April 22, 1833

I have stumbled badly, and find it very hard to recover from my disturbance. All work is impossible amid agitations of this kind. Everything becomes bitter, so strong is the taste of gall in one’s mouth. Is it my fault? A little, perhaps. I ought not to take these things so keenly; but one must also admit that, unless one has completely annihilated one’s soul, pressed, squeezed, twisted it so that not a drop of love for independence remains, it is difficult to stifle that cry of liberty, or pride, as you please. This little adventure is a very bad omen for my new life; if so slight a trial has exhausted my patience and all my good resolutions, I have little to hope for from my future resignation. Disenchantment has seized me again: everything that smiled at me yesterday grimaces at me today; everything that was white is black, what was clear is turbid; my soul Is now no more than dark water in which the sand has risen.

It is a misfortune to be made this way. My happiness must be pure and complete in every respect; the slightest stain disfigures it for me, a black cloud in the sky spoils the whole firmament. It is madness, for there is no such happiness in this world, and the most ill-advised of all madnesses; yet it seems my lot to fare as poorly in illusions as in realities. Fiat! fiat!

April 23, 1833

The awakening of vegetation is prodigiously slow. I am almost vexed with nature, which seems to take pleasure in making us lose patience. The larches, the birches, the two lilac bushes we have in the garden, the rosebushes and hawthorn hedges bear scarcely any greenery; everything else is dark and sleeps almost as in winter, except for a few beeches which, more springlike than their brothers, are beginning to take on color against the black mass of the planting along the pond. Besides, all the birds have arrived, the nightingales sing day and night, the sun shines wonderfully, winged insects buzz and whirl; there is life and joy everywhere, except within me. By some strange contrast I cannot explain, I have found life harder these past few days than in the winter days, when I was already in no little distress. I feel like a dead tree in the midst of a wood all green.

April 24, 1833

Finished reading Plant Physiology by Candolle, three octavo volumes. The first deals with nutrition, the second with reproduction, the third with the influence of outside agents. Despite the chemistry, which plays a large part in this work, especially in the first volume, and of which I understand not a word, I took keen pleasure in the reading. An entirely new world opened before me, a little vague, it is true, and one into which I have taken scarcely half a step; but be that as it may, it is no small happiness to open a new prospect in the contemplation of this world and to glimpse something of nature’s life and beauty. An infinite number of details escaped me, but the impression that remains is precious. It has redoubled my attraction to observing natural things and inclined me toward an inexhaustible source of consolation and poetry. Oh, what happiness there must be in heaven, since the smallest glimpse of the order and vital energy of our tiny globe delights us so profoundly. On the other hand, distress and anguish increase: every day one strikes one’s head against phenomena one does not understand, ordinary phenomena, and that makes it all the more cruel. But one must be patient in view of the future, and accustom one’s soul to knowing how to live on little.

April 25, 1833

It has just rained. Nature is fresh, radiant; the earth seems to savor with delight the water that brings it life. One would say the birds’ throats had also been refreshed by this rain: their song is purer, livelier, more brilliant, and vibrates wonderfully in the air, now extraordinarily resonant and resounding. The nightingales, bullfinches, blackbirds, thrushes, orioles, finches, kinglets, all sing and rejoice. A goose, crying like a trumpet, adds to the charm by contrast. The motionless trees seem to listen to all these sounds. Countless apple trees in blossom appear in the distance like balls of snow; the cherry trees, also all white, rise in pyramids or spread into fans of flowers.

The birds sometimes seem to aim at those orchestral effects in which all the instruments mingle in a mass of harmony.

If one could identify oneself with spring, press that thought to the point of believing one breathed into oneself all the life, all the love fermenting in nature, feel oneself at once flower, greenery, bird, song, freshness, suppleness, delight, serenity! What would become of me? There are moments when, by concentrating upon this idea and gazing steadily at nature, one believes one feels something like it.

