Diotimos Library · Journals, Notebooks & Fragments Collection · Bilingual Edition
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Facing Pages · Branch 50 of 121
1833 · August 1, 1833
French
p. 99Le 1er août.
Depuis quelque temps, comme un pécheur converti, je m’efforce d’aimer ce que je haïssais et de haïr ce que j’aimais. J’ai fait abjuration solennelle de poésie, de contemplation, de toute ma vie idéale. Je me suis promis de vivre bien paisiblement dans un petit monde de ma façon d’où j’ai banni tous les beaux fantômes qui faisaient foule dans celui que j’habitais auparavant. J’ai pensé qu’une existence circonscrite dans un cercle bien étroit de réalité, confinée comme la fourmi dans un petit trou creusé dans le sable, me vaudrait mieux que ces courses aventureuses et stériles de ma pensée dans un monde dont je suis décidément repoussé. Mais hélas! il est écrit que ma pauvre imagination n’aura pas où se reposer ici-bas. Ce petit coin que je lui avais choisi dans les réalités, afin qu’elle pût s’y endormir, la rejette comme a fait la sphère idéale. Que devenir dans cet état de suspension entre deux sphères, dans cette région où la pensée ne se soutient que parce qu’elle est également repoussée par toutes les deux ?
The Green Notebook: 1833
p. 100August 1, 1833
For some time, like a converted sinner, I have been striving to love what I hated and hate what I loved. I have solemnly renounced poetry, contemplation, my whole ideal life. I have promised myself to live very peacefully within a little world of my own making, from which I have banished all the beautiful phantoms that crowded the one I inhabited before. I thought an existence circumscribed within a very narrow circle of reality, confined like an ant in a little hole dug in the sand, would be better for me than these adventurous, barren excursions of my thought into a world from which I am decidedly repelled. But alas, it is written that my poor imagination will have nowhere to rest here below. This little corner I chose for it among realities, so that it might fall asleep there, rejects it as the ideal sphere did. What is to become of me in this suspension between two spheres, in this region where thought remains suspended only because both repel it equally?
Socrates
Reading The Green Notebook · 1833 · August 1, 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.