From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordJournal and gazette mean the newspaper here, not the private notebook suggested by the English title Intimate Journals.
- In Intimate JournalsMon cœur mis à nu CIII juxtaposes crimes with assertions of goodness, charity, progress, and civilization.
- In this editionThe 2026 English retains ‘pure hand’, following the print where the comparison transcription omits pure.
- A place to readune ivresse d’atrocité universelle.
Meaning
Journal and gazette mean the newspaper here, not the private notebook suggested by the English title Intimate Journals. Mon cœur mis à nu CIII makes the newspaper both a surface of representation and an object consumed at breakfast. Its atrocity is therefore social: readers make a habit of taking in what they profess to condemn.
Apéritif turns information into appetite. The metaphor is deliberately disgusting because it makes ordinary civilized routine appear nourished by violence.
Use in the book
Mon cœur mis à nu CIII juxtaposes crimes with assertions of goodness, charity, progress, and civilization. The issue is not merely that bad events occur. It is the ease with which accounts of them coexist with a flattering narrative of collective improvement. Princes, nations, and individuals all contribute to the fabric; responsibility is not assigned to one class alone.
The last sentence imagines a pure hand convulsed by touching the paper. Moral contact becomes bodily contamination, extending the critique from what is read to the act of handling it. Yet Mon cœur mis à nu LXXXV incorporates an actual clipping to expose the treatment of Lavalette's daughter. The condemned medium can also supply evidence against respectable cruelty.
The dossier of editors, pedantry, and military rhetoric explains another aspect of distrust: journalism administers reputations and disciplines authors. Mon cœur mis à nu LXVI shows printing and telegraphy as instruments of rule. The press is thus an appetite, a workplace hierarchy, a machinery of power, and an archive from which the notebook itself borrows. Its reliance does not cancel the attack, but prevents a simple fantasy of uncontaminated exteriority.
Places to read
- Mon cœur mis à nu CIIIune ivresse d’atrocité universelle. — The catalogue of crimes becomes an intoxicating collective state.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CIIIce dégoûtant apéritif — Reading is made a preparation for daily consumption.
- Mon cœur mis à nu CIIIune main pure — The governing witness intensifies the contact metaphor.
- Mon cœur mis à nu LXXXVcet entrefilet découpé dans un journal — The notebook also uses the newspaper as documentary evidence.
Translation in this edition
The 2026 English retains ‘pure hand’, following the print where the comparison transcription omits pure. ‘Apéritif’ preserves the odd placement of a pre-meal stimulant at the breakfast table. The bracketed introduction to the clipping belongs to the source's editorial account of the manuscript, not to Baudelaire's quoted article. These layers should not be merged.