Intimate Journals

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

4.2

Word count: 66K words
Chapters: 7

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Journaux intimes by Charles BaudelaireAuthor: Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867,Language: French, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Oct 19, 2004

Editor's review

This is the electronic edition of Baudelaire's private diary writings, in the original French, from Project Gutenberg. Its value lies not in systematic theory but in the spiritual warmth that shines through its fragments: self-examination, artistic judgment, observations of the city, and inner turmoil interwoven, allowing readers to see the ways of thinking and emotional textures of the author of Les Fleurs du mal beyond his public works. As a public-domain ebook, it is lightweight and searchable, suitable as auxiliary material for studying Baudelaire and 19th-century French literature, and also suited to those who enjoy essayistic reading in short bursts during commutes or before sleep. A caveat: the original is in French, and the diary form lacks continuous narrative, so first-time readers may find it jumpy; it is best treated as a desk book to revisit rather than a biography to read straight through.

Who it's for

A good fit for

French majors or literature lovers with reading ability in French
Readers studying Baudelaire and 19th-century French poetry
Readers who enjoy diaries, essays, and aphoristic writing
Researchers who need public-domain electronic texts for teaching or excerpting

Not a good fit for

General readers with no French at all who want a Chinese translation
Readers expecting a systematic biography or a complete theoretical work
Those who prefer coherent narrative and find fragmented texts hard to adapt to

Reading tips

Read a few pages first to feel the rhythm of the French; don't force yourself to understand it all at once—mark passages that move you and revisit them.
Read alongside Baudelaire's poetry or a relevant biography, treating the diary as background material rather than the main line.
Keep a notebook to excerpt aphoristic sentences, grouped by theme, for later writing or research citations.
Read only a small section at a time, ten to twenty minutes, to avoid the fatigue that fragmented texts can bring.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Is this book Baudelaire's complete autobiography?

No. It consists of private diary writings made up of fragmentary records, not a complete autobiography narrating his life chronologically. Readers should not expect a continuous life story but should see it as a collection of fragments of thought and feeling that supplements understanding of the author's other works.

Can I read this book without knowing French?

The original is in French, and without any French it will be very hard to read directly. It is advisable first to find a Chinese translation or a bilingual edition to understand the content, then return to the original to feel the rhythm of the language; for research, read closely paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary and notes—don't plow straight through from page one.

What kind of reading approach suits the electronic edition?

It suits short, searchable reading: a few passages on the commute, or skimming by keyword while writing or researching. Because it is a public-domain electronic text, excerpts can also be copied for notes, but citations should verify edition and page information.

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About the author

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867 Author

Charles Baudelaire (Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867) was a nineteenth-century French poet best known for his collection Les Fleurs du Mal, also translated as The Flowers of Evil. He also wrote the prose poems collected in Poems in Prose, the diary-like Journaux intimes, and De l'amour, a work of reflections on love and feeling. The library holds eight of his works, including Baudelaire: His Prose and Poetry and Les épaves de Charles Baudelaire. Because public information is limited, biographical details are omitted here; as for his writing, he often took city life, love, melancholy and death as his subjects, with concise language and intense imagery, and his influence on poetry's transition from tradition to modernity has been profound.