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June 4, 1835
Why am I saddened to such a degree by the sight of mediocre productions? I never open a book of the same family as the one we glanced through yesterday without leaving it with my mind suffering and my imagination cast down. Is it painful pity for that spectacle, one of the saddest I know, of powerless vanity? Or is it conscience and a turning back upon myself? Be that as it may, what does it matter? Man’s beauty does not lie there. It would be great mediocrity of soul to be unable to endure the mediocrity of one’s mind. I understand all this and languish in weaknesses. My God, what moral education is given today? I am twenty-five, ten of those years spent in schools, and I have not yet opened a primer of inward strength and the guidance of the moral sense! Never has a word been communicated to me of the soul’s greatnesses. Only yesterday did I, an old child, begin to glimpse the man, but at a great distance and upon those serene heights which one can scarcely reach with a foot already infirm. Inveterately weak and wholly crippled by fatal habits, I drag myself along in a painful march. But I understand, but I see, and if in my days I do not attain moral beauty, at least I shall die with my eyes fixed upon it. There is, however, a very troubling sign within me: the next day I find myself scarcely above the previous day’s actions, and my soul seems to remain at the level of the same acts, acts already far back in the days. My mind, on the contrary, sees everything it does age quickly. What happiness to stand above one’s past, and what joy there is in being able to disdain oneself day by day in one’s actions! — What a destiny if I were to remain coeternal with myself in the moral state I occupy at this moment!
June 5, 1835
My God, how I suffer from life! Not in its accidents, for a little philosophy suffices there; but in life itself, in its substance, apart from every phenomenon. I advance in age, my mind lets a thousand cast-off skins fall upon its paths, bonds break, prejudices fall, I begin to show my head above the waves; but existence itself remains caught: always the same painful point marking the center of the circumference. Is there a philosophy, are there rules which apply to this affliction? I know less and less of this foundation of life and what must be done there. O Porch, established to combat sorrow through strength and constancy of soul, you knew how to combat life only through death, and we are no further advanced than you!
June 12, 1835
I do not commit my bad actions impetuously. At the bottom of me there are I know not what dead and deadly waters, like that deep pool where Sténio the poet perished.
June 22, 1835
What at times makes me despair of myself is the intensity of my suffering over small matters and the forever mistaken, blind use of my moral powers. Sometimes, to roll grains of sand, I use an energy capable of pushing a rock to the mountaintop. I would better bear enormous burdens than this light, almost impalpable dust which clings to me. I perish secretly every day; my life escapes through invisible punctures. Not long ago I was told that contempt for men would carry me far; yes, and especially if sourness mingles with it. What surrounds me wearies me; I do not know where I would like to live, or in what profession; but I detest mine, which spoils me and makes me miserable. At every moment it makes me break with the little philosophy I gain in my free and serious hours; it makes me angry with men who are still children. How I hate myself in these miseries, and what violent desires seize me to leap onto a free shore, pushing away with my foot the odious boat which carries me!
July 11, 1835
Which is the true God? The God of cities or the God of wildernesses? To which should one go? Long-nourished tastes, the heart’s impulses, the accidents of life decide the choice. We carry within ourselves a thousand forces of fate. What do we know of what draws us on, and what is best in all this? The man of cities laughs within himself at the solitary men’s remote dreams; they applaud their separation, finding themselves, like the islands of the great Ocean, far from continents and bathed by unknown waves. Most to be pitied are those who, thrown between these two contradictions, stretch their arms toward both sides.
October 13, 1835
I have traveled. I do not know what movement of my destiny carried me along the banks of a river as far as the sea. Along that river I saw plains where nature is powerful and gay, royal and ancient dwellings marked by memories which hold their place in humanity’s sad legend, many cities, and the Ocean roaring at the end. From there I returned inland, to the country of great woods where continuous sounds of vast extent also abound. I endured fatigues I shall miss keenly and for a long time, crossing the great countryside, climbing from horizon to horizon, enjoying space and gaining several times a day those impressions which rise from every point of newly encountered expanses of land and fall in flocks upon the traveler. The current of journeys is very sweet... Oh! Who will set me adrift upon this Nile?...