Candolle

Use in the book

Guérin records the work’s organization before describing his response: nutrition, reproduction, and the influence of external agents. This attention to arrangement distinguishes the entry from an indiscriminate celebration of science. He acknowledges that chemistry is essential to the book, especially its first volume, and that he understands none of it. Many details escape him, and he describes his entrance into the newly opened world as scarcely more than half a step. Yet the remaining impression is precious. It redoubles his desire to observe natural things and opens a source of consolation and poetry. The gain also has an uncomfortable side: ordinary phenomena become obstacles whose unexplained existence presses upon him. The reading both enlarges wonder and intensifies awareness of ignorance. Its relation to the Études de la Nature is therefore instructive. Bernardin is praised for poetic awakening with little scientific gain, whereas Candolle offers scientific organization that Guérin only partly grasps but finds imaginatively productive. Neither entry licenses treating the diary’s subsequent personifications as literal botanical propositions.

Places to read

1. 24 April 1833 · ¶1The three-volume reading yields an exact account of its divisions, an admission about chemistry, and a double result of wonder and frustration.
2. 21 March 1833 · ¶1The earlier judgement on the Études provides a contrast between scientific instruction and poetic awakening.

Translation in this edition

The text gives Candolle without a first name and identifies the title and three-volume format. The lexicon preserves that level of bibliographical specificity rather than reconstructing the copy used.