Monday, December 10, 2007

BAUDELAIRE, ERNST JUNGER, EZRA POUND, THE ESSENTIALLY HELPFUL

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In addition to the ABC OF READING by EZRA POUND (1) I want to let you know about a few other essentially helpful small books

INTIMATE JOURNALS by CHARLES BAUDELAIRE. (2) Translated by Christopher Isherwood with an introduction by W.H. Auden. Published now by Dover. There was another introduction for an earlier edition by T.S. Eliot which is available in his selected essays.

The INTIMATE JOURNALS is a book to take to heart and head as they say.

Just as with the ABC OF READING it is a book that can not be exhausted. It does not date.

LXX. There are no great men save the poet, the priest,and the soldier.
The man who sings, the man who offers up sacrifice, and the man who sacrifices himself.
The rest are born for the whip.
Let us beware of the rabble, of common-sense, good-nature, inspiration and evidence.

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Some time ago in reviewing a novel by Ernst Junger I mentioned the three vocations available for a man and how Junger himself if we allowed the scientist to replace the priest was able to embody all of these vocations. As far as I know he is the only modern man so gifted. I am no longer happy with the replacement of the priest by the scientist and can only note that in the last years of his very long life Junger converted to Catholicism. He died at 103 in 1998.

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XL. One must work, if not from inclination at least from despair, since, as I have fully proved, to work is less wearisome than to amuse oneself.