From the book
The Green Notebook
Maurice de Guérin · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe family household where Guérin spends three weeks around the turn of 1834.
- In GuérinMordreux is a useful corrective to the idea that a good household automatically pacifies the guest.
- In this editionSource note S9 identifies the host and relation.
- A reading distinctionThe identification of M. de La Villéon is the historical editor’s note, not an expanded name in Guérin’s paragraph.
Meaning
The family household where Guérin spends three weeks around the turn of 1834. A historical note places the visit with M. de La Villéon, Hippolyte’s father-in-law.
Use in the book
Mordreux is a useful corrective to the idea that a good household automatically pacifies the guest. Looking back from Le Val, Guérin praises this family as exceptionally peaceful and united, yet says that he has rarely felt comparable agitation of heart and mind. Tenderness becomes an almost bodily intoxication, making food and ordinary action seem an interruption. More exact attention to fields, woods, and waves provides a diversion and produces a mixed state of tranquillity and persistent sadness. The place also holds the New Year passage: the dying year, an outdoor storm, and news of Féli’s defeat intensify one another without becoming a simple causal explanation. Mordreux’s importance is therefore relational. It belongs to the network of hospitality surrounding Le Val, while giving Guérin an occasion to distinguish domestic peace from the state of his own faculties. The retrospect’s long evening landscape is written at Le Val; not every detail of that description should be reassigned to Mordreux merely because the paragraph begins by recalling it.
Places to read
- 2 January 1834 · ¶1The Mordreux heading introduces the quoted close of a letter written during the final hours of 1833.
- 2 January 1834 · ¶3News concerning Féli enters a night already troubled by time, destiny, and doubt.
- 20 January 1834 · ¶1The three-week stay is recalled from Le Val and contrasted with its guest’s inward agitation.
Translation in this edition
Source note S9 identifies the host and relation. The January 20 heading is Au Val: the paragraph moves from retrospective Mordreux to the present coastal evening.
Source note
1864 Journal, January 2 and January 20, 1834. The identification of M. de La Villéon is the historical editor’s note, not an expanded name in Guérin’s paragraph.