From the book
The Green Notebook
Maurice de Guérin · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordScriptural wording enters the notebook as an utterance to be repeated, translated, or placed beside an experience.
- In GuérinThe garden labourers of 4 March 1833 are imagined addressing the Lord with their damaged hands as evidence.
- In this editionTranslator note 6 identifies the Pauline quotation as 1 Corinthians 9:16.
- A reading distinctionThe biblical locations and the Journal’s omission of ego before morior in the honey quotation are reported in the supplied translator notes 6 and translator’s note 8.
Meaning
Scriptural wording enters the notebook as an utterance to be repeated, translated, or placed beside an experience. A quotation can occupy a paragraph or even constitute the whole dated entry; its brevity does not make it incidental.
Use in the book
The garden labourers of 4 March 1833 are imagined addressing the Lord with their damaged hands as evidence. The blessing of the poor and humble becomes the language of a future appeal: the sentence gives the workers a voice within Guérin’s meditation, without pretending to record words they actually spoke. Two days later, the Latin attributed to Saint Paul follows an account of a writer whose apostolate serves the world’s good. Its insistence on necessity and its refusal of glory concentrate the preceding account of mission.
The entry of 12 March is different. It consists solely of the Latin saying about tasting a little honey and facing death. Guérin supplies no interpretation linking it to a named event in his own life. The juxtaposition of sweetness and mortality is available to the reader, but a specific confession or biographical episode would be an addition. At Mordreux in January 1834, the language of zeal helps defend Féli: Guérin contrasts devotion to the Lord’s house with the accusation that the same man threatens it. These uses range from social appeal and public vocation to an isolated, unexplained sentence. They should retain their differing degrees of explicitness.
Places to read
- 4 March 1833 · ¶1The future speech of the labourers adapts the language of blessing to their exhausted bodies and difficult lives.
- 4 March 1833 · ¶2The following appeal is already in English in the French column. The supplied apparatus gives it no author or scriptural source.
- 6 March 1833 · ¶2The quotation attributed to Saint Paul seals the preceding account of mission with necessity rather than personal glory.
- 12 March 1833 · ¶1This quotation alone constitutes the dated entry; its honey and impending death receive no authorial explanation.
- 2 January 1834 · ¶3Zeal for the Lord’s house becomes a measure of Féli’s intention amid the account of his defeat.
Translation in this edition
Translator note 6 identifies the Pauline quotation as 1 Corinthians 9:16. Note 8 identifies the honey passage as 1 Samuel 14:43, called I Regum in the traditional Vulgate naming. The English keeps the printed Book of Kings label; it does not mean modern 1 Kings. Both Latin passages are translated directly, while the already-English appeal of 4 March remains unchanged.
Source note
The biblical locations and the Journal’s omission of ego before morior in the honey quotation are reported in the supplied translator notes 6 and translator’s note 8. No provenance is supplied here for the separate English line beginning To you, good God.