From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordDebt brings time, dependence, and humiliation into the vocabulary of inward life.
- In Intimate JournalsMon cœur mis à nu LXXXII acknowledges that leisure without wealth increases debt and its humiliations.
- In this editionNote 1002345 identifies Ancelle as the notary administering Baudelaire's finances and supplies the mother's connection to Honfleur.
- A place to readA Honfleur !
Meaning
Debt brings time, dependence, and humiliation into the vocabulary of inward life. It is not merely an incidental circumstance behind the writing. The notebook makes it a practical test of whether hopes and talents can become completed acts.
Honfleur appears as a destination for repair and ordering. The imperative to go there precedes lists of letters, debts, engravings, and notes, each allotted time. Spatial retreat is supposed to make an executable sequence possible.
Use in the book
Mon cœur mis à nu LXXXII acknowledges that leisure without wealth increases debt and its humiliations. Mon cœur mis à nu CX answers with the urgent call to reach Honfleur before falling further. The location does not magically promise a cure; the later schedule specifies work to be done there.
Mon cœur mis à nu CXIV plans two 500-franc shares from 1,000 francs and a further division of the second share. Its classification separates promissory notes, large debts, small debts, and friends, then gives two days each to several kinds of sorting. Artistic and financial papers occupy the same ordered world. The project imagines clearing obligations and recovering usable materials as related forms of attention.
Mon cœur mis à nu CXVI's monthly allocation and Mon cœur mis à nu CXVII's four shares are different plans, not revisions whose chronology can be reconstructed from their printed order. The admission that a realized plan's pleasure remains unknown checks the apparent assurance of the figures. Their precision measures desire for control rather than verified solvency. The imagined budget also names people whose welfare depends on the self's transformation, making arithmetic part of affection.
Places to read
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXA Honfleur ! le plus tôt possible — The place is cast as an urgent destination.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXIVDettes (Ancelle). — Financial administration is attached to a named person.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXIVQuatre catégories, billets, grosses dettes, petites dettes, amis. — The list distinguishes types of obligation.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXVIIquatre parts — The final vow proposes a separate distributive scheme.
Translation in this edition
Note 1002345 identifies Ancelle as the notary administering Baudelaire's finances and supplies the mother's connection to Honfleur. ‘Promissory notes’ gives billets its financial sense, avoiding confusion with ordinary letters. The edition preserves the two-share, monthly 800-franc, and four-share plans independently. No reconstructed account of actual payment should be built from these proposals.