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Amiel's Journal

Henri-Frederic Amiel

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Pages and passages

1. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL", para. 1. AMIEL’S JOURNAL
2. "By Henri-Frédéric Amiel", para. 1. By Henri-Frédéric Amiel
3. "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel Translated, With", para. 1. The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel Translated, With an Introduction and Notes
4. "PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.", para. 1. PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. In this second edition of the English translation of A
5. "M. A. W.", para. 1. M. A. W.
6. "PREFACE.", para. 1. PREFACE. This translation of Amiel’s “Journal Intime” is primarily addressed to those
7. "PREFACE.", para. 3. The difficulties of the translation have been sometimes considerable, owing, first of
8. "PREFACE.", para. 5. My warmest thanks are due to my friend and critic, M. Edmond Scherer, from whose valu
9. "MARY A. WARD.", para. 1. MARY A. WARD.
10. "INTRODUCTION", para. 1. INTRODUCTION It was in the last days of December, 1882, that the first volume of Henr
11. "INTRODUCTION", para. 4. Thus modestly announced, the little volume made its quiet début. It contained nothing
12. "INTRODUCTION", para. 5. But “wisdom is justified of her children!” It is now nearly three years since the fir
13. "INTRODUCTION", para. 5. at “the surest test of a man’s critical power is his judgment of contemporaries.” M.
14. "INTRODUCTION", para. 6. M. Caro’s article on the first volume of the Journal, in the Revue des Deux Mondes fo
15. "INTRODUCTION", para. 7. Among ourselves, although the Journal has attracted the attention of all who keep a v
16. "INTRODUCTION", para. 9. “It is not, however, with the view of thrusting my egotism upon you that I have ventu
17. "INTRODUCTION", para. 12. Henri Frédéric Amiel was born at Geneva in September, 1821. He belonged to one of the
18. "INTRODUCTION", para. 13. During the years, however, which immediately followed Amiel’s birth, some signs of de
19. "INTRODUCTION", para. 14. In the same year—1833—that M. Rossi had left Geneva, Henri Frédéric Amiel, at twelve
20. "INTRODUCTION", para. 15. Writing in 1856 he describes the effect produced in Geneva by M. Pictet’s Lectures on
21. "INTRODUCTION", para. 16. Amiel’s first literary production, or practically his first, seems to have been the r
22. "INTRODUCTION", para. 16. thing which foretells the future. For instance, after dwelling with evident zest on t
23. "INTRODUCTION", para. 17. Curious words for a beginner of twenty-one! There is a touch, no doubt, of youth and
24. "INTRODUCTION", para. 18. However, in spite of this inbred tendency, which was probably hereditary and inevitab
25. "INTRODUCTION", para. 18. think about. Not at all. The man who has left us these microscopic analyses of his ow
26. "INTRODUCTION", para. 19. Of these years of travel, however, the four years spent at Berlin were by far the mos
27. "INTRODUCTION", para. 19. From 1780 to 1830,” says M. Taine, “Germany produced all the ideas of our historical
28. "INTRODUCTION", para. 19. rance. He thinks that the French have more to gain from our literature—taking literat
29. "INTRODUCTION", para. 20. Of this great movement, already so productive, Amiel is then a fresh and remarkable i
30. "INTRODUCTION", para. 21. M. Renan regrets that after Geneva and after Berlin he never came to Paris. Paris, he
31. "INTRODUCTION", para. 22. We have been carried forward, however, a little too far by this general discussion of
32. "INTRODUCTION", para. 22. place in him between the accumulating and producing faculties; he writes readily even
33. "INTRODUCTION", para. 24. His return, moreover, was marked by a success which seemed to secure him at once an i
34. "INTRODUCTION", para. 25. Of these new men Amiel was one. He had been absent from Geneva during the years of co
35. "INTRODUCTION", para. 25. within it a number of different circles of life, Amiel would easily have found his ow
36. "INTRODUCTION", para. 26. In a passage of the Journal written nearly thirty years after his election he allows
37. "INTRODUCTION", para. 27. Still one may no doubt easily exaggerate this loneliness of Amiel’s. His social diffi
38. "INTRODUCTION", para. 28. In these last words of M. Scherer’s we have come across the determining fact of Amiel
39. "INTRODUCTION", para. 29. Before we can answer the question we must go back a little and try to realize the int
40. "INTRODUCTION", para. 29. ll proportion to the rest of the personality. Nor had any special subject the power t
41. "INTRODUCTION", para. 30. It was not, indeed, that he neglected the study of detail; he had a strong natural ap
42. "INTRODUCTION", para. 30. aining to self-intoxication or self-delusion—I come again upon the fathomless abyss,
43. "INTRODUCTION", para. 32. No doubt to some extent this mood is familiar to all minds endowed with the true spec
44. "INTRODUCTION", para. 32. us anxious; but at the same time, in the case of a nature like Amiel’s, there is so m
45. "INTRODUCTION", para. 33. The manner in which this intellectual idiosyncrasy we have been describing gradually
46. "INTRODUCTION", para. 34. It is the same, at bottom, with his professional work. He protects the intellectual f
47. "INTRODUCTION", para. 35. So that as a professor he made no mark. He was conscientiousness itself in whatever h
48. "INTRODUCTION", para. 36. Many a student, however, has shrunk from the burden and risks of family life, and has
49. "INTRODUCTION", para. 36. ngth of magazine articles, on Mme. de Staël, Rousseau, the history of the Academy of
50. "INTRODUCTION", para. 37. The whole “Journal Intime” is in some sense Amiel’s explanation of these facts. In it
51. "INTRODUCTION", para. 38. And in close combination with the speculative sense, with the tendency which carries
52. "INTRODUCTION", para. 39. And yet the literary instinct remains, and must in some way be satisfied. And so he t
53. "INTRODUCTION", para. 40. Not that he surrenders himself to the nature which is stronger than he all at once. H
