Traditionalism: The Radical Project for

Restoring Sacred Order Mark Sedgwick

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Traditionalism
Traditionalism
The Radical Project
for Restoring Sacred
Order
MARK SEDGWICK
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Names: Sedgwick, Mark J., author.

Title: Traditionalism : the radical project for restoring sacred order / Mark Sedgwick.
Description: New York, NY, United States of America : Oxford University Press, [2023] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2023008585 (print) | LCCN 2023008586 (ebook) |
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Contents

ACKN OWLEDGEMENT S ix

IN TR OD UCTORY

C H A PT ER 1
3
Traditionalism and the Traditionalists
CHA PT ER 2
21
Historical perennialism

PA R T I: FOUNDAT IONS

C H A PT ER 3
43
Traditionalist perennialism
CHA PT ER 4
67
Traditionalist history
CHA PT ER 5
93
The Traditionalist critique of modernity
CHA PT ER 6
119
Traditionalism, thought, and society
PA R T II : COR E PROJECT S

C H A PTE R 7
139
Self-realization
CHA PTE R 8
179
Religion
CHA PTE R 9
199
Politics

PA R T III : F UR T HER PROJECT S

CHA PTE R 10
229
Art
CHA PTE R 11
259
Gender
CHA PTE R 12
289
Nature
CHA PTE R 13
309
Dialogue

PA R T IV : POST- T RADIT IONALISM

CHA PTE R 14
331
The radical right

PA R T V: CON CLUDING

CHA PTE R 15
359
Conclusion
SE LEC T BIBLIOGRAPHY OF T RADIT IONALIST W OR KS 371

N OTES 377

IN D E X 399
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editor at Pelican, Maria Bedford, for

her careful and constructive reading of the draft of this book.
I would also like to thank Boaz Huss for his help with Kabba-
lah, David R. M. Irving for his help with music, Dorthe Jør-
gensen for her help with philosophy, Jafe Arnold for his help
with Aleksander Dugin, Joscelyn Godwin for his help with
Julius Evola, Manni Crone for general comments, Marianne
Qvortrup Fibiger for her help with Hinduism, Patrick Laude
for his comments on Frithjof Schuon, Patrick Ringgenberg
and Ricarda Stegmann for general comments, and Shankar
Nair for help with connections between Greece and India. I
have not always followed their advice, however, and the book
is my responsibility, not theirs.

ix

ix
Introductory
CHAPTER 1

Traditionalism and the Traditionalists

Traditionalism is today’s least-known major philosophy, and

my aim in this book is to make it and its radical project for
restoring sacred order more widely known and better under-
stood. It is not my aim to convert people to Traditionalism.
This is partly because I am by training and trade a historian
of ideas, and thus professionally neutral. It is also because
the outcomes of the Traditionalist project are, as we will see
in later chapters, mixed.
Traditionalism has been used to encourage respect for the
environment, compose great music, and reduce hostility be-
tween followers of different religions. It has also been used
to support very different causes, from the election of Donald
Trump as president of the United States of America to what
many would call fascism and racism, not to mention terror-
ism. Some have blamed a Russian Traditionalist, Aleksandr
Dugin, for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The Trad-
itionalist philosophy, then, needs to be handled with care. It is
not always a good thing for someone to become a Tradition-
alist. It would be good, however, if those who oppose fascism,
racism, and terrorism could more easily recognize Tradition-
alism when they see it.
To be able to recognize Traditionalism and make sense

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C HA PTE R 1

of its project, we need to understand the ideas on which it is

built, and its somewhat specialized terminology. The ‘trad-
ition’ in ‘Traditionalism’, for example, is not what is general-
ly meant by the word, but rather a group of sacred teachings
that are understood to have been handed down since time
immemorial and are the basis for the proper order of things,
a sacred order. These traditional teachings have something
of the philosophical and something of the religious about
them, so Traditionalism is both philosophical and religious,
although some Traditionalists prefer the term ‘metaphys-
ical’, which combines those two aspects.
The sacred order that once derived from tradition is often
contrasted with modern disorder, and Traditionalism is anti-
modern as well as metaphysical. This anti-modernism has im-
portant political implications, as liberalism and democracy are
both modern, and anti-modernism is thus hardly compatible
with liberal democracy, and may imply its rejection. Tradition-
alism is thus political as well as metaphysical. It is a radical
political ideology as well as a religious philosophy. But if
a single term is needed, ‘philosophy’ usually works best, with
that word used in its oldest and widest sense, denoting not
the contents of contemporary university courses but rather a
coherent body of theory concerning fundamental questions of
existence. The Traditionalist project is a philosophical or intel-
lectual project, not an organized or institutional undertaking.
Traditionalists understand the traditional teachings that
their philosophy is based on as ancient and timeless – and
some of them really are very ancient. The way that they are
understood and interpreted by Traditionalists, however, is
much more recent. The Traditionalist philosophy that this

