Diotimos Library · Journals, Notebooks & Fragments Collection · Bilingual Edition
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French Page · Branch 23 of 121
1833 · Le 28.
French
p. 45Le 28.
Toutes les fois que nous nous laissons pénétrer à la nature, notre âme s’ouvre aux impressions les plus touchantes. Il y a quelque chose dans la nature, soit qu’elle rie et se pare dans les beaux jours, soit qu’elle devienne pâle, grise, froide, pluvieuse, en automne et en hiver, qui émeut non-seulement la surface de l’âme, mais même ses plus intimes secrets, et donne l’éveil à mille souvenirs qui n’ont, en apparence, aucune liaison au spectacle extérieur, mais qui sans doute entretiennent une correspondance avec l’âme de la nature par des sympathies qui nous sont inconnues. J’ai ressenti aujourd’hui cette puissance étonnante en respirant, couché dans un bois de hêtres, l’air chaud du printemps.
The Green Notebook: 1833
p. 46March 28, 1833
Whenever we let nature penetrate us, our soul opens to the most moving impressions. There is something in nature, whether she laughs and adorns herself in fine weather, or grows pale, gray, cold, and rainy in autumn and winter, that stirs not only the soul’s surface but even its innermost secrets, awakening a thousand memories which apparently have no connection with the outward scene, but which surely maintain a correspondence with nature’s soul through sympathies unknown to us. I felt that astonishing power today while breathing the warm spring air, lying in a wood of beeches.
Socrates
Reading The Green Notebook · 1833 · March 28, 1833
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Maurice de Guérin’s journal moves between close attention to nature, friendship, faith, and the inward demands of poetry. This bilingual edition presents the complete Journal section of the 1864 printing, with a separate appendix of earlier printed passages from 1861.
Historical Text and Translation
The French follows G. S. Trébutien’s sixth edition of Journal, lettres et poèmes (Paris: Didier et Cie, 1864), pages 3–126. Its 116 dated entries run from July 1832 to October 1835. Five earlier passages from Reliquiae (1861) appear separately in the appendix. Completeness refers to the printed Journal, rather than the autograph notebook; the following letters and poems are outside this edition.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this independent English translation directly from the French, preserving Guérin’s imagery, repetitions, intimate voice, and original paragraph divisions. French and English remain aligned for comparison. Translator’s notes clarify words, quotations, and allusions, while historical editor notes retain their separate attribution. The Essential setting keeps explanations useful to reading; All also includes the note on the edition’s typographic treatment.
Rights
The historical French printings are in the public domain in the United States. The independent English translation and new editorial notes are © 2026 Diotimos Editions. The linked facsimiles identify the printed witnesses used for this edition. Historical annotations and editorial conjectures remain attributed to their source editors, and the earlier variant passages are presented separately from the later Journal text.