From the book
Intimate Journals
Charles Baudelaire · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordComédien means a theatrical actor, not specifically a comedian.
- In Intimate JournalsMon cœur mis à nu XXXIX moves from a childhood preference for the chandelier to a programme of artificial performance: raised footwear, expressive masks, amplified voices, and men in women's roles.
- In this edition‘Platform shoes’, ‘speaking trumpets’, and ‘opera glass’ distinguish three separate apparatuses in Mon cœur mis à nu XXXIX; masks are not said to be the amplifying device.
- A place to readc’est le lustre — The theatre’s appeal begins with an illuminated object.
Meaning
Comédien means a theatrical actor, not specifically a comedian. Acting interests the notebook as a vocation, an art of assumed persons, a social position, and an expansion of possible experience. The chandelier, by contrast, is an object whose symmetrical brilliance can displace the human performer as the theatre's chief attraction.
The two interests coexist. Baudelaire can prefer a luminous structure to ordinary dramatic representation while imagining his own life as an actor.
Use in the book
Mon cœur mis à nu XXXIX moves from a childhood preference for the chandelier to a programme of artificial performance: raised footwear, expressive masks, amplified voices, and men in women's roles. These devices do not abolish expression; they seek expression more forceful than the unmodified human face or voice. The opera glass further turns the theatre into a field of altered scale.
Mon cœur mis à nu XLII includes the Actor among the senses in which an intoxication with humanity might be explored. Mon cœur mis à nu XCIV's paired fantasies of military pope and actor join authority to spectacle without explaining them away as one desire. Mon cœur mis à nu XCVI requests an account of the actor's calling and the true greatness of pariahs, then wonders whether virtue may even damage their talents.
These reminders do not justify reconstructing a completed theory of acting. In particular, the dismissal of Samson as not an actor is an evaluative provocation, not a denial of his documented profession. What emerges is a sustained interest in artifice and marginality: the performer may achieve imaginative power precisely where respectable social classifications fail.
Places to read
- Mon cœur mis à nu XXXIXc’est le lustre — The theatre’s appeal begins with an illuminated object.
- Mon cœur mis à nu XXXIXdes masques plus expressifs que le visage humain — Artifice intensifies rather than simply conceals expression.
- Mon cœur mis à nu XCIVtantôt pape, mais pape militaire, tantôt comédien. — Two childhood roles combine sovereignty and performance.
- Mon cœur mis à nu XCVIDe la vraie grandeur des parias. — The projected actor-study turns toward excluded social figures.
Translation in this edition
‘Platform shoes’, ‘speaking trumpets’, and ‘opera glass’ distinguish three separate apparatuses in Mon cœur mis à nu XXXIX; masks are not said to be the amplifying device. The English ‘Actor’ in Mon cœur mis à nu XLII follows the source capital. ‘Deadpan joker’ for farceur froid in Mon cœur mis à nu XCVI makes the comparison to Swift intelligible without inventing a particular Swift text. Translator notes 39, 40, and 872345 retain the unresolved theory attributed to Legouvé.