of an imagination whose bloom is gone than that of an inspiration still untamed. I am speaking of the style. As for the events, they are not very judicious, and the imitator, by often giving them an exposition, another course, and other complications, has often embellished the work.
In the preface I have cited, Tasso excuses himself for not having adorned the beginnings of his cantos with those prologues Ariosto had brought into fashion, which were then a novelty. He gives a reason that does no less honor to his taste and mind than his poem does to his imagination. In a poem, he says in substance, where the variety of events continually interrupts its thread, the author must show himself and speak in his own name from time [to time], just as in unfamiliar and winding country a guide must etc. Thus in these complex works a kind of unity of a particular sort is established: the unity of the writer. That expression is profound.
This leads me to speak of Tasso’s prose works and his literary principles. They are little known and well deserve to be. He was a profound thinker on his art. Whoever makes on his etc. — will render an important service to letters.
This character of a thinker appears even in Tasso’s verses. They are short and have the form that would suit maxims. In the turns of his style he does not resemble the ancient poets, but he resembles the ancient sages. There is none in, etc. — for which one could not find models in them. They are blamed... They are fitting. Nothing can... This great and reason... [able] etc.
One will not find in this imitation the same style as in the original. That one is narrow, close-packed; its sentence is scantily clad. The corselet and the armguards. This one is rich, abundant, sumptuous, and unfolded. Here is what he thought of this etc...
In this work one will see his name, his country, his family, those etc. As for the praises given him here, I shall not seek to conceal... I wished to speak of him here only to praise him. His country has done him greater honor. Nothing would be lacking... only one is lacking to his happiness: to have today as witness to his labors the woman to whom [it] is dedicated, a woman worthy of homage, whom Tasso himself would have celebrated in song at her tomb. Let this bitter reflection sadden neither author nor reader. Memories...
For it is a work by Tasso...