Ploërmel and Josselin

Use in the book

The Ploërmel entry resumes an interrupted memory. Watching mist dissolve recalls mountain scenery from the previous year, but the remembered landscape gradually discloses a human figure, L..., whose identity the text does not expand. Present sunset repeatedly interrupts recollection, so the new place becomes an intersection of perception, earlier attachment, and recent leave-taking. The account then distinguishes two departures that resemble one another only in their depth of pain, the second being the separation from Féli. At Josselin, Guérin regrets his inability to draw what he has seen. The castle’s massive towers and walls frame apparently fragile architecture, figured as a medieval dream embroidered in stone. A leaf stripped to its veins offers the reader a miniature visual analogue for Gothic art. The places therefore do more than fix an itinerary: one reveals how scenery calls up withheld memories; the other turns architectural observation back toward a natural object that can teach the eye to see.

Places to read

1. 1 October 1833 · ¶1Ploërmel’s present mist and sunset mediate a remembered mountain scene and an interrupted glimpse of a blue dress.
2. 1 October 1833 · ¶2The blue-dressed figure is printed as L...; the supplied text and notes leave the identity unexpanded.
3. 1 October 1833 · ¶3The entry explicitly separates the earlier personal farewell from the recent parting with Féli.
4. 4 October 1833 · ¶1Josselin’s castle is understood through contrasts of mass and delicacy and through the skeleton of a leaf.

Translation in this edition

The interrupted September 26 fragment and the opening of October 1 are visibly connected by Guérin’s remark about stopping mid-sentence. This interruption is not itself an editorial identification of L....