October 21.

The agreeable (or agreeableness) applied to the useful is properly the object of literature.

— Of those who seek the best in what exists.

In the arts, we call manner a habit we have formed for ourselves and that comes from our custom more than from our nature. In literature, we call manner what one cannot read without at once imagining it accompanied by some small gesticulation, some pursing of the mouth or some contortion, that is, some movement that is not very frank, not much shared by the whole man. The mannered in which one imagines the gesture is properly the mannered. When one imagines the pursing, it is the precious, affectation. When one imagines the contortion, it is altogether the ridiculous.

Mannered in manners. Delalot partakes of the mannered because, in reading everything he writes, one involuntarily imagines a certain air of the head that is easily mimicked and is constant. I say constant, for what is fleeting and varied escapes both the name and the reproach.

— What makes one imagine that the author has smiled to himself.

There is sometimes in Montesquieu a sort of pursing; but it is a pursing of the eyebrows, a sort of frown that penetration makes so as to let nothing escape.

In Félès, the posture is from head to foot.

The grimace of temper lies outside the mannered; it is too lively.

Geoffroy sometimes has affectation, but it is brief.

Manner in the voice, is not the mannered. The mannered requires some movement in the body. Repose can enter only into manner. The original, the singular have customs that come to them from their nature. Emphasis is in the voice; affectation can be found in pronunciation.

The movement of the body, though partial and not total, does not constitute the mannered if it comes from the movement of the mind. For the mind is accounted the whole man.

... [they] cast their sentences into molds they do not have — but have prescribed for themselves. Such is Ch—p—g—n— Such C—m—s, when they translated Aristotle.

Of the overelaborate. When there is something overelaborate in a good style, it is a misfortune rather than a fault, for it comes from the author’s not having had the time or good fortune to find what he was seeking. It was not taste he lacked, but success.

In dialogue, affectations can be in their place.

By deriving comedy from comus, one understands better what it means. And one can make this the law of etymologies. The best is the one that makes the meaning of the word better felt.

October 22.

Of the feeling of existence. When nothing disturbs it, it suffices for happiness. And how.

October 23.

The law of logistic distinctions and divisions is this: they must be made and admitted when the subject is better known by this means. Greater clarity in the subject establishes their legitimacy. That is their good. Without this excuse, they are only a license.

October 28.

One can say in a few words that the pleasure proper to comedy lies in laughter and the pleasure proper to tragedy in tears. But for the honor of the poet who arouses laughter or tears, the laughter he arouses must be agreeable and the tears beautiful. In other words, tragedy and comedy must make us laugh and weep with decency. What forces laughter and what wrings out tears is not praiseworthy.

October 29.

We moderns have more brilliance and less clarity.

October 30.

Style then beats, so to speak, the time of the movement within our soul. If this movement is gentle and moderate, what marks it is gentle too and gives pleasure. But on the contrary...

In Delalot, one does not see it beat, but one feels it. There is the sound of the woodcutter whose stick one does not see.