From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordSalut means spiritual salvation in Mon cœur mis à nu LXIV, where the final aspiration is to sainthood.
- In Intimate JournalsThe falling man of Mon cœur mis à nu LXIV tries to save himself by gripping bushes, only to uproot them.
- In this editionThe edition keeps ‘binds’ and ‘holds us suspended’, preserving the bodily relation to time.
- A place to readLe soin de notre salut nous suspend à l’avenir.
Meaning
Salut means spiritual salvation in Mon cœur mis à nu LXIV, where the final aspiration is to sainthood. The competing attachments are figured in time: pleasure binds one to the present, while concern for salvation suspends one from the future. Neither state is described as simple freedom from attachment.
Plaisir and volupté can name destructive consumption, an intensity sought in art, or the hoped-for satisfaction of accomplished work. The notebook's moral division is therefore not adequately stated as pleasure versus its total abolition.
Use in the book
The falling man of Mon cœur mis à nu LXIV tries to save himself by gripping bushes, only to uproot them. The image turns the resources of the present into things carried away by the very momentum they should resist. It makes the danger cumulative and active: the attempt at rescue can become part of the fall.
The repeated wish to be a great man and a saint for oneself in Mon cœur mis à nu LXIV and LXXIV2 removes public applause as the final court of judgment. It does not necessarily remove others from moral concern. Mon cœur mis à nu LXVIII asks that the mother not be punished through the son, and the late budgets give material form to attachment.
Mon cœur mis à nu CXI presents pleasure and work as two ways to forget time, opposing their effects on strength. Mon cœur mis à nu CX then tries to make work a perpetual volupté, and Mon cœur mis à nu CXVI admits never yet having known the pleasure of a fulfilled plan. Work is supposed to transform the economy of enjoyment, not leave life without any. These commands record an aspiration, with the unfulfilled plan marking the distance between prescription and achievement.
Places to read
- Mon cœur mis à nu LXIVLe soin de notre salut nous suspend à l’avenir. — The future has its own binding power.
- Mon cœur mis à nu LXXIVun grand homme et un saint pour soi-même — Inner judgment is privileged over celebrity.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXma perpétuelle volupté de mon tourment ordinaire — Work is asked to change its affective value.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXVIle plaisir d’un plan réalisé. — The desired pleasure remains explicitly unexperienced.
Translation in this edition
The edition keeps ‘binds’ and ‘holds us suspended’, preserving the bodily relation to time. ‘Salvation’ avoids the merely practical sense of safety. ‘Pleasure’ and ‘sensual pleasure’ vary with the French words and context; the lexical variation should not be erased by assuming all enjoyment has one moral value. The final infinitive in Mon cœur mis à nu LXIV remains an aspiration rather than a new categorical command.