From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPostulations are directed movements or aspirations, not logical postulates.
- In Intimate JournalsThe elaboration assigns erotic love for women and affectionate conversation with animals to the descending movement.
- In this edition‘Aspirations’ makes the historical literary sense of postulations available without importing a proof or axiom.
- A place to readdeux postulations simultanées — The two directions are concurrent within the person.
Meaning
Postulations are directed movements or aspirations, not logical postulates. Mon cœur mis à nu XLI locates two of them in every person at every hour: toward God and toward Satan. Simultaneity is crucial. The fragment does not divide humanity into permanently pure and impure classes, nor does it narrate a simple succession from temptation to conversion.
Its vertical metaphor is unevenly valued. Spirituality desires to rise in rank; animality enjoys descending. Aspiration and pleasure are already distributed differently within the sentence.
Use in the book
The elaboration assigns erotic love for women and affectionate conversation with animals to the descending movement. This is an explicitly gendered and hierarchical polemic. It neither proves women lack spirit nor gives a neutral description of human intimacy. The cruelty of the classification should remain visible beside the attractions that make descent pleasurable.
Elsewhere the same field is less stable. Mon cœur mis à nu LXVII identifies humanity as a worshipping animal, while Mon cœur mis à nu LXVIII makes God the being most available to every individual. What looked like animal self-loss can participate in a language of divine giving. Mon cœur mis à nu XCI calls misplaced erotic devotion an error of idol-selection rather than an absence of the power to worship.
The late prayers ask for strength to perform ordinary duties, not immunity from contradiction. The wish to become a saint for oneself can coexist with concern for one's mother and Jeanne. Read across these passages, the two aspirations identify a struggle in motivation; they cannot serve as a master key that predetermines the value of each action.
Places to read
- Mon cœur mis à nu XLIdeux postulations simultanées — The two directions are concurrent within the person.
- Mon cœur mis à nu XLIun désir de monter en grade — Spiritual ascent borrows a worldly hierarchy of rank.
- Mon cœur mis à nu LXVIIL’homme est un animal adorateur. — Animal existence includes, rather than excludes, worship.
- Mon cœur mis à nu XCIl’animal adorateur se trompant d’idole. — Devotion can fail through its chosen object.
Translation in this edition
‘Aspirations’ makes the historical literary sense of postulations available without importing a proof or axiom. ‘Rise in rank’ preserves the odd military or bureaucratic flavour of monter en grade. The parallel ‘invocation’ toward God and Satan is retained, as are ‘spirituality’ and ‘animality’; smoothing the latter into mere bodily pleasure would conceal the fragment's aggressive hierarchy.