Private Diary / Collection of Essays

Author: [French] Charles Baudelaire
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: The Graphic Private Diary is a collection of translated essays, primarily including the preface My Heart Naked, Rocket, Poor Belgium, Hygiene, Manners, Methods, Morality, The Melancholy of Paris, and Flashing Aphorisms. Among the four major categories of literary works, essays differ from poetry and fiction. If poetry belongs to the history of the spirit, and fiction belongs to the history of society, then the drama, which concentrates numerous artistic functions and is a broad cultural and artistic history beyond the expression of literary symbols, belongs to the general cultural and artistic history. In contrast, essays are the most popular and the most extensively involved in life, becoming an integral part of life—a unique literary phenomenon. In one of Molière's comedies, there is a dialogue where Person A asks Person B: What is prose? Person B replies: What you are saying now is prose. Can we understand it this way: essays are actually very ordinary; we live in essays every day, so we are all familiar with them. Because of this, as a literary term, essays express a relatively loose concept. Of course, they must possess indispensable literary qualities, but they are not very standardized; rather, they are more free. In English, Essay is generally translated as sketches, ramblings, attempts, or vignettes, all emphasizing the freedom of writing. It is a genre that is free enough to take on multiple forms, covering letters, diaries, travelogues, memoirs, notes, prefaces, satirical essays where laughter and anger alike become writing, and even the kind of politics where "the pen is often filled with emotion." With the development of literature, in the early 19th century, marginal genres like prose poems emerged between poetry and essays. Beyond writers, its authors are widespread, including artists, musicians, actors, as well as philosophers, scientists, historians, and even politicians, religious figures, travelers, and so on.