MihaElla > Recent Status Updates

El intuieste o functie esentiala - tine un jurnal intim nu numai pt a da un sens lucrurilor fara sens, pt a salva efemerul, fugitivul, scrie pt ca, recitind ceea ce scrie, sa poata sa recunoasca si sa retraiasca timpul obiectiv care se scurge de la o zi la alta..

“Ah! your poor dear mamma! How often I think of her! And what need I have of her! There is not a day when I do not say: "If she were there, I should ask her advice.

Cruchard for you,
Polycarp for the human race,
Gustave Flaubert for Literature”

“You speak to me of your dear and illustrious mamma! Next to you I do not think that any one could think of her more often than I do! How I miss her! How I need her!
I had begun un coeur simple solely on account of her, only to please her. She died while I was in the midst of this work. Thus it is with our dreams.”

You will see by my Histoire d'un coeur simple where you will recognize your immediate influence, that I am not so obstinate as you think. I believe that the moral tendency, or rather the human basis of this little work will please you!

I do not say that you do not believe:on the contrary,all your life of affection,of protection,& of charming & simple goodness,proves that you are the most convinced individual in the world.But,as soon as you handle literature,you want,I don't know why,to be another man,

I tell you that, because you have excessive prejudices AS TO WORDS. In truth, you read, you dig, you work much more than I & a crowd of others do. You have acquired learning that I shall never attain. Therefore you are a hundred times richer than all of us; you are a rich man, and you complain like a poor man.

When you feel you are on the ladder, you will mount very quickly. You are about to enter gradually upon the happiest and most favorable time of life: old age. It is then that art reveals itself in its sweetness; as long as one is young, it manifests itself with anguish.

we are buried under the snow;it is the sort of weather that I adore:this whiteness is like general purification,& the amusements of the house seem more intimate and sweeter.Can anyone hate the winter in the country?The snow is one of the most beautiful sights of the year!

**Hurray for the ⛄️ ❄️

“I lack a well-defined and extended vision of life." You are right a thousand times over, but by what means could it be otherwise? I ask you that. You do not enlighten my darkness with metaphysics, neither mine nor that of others.

I am seeking above all for beauty, which my companions pursue but languidly. I see them insensible when I am ravaged with admiration or horror. Phrases make me swoon with pleasure which seem very ordinary to them.

I do not enjoy making "desolation,"believe me,but I cannot change my eyes!As for my "lack of convictions," alas! I choke with convictions.I am bursting with anger & restrained indignation.But according to the ideal of art that I have,I think that the artist should not manifest anything of his own feelings,

“I am not reading anything at all, except Shakespeare, whom am going through from beginning to end. That tones you up and puts new air into your lungs, just as if you were on a high mountain. Everything appears mediocre beside that prodigious felow.”

“Externally my life is scarcely changed: I see the same people, I receive the same visits. My faithful ones on Sunday are first of all, the big Tourgueneff, who is nicer than ever, Zola, Alphonse Daudet, and Goncourt. You have never spoken to me of the first two. What do you think of their books?”

A wandering gout,pains that go all over me,an invincible melancholy,the feeling of "universal uselessness" & grave doubts about the book that I am writing,that is what is the matter with me, dear & valiant master. Add to that worries about money with melancholic recollections of the past,

“You have had no children. It is the punishment of those who wish to be too independent; but that suffering is nevertheless a glory for those who vow themselves to Apollo. Then do not complain for having to grub, and describe your martyrdom to us; there is a fine book to be written about that.”

Duty is the master of masters, it is the real Zeus of modern times, the son of Time, and has become his master. It is that which lives and acts outside of all the agitations of the world. It does not reason, does not discuss. It examines without fear, it walks without looking behind it;

The sentiment of that agony penetrates me & I am sad enough to die.When I am not torturing myself about my work,I am groaning about myself.That is the truth.In my leisure moments,all I do is to think of the dead,& I am going to say a very pretentious thing to you.No one understands me;I belong to another world.

“Speaking of books, do read Fromont et Risler, by my friend Daudet, and les Diaboliques, by my enemy Barbey d'Aurevilly. You will writhe with laughter. It is perhaps owing to the perversity of my mind, which likes unhealthy things, but the latter work seemed to me extremely amusing; it is the last word in the involuntary grotesque.”

“I am sure that you are finding me grouchy & that you are going to answer me: "What difference does all that make?" But everything makes a difference,& we are dying of humbug, of ignorance, of self-confidence, of scorn of grandeur, of love of banality,& imbecile babble.
"Europe which hates us, looks at us and laughs," said Ruy Blas. My Heavens, she has a right to laugh.”

It is a strange thing how much pleasure imbeciles find in floundering about in the work of another! in cutting it,correcting it,playing the pedagogue!Did I tell you that I was,because of that,very much at odds with a certain.He wanted to make over, sometime ago,a novel that I had recommended to him....

“What? ill? poor, dear master! If it is rheumatism, do as my brother does, who in his character of physician, scarcely believes in medicine. Last year he went to the baths at Aix in Savoy, and in two weeks he was cured of the pains that had tormented him for six years. But to do that you would have to move, to resign your habits”

“As you know Switzerland, it is useless for me to talk to you of it, and you would scorn me if I were to tell you that I am bored to extinction here. I came here obediently because they ordered me to, for the purpose of bleaching my face and calming my nerves!”

“I feel like a good-for-nothing, a cow, damned, antique, deliquescent, in short calm and moderate, which is the last term in decadence.”

** I protest! never has the word ‘cow’ been more misused

“Now explain to me why they put mattresses under certain falls and thorns under others? Ah! the world is funny, and it seems chimerical to me to want to regulate oneself according to its opinion.“

**Good question!

“I shall start, this summer, another book of about the same calibre; after that I shall return to the novel pure and simple. I have in my head two or three to write before I die. Just now I am spending my days at the Library, where I am accumulating notes. In a fortnight, I shall return to my house in the fields.”

“I don't need to tell you that success and the lack of it prove nothing, and that it is a ticket in a lottery. It is agreeable to succeed; to a philosophical spirit it ought not to be very distressing to fail. As for me, without knowing the play, I predict a success on the first day. As for its continuance, that is always unknown and unforeseen from day to day.”

I’m reading now books on hygiene. Oh! but they are comic! What assurance physicians have! what effrontery! what asses for the most part! I have just finished the Gaule poetique of Marchangy (the enemy of Beranger). This book gave me hysterics.

“H. M. the Emperor of all the Russias does not like the Muses. The censorship of the "autocrat of the north" had formally forbidden the transportation of Saint-Antoine, and the proofs were returned me from Saint Petersburg, last Sunday; the French edition even will be prohibited. That is quite a serious money loss to me.”

“While spitting and coughing beside my fire, I muse over my youth. I dream of all my dead friends, I wallow in blackness! Is it the result of a too great activity for the past eight months, or the radical absence of the feminine element in my life? But I have never felt more abandoned, more empty, more bruised.”

“You have no children, be therefore a litterateur, an artist, a master; that is logical, that is your compensation, your happiness, and your strength. And do tell us that you are getting on, that seems to us the main thing in life.—And keep well, I think that these rehearsals which make you go to and fro are good for you.”