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 T RADIT IONALISM A ND TH E TR A DITION A LIS TS

book examines originated in the 1920s and 1930s, and has

since then been developed in various directions. Many phil-
osophies that were important in the 1920s and 1930s have
now vanished, but Traditionalism has not. It remains little
known partly because it has never sought a mass audience,
and partly because it can be difficult to follow. This book
aims to make it (relatively) easy to understand.

Traditionalism
I myself first encountered Traditionalism during the 1990s,
when I was living in Cairo and studying the history of Sufism.
Sufism is a sort of lay monasticism within Islam. Just as Cath-
olic and Orthodox Christians who are drawn to the spiritual
life can join monastic orders, Sunni and Shia Muslims who
are drawn to the spiritual life can join Sufi orders. One major
difference is that Christian monasticism is a full-time, life-
long commitment, while Sufism is part-time, and need not be
lifelong. Another difference is that some Sufi theology is fur-
ther from mainstream Islam than most monastic theology is
from mainstream Christianity. Mainstream Islamic theology
is generally fairly down-to-earth, while Sufi theology stretch-
es into realms of imagination beyond time and space.
In the 1990s, I was especially interested in understand-
ing how Sufi orders change over time, and how they adapt as
they spread from one part of the world to another. I collected
oral histories and documents from the descendants of great
Sufi shaykhs, as Sufi masters are called, in isolated villages in
Sudan, travelling across the empty desert in the trucks that are
the main form of transport in rural areas. I attended Sufi festi-
vals in villages in Upper Egypt, and visited Sufis in towns and

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C HA PTE R 1

villages across Malaysia, parts of Thailand, and Singapore. Fi-

nally, I ended up in Italy, where a charismatic gentleman called
Abd al-Wahid Pallavicini, who had once worked in Singapore,
now lived in a large house in Milan where his Sufi followers
met. They were all well-educated young people who, like their
shaykh, had Muslim first names and Italian surnames. During
their meetings they often discussed questions that seemed to
me to have more to do with Western philosophy than with the
Sufism I had found in Sudan, Egypt, and Southeast Asia. They
were, in fact, Traditionalists as well as Sufis.
It was Shaykh Pallavicini who first told me about Tradition-
alism and gave me a copy of a biography of Traditionalism’s
founder, René Guénon.1 I read the biography, and realized
that Shaykh Pallavicini was not the first Traditionalist I had
met. Some American and European converts to Islam I knew
in Cairo, it became clear, were also Traditionalists. After I
got home from Milan, the more I looked, the more I found. I
even found Traditionalists in Moscow, newly open to Western
scholars after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When I first
met Dugin, then still relatively unknown, he told me that he
thought that Guénon was the undiscovered Marx.
After writing up my research on Sufism between Sudan
and Malaysia, I started to work on Traditionalism. I pub-
lished a book on the history of Traditionalism, Against the
Modern World, in 2003.2 In that book I traced the origins,
development, and spread of the movement that Guénon had
started, which turned out to be a far larger phenomenon than
I or anyone else had suspected. One reason that nobody had
heard of Traditionalism, I discovered, was that Traditionalist
writers almost never identified themselves as such. Unlike

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 T RADIT IONALISM A ND TH E TR A DITION A LIS TS

