From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordIrrégularité is explained through an appositional chain: the unexpected, surprise, astonishment.
- In Intimate JournalsFusées XII concludes with the proposition after a sequence that includes mathematical madness, whipping as discipline, a date and a practical task list.
- In this edition‘Slightly misshapen’ preserves the modest but material force of légèrement difforme.
- A place to readCe qui n’est pas légèrement difforme a l’air insensible — A limited departure from regularity is related to the appearance of feeling.
Meaning
Irrégularité is explained through an appositional chain: the unexpected, surprise, astonishment. Its significance is perceptual as well as formal. A deviation interrupts an easy recognition and makes the object seem capable of feeling or of awakening feeling. Difforme places a sharper word beside it, but the qualifier légèrement keeps the claim from becoming an indiscriminate celebration of damage.
The opposite term in the fragment is insensible, not ugly. The contrast is therefore between a seemingly unfeeling form and a form that engages sensibility. Beauty cannot be judged by conformity alone, because a completely predictable object may leave nothing for the viewer to discover.
Use in the book
Fusées XII concludes with the proposition after a sequence that includes mathematical madness, whipping as discipline, a date and a practical task list. That irregular neighbourhood is itself a reminder of the notebook's mixed forms, though it would be too neat to say the page deliberately demonstrates the maxim. The aesthetic assertion has its own compact reasoning: whatever lacks slight deformation seems unfeeling; therefore surprise is essential to beauty.
The claim does not abolish symmetry. Fusées XXII names regularity and symmetry among the mind's primary needs, alongside complexity and harmony, when analyzing the charm of ships. The two passages can coexist if regularity supplies intelligible order while an unexpected inflection prevents dead predictability. The notebook does not formulate that synthesis explicitly; it gives the reader grounds for it without guaranteeing that every tension has been resolved.
Fusées XVI's beautiful face similarly leaves room for conjecture. Its attraction depends on obscure feeling and contrary possibilities, such as satiety or frustrated desire. Fusées XVIII's pleasure in a mixture of the grotesque and tragic adds a different kind of dissonance. Across these passages beauty is an active encounter with a form, rather than the recognition of a checklist of correct proportions. This also means that ‘irregular’ cannot serve as a universal shortcut to artistic success.
Places to read
- Fusées XIICe qui n’est pas légèrement difforme a l’air insensible — A limited departure from regularity is related to the appearance of feeling.
- Fusées XIIl’inattendu, la surprise, l’étonnement — The fragment interprets irregularity through the beholder’s experience.
- Fusées XXIIla régularité et à la symétrie — The ship passage preserves a positive need for ordered form.
- Fusées XVIIILe mélange du grotesque et du tragique — Mixed registers offer another source of perceptual disturbance.
Translation in this edition
‘Slightly misshapen’ preserves the modest but material force of légèrement difforme. ‘Seems unfeeling’ for a l’air insensible keeps the judgment at the level of appearance; it does not assert that a regular object literally has no sensation. The translation also retains all three terms in the explanatory sequence rather than reducing them to ‘novelty’. The distinguishing mark of beauty is an experienced surprise, not simply newness in historical time.