Wednesday, April 1.

Heads in which there is light, minds that have movement, souls in which there is taste.

Caves, caverns, underground passages have no place in the landscapes of the epic poem; and everything that resembles our actors’ playing would ill befit its characters’ bearing. One must carefully banish from it all apparatus too elaborately arranged, too ostentatious, and equally forbid oneself the poses and scenery of the theater.

And there are heads in which, instead of light, there is fire and heat; minds in which there is agitation and uneasiness instead of movement; souls, finally, that have more hunger or appetite than taste.

In others, there is perception without clarity, without heat, without movement, without feeling; and action without emotion.

To make oneself a dictionary (of words, phrases, turns of expression), a first and difficult operation! Ch—D—Z— has succeeded at it, and will go no further. Y has more taste than knowledge. Ω has taste, wit, and knowledge. Mlle P has only wit, and the great Pr aspires only to orthodoxy in style and literary opinions. He cites the traditions, etc.

There are minds that are machines, and that digest what they learn as Vaucanson’s duck digested food. Mechanical digestion that does not nourish; digestion whose only symptoms and effect are coarse excretions.

Idea and thought. Thought is of the fact, idea of the cause or affinity; thought produces only assertion, idea opens a perspective.

To give currency (by one’s impetus) to new and good ideas, to extract them and expose them to broad daylight, display them, recall them, inculcate them, put them into circulation: that is what a good newspaper must carefully do. Its most useful function is to point things out: let them, then, point out Rivarol.

Rivarol. O the beautiful matter this young man had created! and sometimes the beautiful workmanship! A thinker and writer more perfect in metaphysics than all his predecessors, a great moralist through the rectitude of his mind alone, enlightened by truth about goodness... His grace arises within him from his imagination alone.

There is always charm in grace, because there is always something of the charmed man in it. Charmed, I say, to feel himself within order, to inhabit the diapason or the circle of harmony. For in existence, in morals, in literature, there is a diapason as in music. Everything has its circle. There is a horizon beyond which the imagination is ill at ease; another beyond which the undulations that cause agreeable sounds cannot extend.

To characterize the differences between ancient and modern criticism. And let us also observe, to show the indulgence of ancient criticism, that Cicero found Aratus’s verses very beautiful. (See Journal de l’Empire, March 23, 1807.)

Painters say that there are paintings in which there is no air. We also have poems with characters in which there is no place, no space.

It is impossible to sing in tune and dance in time without pleasure, so naturally agreeable is the observance of any true measure. But moral order is measure and harmony, and it is also impossible to live well without a secret pleasure that is very great.