April 2.

Cicero said of Demosthenes that he was “more Attic than Athens.” One could therefore say of V[oltaire] that he was more French than Paris and all France together.

“Ut oratio orbem suum conficiat” (says Cicero). This happens when, like a father in his household, the mind has made its rounds through its work and seen it again and, as it were, inspected it in a single glance.

Let the work be complete and round.

March 26.

Indeed, speech is the sign of thought and writing is the sign of speech. That is to say, it is only the sign of another sign.

April 3.

Without rhythms (they said) discourse stammers. They admitted certain rhythms in oratorical compositions. For example, some the iambic ephorus, the paeon and the dactyl (he rejected the spondee and the trochee). Aristotle proscribes the heroic and the iamb. He admits the paeon, as do Theophrastus and Theodectes. Cicero wishes them all to be admitted, but the paeon and the dactyl more often. That is to say, the ancients proscribed slow rhythms that spread themselves out, so to speak, arrest the attention and call attention to themselves, and admitted those that move quickly and carry one along.

A rhythm different from that of verse, from all verse among them and only some verse among us. For nature does not impel us toward a certain mixture of times and an affected arrangement of longs and shorts (of which the ancients’ verse was composed), but irresistibly determines, according to the writer’s thought and character, a certain number of syllables for each sentence and each member. The nature of the ear, the very quality of attention according to men and peoples, the greater or lesser liveliness of mind requiring...

Note that beyond twelve syllables there is no longer verse in French, and there is verse of one. The ancients, on the contrary, could not have even a time that did not consist of at least two syllables.

Erudition in a novel, and our contemporaries in a drama.

Saturday, April 2.

Pascal’s “too quickly” and “too slowly.” “One does not understand (he says) what one reads too quickly, nor what one reads too slowly.” See the manuscript of his Pensées, which I saw for the first time on Saturday the 26th, saw again and read on Monday, March 28 of this year. Add that one inevitably forgets (at least I do) everything one transcribes too quickly.

That the ridiculous traits for which names or a designation have not yet been found have fewer drawbacks and, so to [speak], less existence, or an existence not yet established.

April 4.

It takes time, and much time, before the slowness of good taste can, in its progress, catch up with the liveliness of the mind (which is so rapid in its own), and before reason has caught up with imagination. All perfection is slow; everything ripe has ripened slowly. This is so true that the link between these two words is established both in thought and in usage.

The abbé Delile. It is not high in color, but it has a good complexion. Poetry is there like the blood in Mme de V[i]nt[i]m[i]ll[e]’s arms.

Good taste that rejects false pleasures. But in yours there is a little rigorism that denies itself pleasures that would be permitted.

Everywhere in it one sees the soul of a man who has tasted pleasures and preferred Duty to them,—an uncommon kind of charm! Elsewhere poetry shows itself either too devoted to pleasure or too ignorant of it.

There is always in taste a little reflection or second attention.