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December 8.
— Yes. Let the critics talk, it is the rhythm of thought.
December 9.
My mind needs fetters.
The bird that swims in flying, the fish that flies in swimming turn back upon their movements with rather abrupt jolts that give it variety and even have grace if their abruptness is brief.
Finally, in a narrow space and a brief gathering, all peoples, in a sense, all sexes, and all ranks, and all ages on their knees praying for a young woman who had appeared in life only to suffer all its ills.
— This idea and this feeling would have cast some sweetness into that cup of bitterness from which she finally drank death.
Her soul alone remained strong.
December 11.
For nothing is worse than feigned variety, and the first of charms is truth in style, that is to say, its good faith.
It is not the symmetries of his style that keep one from reading Seneca; on the contrary, they are what make him quoted.
Art is only the natural perfected.
They speak to the ear, I want to speak to memory.
December 12.
Opinion is to the mind what temper is to feelings.
— It is true, there is no present abandon there. But there is a past abandon. And it is still abandon.
December 13.
Yes, a flame without smoke, a light without vapors, that is what I would like, but what it is perhaps impossible to have often, and still less always.
December 14.
De industria. — One wants art, and design. One likes the tricks of the craft. In certain cases they are part of the natural. For the orator (and the poet in certain subjects) are not simply men, but orators, poets, men who know an art. (Virgil perpetually shows his in the Georgics. He conceals it in the Aeneid.)
The mind has no part in true poetry, it comes from the soul alone. It comes in reverie, but whatever one does, reflection never finds it. Gift of heaven! Which has placed it within us!
The mind nevertheless prepares it by offering objects to the soul. Reflection, which unearths them, as it were, also serves the purpose for the same reason.
Emotion and knowledge, there are its cause and there its matter. Matter without cause serves no purpose. Cause without matter would be worth more. A beautiful disposition that remains idle at least makes itself felt to the one who has it and makes him happy.
Through a certain marked disposition of mind to which a language without character would not correspond. Prose does not suffice for it unless some measure, some cadence, some rhythm enters into it.