54. "INTRODUCTION", para. 41. Was it that all the while Amiel felt himself sure of his revanche that he knew the va
55. "INTRODUCTION", para. 42. And his estimate of the value of the record thus produced was, in general, a low one,
56. "INTRODUCTION", para. 43. It still remains for us to gather up a few facts and impressions of a different kind
57. "INTRODUCTION", para. 43. tics, for everything deep-rooted in the past, and helping to sustain the present. He
58. "INTRODUCTION", para. 45. He was, as we have said, a delightful correspondent, “taking pains with the smallest
59. "INTRODUCTION", para. 45. hor of so many somber pages.” M. Rivier, his old pupil, remembers him as “strong and
60. "INTRODUCTION", para. 46. In his poems, or at any rate in the earlier ones, this lighter side finds more expres
61. "INTRODUCTION", para. 47. The last stanza is especially poor, and in none of them is there much poetical promis
62. "INTRODUCTION", para. 49. Upon the small remains of Amiel’s prose outside the Journal there is no occasion to d
63. "INTRODUCTION", para. 52. But whether biography or correspondence is ever forthcoming or not, the Journal remai
64. "INTRODUCTION", para. 54. His style, indeed, is by no means always in harmony with the central French tradition
65. "INTRODUCTION", para. 55. Then to the poetical beauty of manner which first helped the book to penetrate, faire
66. "INTRODUCTION", para. 55. mus, but beyond this his philosophical power fails him. As soon as he leaves the regi
67. "INTRODUCTION", para. 57. No—there is much more in the “Journal Intime” than the imagination or the poetical gl
68. "INTRODUCTION", para. 57. d which he has described with so much subtle beauty; rather the energies which should
69. "INTRODUCTION", para. 59. And if the thinker is at home with him, so too are the religious minds, the natures f
70. "INTRODUCTION", para. 60. The Journal is full, indeed, of this note of personal religion. Religion, Amiel decla
71. "INTRODUCTION", para. 60. rited creed has yielded to the pressure of the intellect, and after all the storms of
72. "INTRODUCTION", para. 61. The only but the sufficient revelation! For this first article of a reasonable creed
73. "INTRODUCTION", para. 62. Nor is this all. It is not only that Amiel’s inmost thought and affections are stayed
74. "INTRODUCTION", para. 63. And yet how clear the intellect remains, through all the anxieties of thought, and in
75. "INTRODUCTION", para. 64. And it is just here—in this mixture of the faith which clings and aspires, with the i
76. "INTRODUCTION", para. 65. And he plays this part of his so modestly, with so much hesitation, so much doubt of
77. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 1. AMIEL’S JOURNAL. [Where no other name is mentioned, Geneva is to be understood as the
78. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 5. At bottom there is but one subject of study: the forms and metamorphoses of mind. All
79. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 9. Put personal ambition away from you, and then you will find consolation in living or
80. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 12. October 1, 1849.—Yesterday, Sunday, I read through and made extracts from the gospel
81. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 13. I am astounded at the incredible amount of Judaism and formalism which still exists n
82. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 15. Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh—that is to say, over fear
83. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 18. ... I have just been looking through the complete works of Montesquieu, and cannot ye
84. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 21. Nothing resembles pride so much as discouragement. To repel one’s cross is to make it
85. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 24. February 17, 1851.—I have been reading, for six or seven hours without stopping the P
86. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 24. moralists and the critics. He is one of those men who are superior to their works, an
87. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 26. February 27, 1851.—Read over the first book of Emile. I was revolted, contrary to all
88. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 27. (Same day.)—The pensée-writer is to the philosopher what the dilettante is to the art
89. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 28. March 25, 1851.—How many illustrious men whom I have known have been already reaped b
90. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 28. capacity. Come forth from the shade! It is no longer a question of promising, thou mu
91. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 30. And yet, at the same time it attracts me; I have need of it. Family life, especially,
92. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 34. Last outbreak of a rebellious and deceitful self-will, craving for repose for satisfa
93. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 38. Alas! we must then re-climb a thousand times the peaks already scaled, and reconquer
94. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 39. April 7, 1851.—Read a part of Ruge’s [Footnote: Arnold Ruge, born in 1803, died at Br
95. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 40. The cardinal question is that of sin. The question of immanence or of dualism is seco
96. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 41. Philosophy, then, to return to the subject, can never replace religion; revolutionari
97. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 44. It is astonishing how all of us are generally cumbered up with the thousand and one h
98. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 47. September 6th.—Tocqueville’s book has on the whole a calming effect upon the mind, bu
99. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 50. Is this indeed the fate reserved for the democratic era? May not the general well-bei
100. "AMIEL’S JOURNAL.", para. 53. O night hours, hours of silence and solitude! with you are grace and melancholy; you