Acedia and weariness of life

Use in the book

Fusées XIV begins with the title of Brierre de Boismont's treatise on suicide and suicidal madness in relation to statistics, medicine and philosophy, then asks for a passage about living with someone who feels only aversion. The requested passage is not located within the notebook. The movement from a statistical-medical title to an intimate relation suggests several scales of inquiry, but the missing connection should not be invented.

The named portraits of Serenus and Stagirius place distress beside ancient philosophical and Christian consolatory writing. Acedia then makes monastic weariness explicit. As contextual comparison, Cassian's Institutes X describes distress that produces dislike of one's place, restlessness, impaired reading and work, and a wish to escape. Cassian is not named in the fragment; his account helps explain the historical term without proving that Baudelaire used that particular book.

This vocabulary illuminates, without diagnosing, related notebook problems: the horror of home in Mon cœur mis à nu LVIII, the indifference to winning or losing in Fusées VIII, the exhausting sense of time in Mon cœur mis à nu CXI, and the urgent appeal to work in Mon cœur mis à nu CXII. These passages do not all report the same episode or condition. Their kinship lies in the failure of an activity, place or future to retain its claim on the self. The lexicon should preserve that range rather than turn every instance of boredom, despair and paralysis into one explanatory label.

Fusées XXII's epigram about Stoicism having suicide as its sole sacrament is a different rhetorical object. It compresses a tradition into an antagonistic religious analogy; it is not a reliable survey of Stoic philosophy or a practical injunction. Keeping the epigram separate from Fusées XIV's research plan allows the reader to register both the seriousness of the inquiry and the violence of the wit.

Places to read

1. Fusées XIVL’acedia, maladie des moines. — The historical term is supplied with a monastic gloss.
2. Fusées XIVLe Tædium vitæ. — The Latin label broadens the field to weariness of life.
3. Fusées XIVChercher le passage — The inquiry remains incomplete at this point.
4. Mon cœur mis à nu LVIIIla grande maladie de l’horreur du domicile — A later projected study offers a related, not identical, problem of place and aversion.
5. Fusées XXIILe stoïcisme, religion qui n’a qu’un sacrement — The separate epigram uses religious compression rather than historical exposition.

Translation in this edition

The edition retains ‘Acedia’ and renders Tædium vitæ as ‘Weariness of life’, preserving the historical term while making the Latin accessible. Its ‘suicidal madness’ follows the treatise's historical category; it is not a contemporary clinical diagnosis. Translator's notes 27–282 identify the works and clearly state that the requested aversion passage has not been independently located. The printed spelling Briere is retained in the body, distinguished from the author's fuller bibliographical name.