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Charles Baudelaire, born in Paris in 1821, is best known for Fleurs du Mal, a thrilling and controversial poetry collection that led to him being prosecuted when published in 1857. Sadly, his life was riddled with personal and financial struggles, and when he wrote this entry in his journal, Baudelaire’s health, both mental and physical, was deteriorating rapidly. Plagued by a lifetime of excess and emotional strife, his condition only worsened in the ensuing years. Four years later, he suffered a debilitating stroke, and in 1867, at the age of forty-six, Baudelaire passed away, leaving behind a legacy as one of the most influential poets of the 19th century.
The Diary Entry
The more one desires, the stronger one’s will.
The more one works, the better one works and the more one wants to work.
The more one produces, the more fecund one becomes.
After a debauch, one feels oneself always to be more solitary, more abandoned.
In the moral as in the physical world, I have been conscious always of an abyss, not only of the abyss of sleep, but of the abyss of action, of day-dreaming, of recollection, of desire, of regret, of remorse, of the beautiful, of number etc.
I have cultivated my hysteria with delight and terror. Now I suffer continually from vertigo, and today, 23rd of January, 1862, I have received a singular warning, I have felt the wind of the wing of madness pass over me.
Further Reading
Charles Baudelaire’s journals were published in English in 1930 by Blackamore Press, translated by Christopher Isherwood and bearing the title Intimate Journals. That book can be read at the Internet Archive.
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