From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe recurring mother and Jeanne give the late notebook a network of obligations that resists its assertions of absolute self-sufficiency.
- In Intimate JournalsMon cœur mis à nu LXV lists Jeanne and Mme Muller as examples for a projected study of the people's hatred of beauty.
- In this editionThe English preserves ‘my mother’ rather than replacing the intimate designation with a proper name in the body.
- A place to readNe me châtiez pas dans ma mère — The prayer seeks release from punishment through the loved person.
Meaning
The recurring mother and Jeanne give the late notebook a network of obligations that resists its assertions of absolute self-sufficiency. These figures are named through the writer's relation to them: worry, provision, guilt, remembered attachment, and hope for recognition. Their own voices are not supplied by the fragments.
The 2026 notes identify the mother as Caroline Aupick and the Jeanne of the household plans as Jeanne Duval. That identification does not authorize expanding every isolated Jeanne reminder into a documented episode.
Use in the book
Mon cœur mis à nu LXV lists Jeanne and Mme Muller as examples for a projected study of the people's hatred of beauty. No anecdote follows, so the entry cannot explain what either supposedly did. By Mon cœur mis à nu CXV, Jeanne's illnesses and the mother's infirmity and solitude are reasons to preserve the writer's own health. Self-care becomes a duty owed to others.
Mon cœur mis à nu LXVIII asks God not to punish son and mother through one another. The prayer acknowledges an intimacy in which another person's suffering can be experienced as one's own judgment; it also asks that this feared economy be interrupted. Mon cœur mis à nu CXVII wishes the mother to live long enough to enjoy his transformation. Moral reform requires time not only for the reforming self but for its witness.
The allocations in Mon cœur mis à nu CXIV, CXVI, and CXVII23 imagine income distributed among living expenses, creditors, friends, mother, and Jeanne in different arrangements. These are proposed plans, not evidence of payments. Their shifting detail makes care practical without proving it accomplished. Alongside them, the wish to enjoy memories with another person names a form of companionship the writer still has to learn.
Places to read
- Mon cœur mis à nu LXVIIINe me châtiez pas dans ma mère — The prayer seeks release from punishment through the loved person.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXVMa santé par charité, par devoir — Preserving the self is made an obligation to others.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXVIJeanne 300, ma mère 200, moi 300 — Affection enters a concrete proposed monthly allocation.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CXVIIune vie assez longue pour jouir de ma transformation — The imagined reform needs a surviving maternal witness.
Translation in this edition
The English preserves ‘my mother’ rather than replacing the intimate designation with a proper name in the body. It keeps the distinct budgets separate. Translator note 642 presents the identification of Mariette with the remembered servant as scholarly identification; the final prayer itself names her and Poe as intercessors without supplying biographies. These differences of evidence should remain legible.