Amiels Journal

Amiel's Journal

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Title: Amiel's Journal
Author: Mrs. Humphrey Ward
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Edition: 10
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AMIEL'S JOURNAL
THE JOURNAL INTIME OF HENRI-FRÉDÉRIC AMIEL
TRANSLATED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES
By Mrs. HUMPHREY WARD

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
In this second edition of the English translation of Amiel's "Journal
Intime," I have inserted a good many new passages, taken from the last
French edition (_Cinquiéme édition, revue et augmentée_.) But I have
not translated all the fresh material to be found in that edition nor have
I omitted certain sections of the Journal which in these two recent
volumes have been omitted by their French editors. It would be of no
interest to give my reasons for these variations at length. They depend
upon certain differences between the English and the French public,
which are more readily felt than explained. Some of the passages which
I have left untranslated seemed to me to overweight the introspective
side of the Journal, already so full--to overweight it, at any rate, for
English readers. Others which I have retained, though they often relate
to local names and books, more or less unfamiliar to the general public,
yet seemed to me valuable as supplying some of that surrounding detail,
that setting, which helps one to understand a life. Besides, we English
are in many ways more akin to Protestant and Puritan Geneva than the
French readers to whom the original Journal primarily addresses itself,
and some of the entries I have kept have probably, by the nature of
things, more savor for us than for them.
M. A. W.

PREFACE.
This translation of Amiel's "Journal Intime" is primarily addressed to
those whose knowledge of French, while it may be sufficient to carry
them with more or less complete understanding through a novel or a
newspaper, is yet not enough to allow them to understand and
appreciate a book containing subtle and complicated forms of
expression. I believe there are many such to be found among the
reading public, and among those who would naturally take a strong
interest in such a life and mind as Amiel's, were it not for the barrier of
language. It is, at any rate, in the hope that a certain number of
additional readers may be thereby attracted to the "Journal Intime" that
this translation of it has been undertaken.
The difficulties of the translation have been sometimes considerable,
owing, first of all, to those elliptical modes of speech which a man
naturally employs when he is writing for himself and not for the public,
but which a translator at all events is bound in some degree to expand.
Every here and there Amiel expresses himself in a kind of shorthand,
perfectly intelligible to a Frenchman, but for which an English
equivalent, at once terse and clear, is hard to find. Another difficulty
has been his constant use of a technical philosophical language, which,
according to his French critics, is not French--even philosophical
French--but German. Very often it has been impossible to give any
other than a literal rendering of such passages, if the thought of the
original was to be preserved; but in those cases where a choice was
open to me, I have preferred the more literary to the more technical
expression; and I have been encouraged to do so by the fact that Amiel,
when he came to prepare for publication a certain number of "Pensées,"
extracted from the Journal, and printed at the end of a volume of poems
published in 1853, frequently softened his phrases,