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April 11.
Public education (they said). Public does not matter; but common: the same books, the same disciplines, the same manners; in a word, uniformity.
—Authors of our own actions and instruments of his designs.
Of the abuses of the affective manner in criticism, in history, etc.
It is [through] the art of disguising faults as beauties and errors as truths that the mind and taste of peoples are spoiled. It is through exaggeration in grandeur, in strength, in brilliance that it is corrupted. An affected simplicity has only a slight disadvantage: introducing a bad note into literature for a time. But the ostentation of words and the pride of thoughts, oratorical luxury and pomp, if they become philosophical, corrupt even their morals. Fontenelle and Lamothe, Buffon and Rousseau.
Eloquence begins among all nations with oratorical ostentation and ends with philosophical ostentation.
When it was feared that Fontenelle etc., too much honor was done to [Fontenelle]. But no one mistrusted J.-J. and B[uffon]; and it is they who will have done the harm.—Lucan, Seneca, and Claudian, false grandeur, false wisdom.
April 12.
Illusas que auro vestes (Virg.). Magic is needed everywhere. Painting has it through its colors, sculpture through its [ ], and music through its tones, which produce the effect of speaking even without speech. Even a beautiful fabric has some of it, some magic: silk, fine broadcloth, velvet, and what is called a beautiful white.
Illusion upon a true ground: that is the secret of the fine arts and, what am I saying? of all the arts.
You will soon depict for me, in the fire that attaches itself to a candle when it is lit, a male uniting with a female.
April 13.
Frankness to those who are worthy of it. But one loses the right to be frank if one is brutal like C-m-s.
Singing measures time fairly accurately. That is, the same song, performed with the same care in different places and by different people, occupies an absolutely precise time there: the span of a credo, an ave, a miserere (the people used to say). Recitation is not so precise a measure.
April 14.
“Genius consists... in discovering the truth (hidden)”—Z, Journal des Débats, Tuesday, 23 Germinal 1802.—Or rather pure, elementary, principal, first truth.
April 16.
Plutarch. His thought is dyed with the colors that come out of all the other books.