ABSTRACT
The Pleiade edition of Charles Baudelaire's works carefully separates out the three sets of notes- Fusees, Hygiene, Mon coeur mis a nu- that have come to be known, since their posthumous publication, as the Journaux intimes. A note of aesthetic optimism, of confidence in the power of art to bestow coherence and stability, occasionally strays across into the Journaux intimes. The evidence of the Journaux intimes would seem to indicate that from the outset Baudelaire intended treatment of his material to be digressive, spasmodic and fragmentary with the aphorism as the vehicle of intellectual suggestion. The intensification in the cult of the dandy or 'la centralisation du Moi is no doubt linked to Baudelaire's repudiation of drugs. The 'jouissances' that come under the label 'vaporisation du Moi' are the positive face of a sense of psychological terror. Baudelaire's theological references in the Journaux intimes constitute an indirect discourse about the undermining of the self and its traditional privileges.
