To what extent do our own personal and artistic interests coincide with those of the companies we work for (or start, run, and own ourselves)? To what extent do we find ourselves overlooking the difference because it is easier to be in situations where our work is wanted, waited for, rewarded, and well-equipped for progress, than to be free, independent, visionary, and broke, frustrated, and unwanted?








































































The end of the world and the species is coming in. We want to simplify everything because we cannot keep up those standards of complexity. It’s entropy of language and of the world. It’s our destiny to move faster and faster toward entropy. Therefore, mess, or sloppiness even, is a desideratum. 






























Art is just as far from turmoil as from apathy.

I found in the driveway yesterday morning a little starling that had fallen from the nest but was almost ready to fly. While I am writing now, he is right here beside me on the table, or more exactly between the fingers of my left hand, which are holding those notebook in place; that is the spot he most likes. He folds up his legs, puffs up like a little ball; you can tell he is comfortable. I had tried to put him into a cage, but he beat against it; I had to leave him free in the room, where he soils everything. Every ten minutes he lets fall anywhere and everywhere a little liquid, corrosive dropping. I give him bread soaked in milk to eat, mixed with the yolk of a hard-boiled egg; or little earthworms, which he is very fond of. He just flew from the table to my shoulder as soon as he saw me come in. After he has sat for some time on my hand, I feel an odd little itch moving over the back of my hand; this is tiny parasites moving from him to me. Another dropping.

This afternoon Copeau asked me to help him in his translation of Whitman—that is, to act as his secretary. 
We had sat down on the bench behind the house that is sheltered by a hazel tree; then soon, leaving the bench, we stretched out on the lawn beside the path. We were about to leave our work and go in for tea when there came toward us, hopping through the grass in great haste, my little starling. By himself he came right up close to my hand and made no effort to get away when I tried to catch him. In my hand he didn’t struggle at all; he seemed perfectly happy to be there. I ran into the kitchen to ask for some bread and milk and, for fear of the cats, I carried the bird into the aviary. He ate quite willingly but without throwing himself on the food with such eagerness that it seemed that mere hunger brought him back. I could have shouted with joy. I prepared his mush with a hard-boiled egg, changed the water in his tub, and stayed for some time with him. Very sorry to have to leave tomorrow. As soon as I get back from Paris I shall give him his liberty.

I believe my books would have been judged quite differently if I had been able to publish them all at once, just as they grew in my mind.
“Publish one’s complete works all together for the first time”—I remember how this remark dazzled me when I read it in Flaubert’s Correspondance. But that would not have been natural.

The secret of almost all my weaknesses is that frightful modesty of which I cannot cure myself.
I can never persuade myself that I have a right to anything.

They took me for a rebel (Claudel and Jammes) because I was unable to get—or unwilling to force—myself to that cowardly submission which would have assured my comfort. That is perhaps the most Protestant trait I have in my: my horror of comfort.

The French, who were playing fair, were indignant at the fact that in war the Germans did not observe the rules of the game.
As for the latter, it seemed as if they were aiming to discredit war forever; and as if to prove that war was an evil thing—if it is true that in war the aim is to conquer—they won by the worst means.

I wish it were forbidden for anyone to make statements about sex who had not had experience in breeding and observing animals. Perhaps they would finally come to understand that many difficulties, deviations, and irregularities that they insist on calling abnormal and “against nature” are no less natural than others.

Having resumed my life as a philanthropist and parasite, I no longer have a moment to write in this notebook.

I am caught again by the extreme interest of certain cases, by the atmosphere of affection and bewilderment that pervades that place, and the dangerous intoxication that self-sacrifice brings.

Unadulterated awe; and not only in front of the cathedral. This warm morning of soft azure I wander in the old quarter of the lower town, on the edge of a charming, grassy, shady canal and of a stream of which I don’t know the name. A bit worried at the thought that perhaps Roger Fry, who is with me, is waiting for me in the hall of the hotel. But there is a spell upon me, and I need solitude. I persuade myself that he does too How young I should still feel if I did not know that I am not!
Some people work over themselves to obtain the unity of their person. I let myself go.

Faced with that uninterrupted parade of misfortunes constantly tearing my heart, I became ashamed of any superiority and repeated to myself the words of Montesquieu’s Eucrates: “For one man to rise above humanity is too costly to all others.”

Yesterday an indescribably odd and beautiful sunset: sky filled with pink and orange-tinted mists; I admired it especially, as I was going over the Pont de Grenelle, relfected by the Seine heavy with barges; everything melted into a warm and tender harmony. In the Saint-Sulpice tram, from which I was watching this sight with wonder in my eyes, I noted that no one, absolutely no one, was aware of it. There was not a single face that didn’t look preoccupied with cares. . . . Yet, I thought, some people travel to a great distance to find nothing more beautiful. But most often man does not recognize beauty unless he buys it

The pruning of our fruit trees is dreadfully behindhand; the sap is rising. I have taken an active part in it and every day have spent almost four hours at it. I get furious with Mius when I discover the absurd arrangement of his espaliers. Since he sacrifices everything to appearances and since the least empty spot upsets him, he contrived to bring a branch forward from anywhere whatever to take the place of the missing one, which he should have known how to get the tree to produce. Impossible to describe the acrobatic contortions and odd arrangements my trees were forced to by that limited mind. His dream would have been to write his name everywhere in bent branches; on the espaliers I find the shape of every letter in the alphabet. And in order to achieve somewhat reasonable outlines again, I have to risk real havoc, which the trees won’t get over for a long time. 

I read in a letter from my mother to my father: “André would be very nice if he didn’t have a mania for standing a long time absolutely still at the foot of a tree watching snails.” 
The letter must date from ’73 (the year of Isabelle Widmer’s marriage, which it mentions earlier). I was therefore four years old.

I admire nothing so much as that friskiness of Stendhal in his letters, which I pick up immediately afterward in order to completely disgust myself with myself.

12 May
Written nothing further in this notebook for the last fortnight. Gave up my readings and those pious exercises which my heart, utterly dry and listless, had ceased to approve. See nothing in it but a comedy, and a dishonest comedy, in which I convinced myself that I recognized the hand of the demon. This is what the demon whispers to my heart.