May 1, 1833

God, how sad it is! Wind, rain, and cold. This May Day feels to me like a wedding day turned into a funeral day. Last night there was the moon, the stars, a blue so limpid and a light so clear they could carry one into raptures. Today I have seen nothing but showers racing through the air one upon another in great columns, which a mad wind drives relentlessly before it. I have heard nothing but that same wind moaning all around me, with those lamentable, sinister moans it takes or learns I know not where: one would call it a breath of misfortune, of calamity, of all the afflictions I imagine floating in our atmosphere, shaking our dwellings and coming to sing its mournful prophecies at all our windows. This wind, whatever it may be, while stirring my soul so sadly by its mysterious power, shook nature outside through its material action, and perhaps through something more as well: for who knows whether we know the full extent of the elements’ relations and conversations with one another? Through my windows I saw this wind raging against the trees, driving them to despair. Sometimes it descended upon the forest with such impetuosity that it tossed it like a sea, and I thought I saw the whole forest pivoting and whirling upon its roots like an immense eddy. The four great firs behind the house received such violent blows from time to time that they seemed seized with terror, and gave something like hurrahs of terror that could make one tremble. The birds venturing to fly were carried off like straws; I saw them, scarcely showing their feeble struggle against the current and barely able to keep their wings extended, drifting away at the greatest speed. Those that remain hidden give scarcely a sign of life, beginning their songs but never finishing them. The flowers are dulled and, as it were, crumpled; everything is afflicted. I am sadder than in winter. On such days there reveals itself deep within my soul, in the most intimate, most profound part of its substance, a kind of altogether strange despair; it is like abandonment and darkness outside God. My God, how can it be that my repose is disturbed by what happens in the air, and the peace of my soul thus given over to the winds’ caprice? Oh, it is because I do not know how to govern myself, because my will is not united to yours and, since there is nothing else to which it can attach itself, I have become the plaything of everything that blows upon the earth.

May 3, 1833

A joyous day, full of sun, a warm breeze, perfumes in the air; within the soul, felicity. Greenery gains before one’s eyes; it has leapt from the garden into the groves, reigns all along the pond; it jumps, so to speak, from tree to tree, thicket to thicket, in the fields and on the slopes, and I see it has already reached the forest and is beginning to spill across its broad back. Soon it will have overflowed as far as the eye can reach, and all these great spaces enclosed by the horizon will be billowing and bellowing like a vast sea, an emerald sea. A few days more and we shall have all the splendor, all the unfolding of the vegetable kingdom.

May 7, 1833

I have this moment received a letter and verses from my dear François, in reply to the poem I sent him. What a sweet friendship I have formed there. François is one of the freshest, clearest, most consoling souls I have ever known. Moreover, he is a poet, and it could not be otherwise; a poet not through effort and mental labor, as so many are, but through outpouring and natural speech. It flows from him like water from a fountain. His friendship is all the dearer to me, and I understand his talent all the better, because I am far from deserving the one or approaching the other. I resemble him so little! But I find consolation in thinking that friendship is born of contrasts.

May 9, 1833

Five or six days of sun without the shadow of a cloud. The unfolding of greenery is almost complete. Nature has brought out all her adornments. She has reached that unique point of freshness, purity, grace, which one must hasten to seize, for it passes quickly. The leaves that opened yesterday are tender as dew and transparently green; I scarcely dare touch them for fear of withering them. Yet the day before yesterday Élie and I tore off a few beech leaves to make a dish of them, following the Bernardines’ example. They are not bad; they have some flavor, but are a little tough. I truly felt remorse at tearing off these poor leaves, scarcely born. They would have lived their lives, rejoiced in the sun, swayed in the wind. I thought of all this as I cut them, yet my hand went on ravaging the branches just the same. Besides, while committing this little cruelty, I was having with Élie one of those conversations that recur from time to time, always bringing charm and relief to the soul. As we went away with our basket full, we promised ourselves we would gather leaves from time to time, alluding to our conversation.

La Chênaie seems to me like an old woman, deeply wrinkled and white-haired, turned by the fairies’ wand once more into a girl of sixteen, and a most graceful one. She has all the freshness, all the radiance, all the mysterious charm of virginity. But, my God, how little time it will last! Yesterday M. Féli showed us leaves already pierced and notched by insects.

It rained all night. An increase of greenery and life. I walked along the pond toward seven o’clock. The trees leaning over the water dripped slowly, and each drop fell upon the smooth surface with a little resonance that had something plaintive about it. One would have said the trees, having wept all night, were letting fall their last tears.

‘Do you know,’ M. Féli said to us the evening before last, ‘why man is the most suffering of creatures? It is because he has one foot in the finite and the other in the infinite, and is torn apart, not by four horses, as in dreadful times, but by two worlds.’

He also said to us, on hearing the clock strike: ‘If someone told this clock its head would be cut off in a moment, it would go on striking its hour until that moment came. My children, be like the clock: whatever is to happen, always strike your hour.’

May 22, 1833

There are no more flowers on the trees. Their mission of love accomplished, they have died, like a mother who perishes in giving life. The fruits have set; they draw in the vital and reproductive energy that is to bring new individuals into being. A countless generation is now suspended from the branches of every tree, from the fibers of the humblest grasses, like children at the maternal breast. All these seeds, incalculable in their number and diversity, hang there between heaven and earth in their cradle, given over to the wind, whose charge it is to rock these creatures. Future forests sway, imperceptible, upon the living forests. Nature is wholly occupied with the cares of her immense maternity.