Marxists, they never tried to reach the masses, whom they

considered no longer capable of understanding traditional
teachings. Traditionalists sought to change the world and
restore sacred order more quietly, in other ways.
In the conclusion to Against the Modern World, written in
2002, I suggested that the Traditionalist project had run its
course, and was even in decline. That turned out to be quite
wrong. In 2002, there were indeed fewer Traditionalists writ-
ing about Sufism, Islam, and art than there had been twenty
or thirty years before, but there were already more politic-
ally active Traditionalists. I did not see this at the time, but
the key reference was fast becoming not Guénon but Julius
Evola, an Italian Traditionalist writer who had died in 1974
and had once advised Mussolini on race before moving to
Germany as a guest of the Nazis.
Politically active Traditionalists who referred more to
Evola than to Guénon were becoming more and more visible.
In Russia, Dugin’s 1997 book The Foundations of Geopolitics:
The Geopolitical Future of Russia, discussed in a later chapter,
became a bestseller.3 When Russia invaded Ukraine in Febru-
ary 2022, some turned to Dugin’s views on geopolitics for an
explanation, and, in August 2022, a car bomb probably aimed
at Dugin instead killed his 29-year-old daughter, Darya, who
was driving home from a literary festival entitled ‘Tradition’,
where her father had spoken on ‘Tradition and History’. It
seems likely that the bomb was planted by Ukrainians.
After 1997, Dugin became the best- known politically
active Traditionalist, but there were others. A Hungarian
Traditionalist, Gábor Vona, founded a right-wing political
party called Jobbik that did surprisingly well in the 2010

7
C HA PTE R 1

Hungarian elections, winning 47 seats in parliament and

coming third overall. Something similar happened in Greece.
And then, in early 2017, as the world was trying to come to
terms with the unexpected election of Donald Trump, the
New York Times reported that Trump’s campaign manager
and counsellor, Steve Bannon, had been citing Evola. As the
New York Times contacted me to try to find out who on earth
Evola was, I began to wonder whether Dugin had been right,
and whether Guénon really was the new Marx. Traditional-
ism certainly seemed to be thriving as a political ideology.
The popularity of ideologies and philosophies always has a
lot to do with circumstances. Traditionalism has been doing
well in the new world created by the slow collapse of the
centre-left and centre-right political parties that dominated
Western politics after the end of the Second World War. The
centre-left historically depended on the votes of industrial
workers and the support of the union movement, and inev-
itably suffered from the shift in Western economies from in-
dustry to services. As industrial workers became fewer and
fewer, and union membership declined, the centre-left was
bound to be in trouble. The centre-right suffered from the
decline of the centre-left, against which it had always de-
fined itself, and from the rise of new issues that it had never
really thought through, notably immigration, which worried
more and more Western voters. The collapse of centre-left
and centre-right parties made room for new parties like the
Greens and, especially, for nationalist parties that would once
have been beyond the pale, like Vona’s Jobbik in Hungary and
Trump’s version of Republicanism in America. Even when
they do not win power, such parties pull the larger parties

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 T RADIT IONALISM A ND TH E TR A DITION A LIS TS

towards those of their policies that voters seem to like. The

collapse of centre-left and centre-right parties made room for
new ideologies as well as new parties. Traditionalism is one of
these new, or newly important, ideologies.
Even if Guénon is the new Marx, Traditionalism will never
be the new Marxism. It is not suitable as the basis for a mass
ideology like communism, and the days of mass ideologies
have passed, anyhow. Marxism, like Nazism, needed indus-
trial workers, and industrial workers are now in short supply
in advanced economies. Nor are politicians like Trump ever
going to read Guénon’s or Evola’s books; they are far too dif-
ficult, and politicians need to be flexible and pragmatic. Pol-
iticians are well advised not to get too ideological, or even
too consistent. But politicians need advisers and activists,
who may be both ideological and consistent, and Bannon is
not the only activist adviser to be inspired and motivated by
Traditionalism. Shortly after Bannon’s appreciation of Evola
was revealed in the New York Times, for example, a parlia-
mentary aide from the AfD, the German nationalist party that
had come third in the federal German elections in 2017 (but
fifth in 2021), approached me at a conference and said that
he had read the German translation of my Against the Modern
World. He lamented that most AfD activists knew nothing of
Traditionalism. But even if most AfD activists know noth-
ing of Traditionalism, some do, as my conversation with the
aide made clear. So do activists in less famous parties and in
groups that have never won any parliamentary seats at all, but
still matter in other ways. This is why those who support lib-
eralism and oppose nationalism need to be able to recognize
Traditionalism and its project when they see it.

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C HA PTE R 1

This book
Many introductions to Traditionalism have been published
over the years, but all of them have been written by Tradi-
tionalists aiming to recruit people to their cause. Some read-
ers of these books have become Sufis, and some have joined
the far right, but most stopped reading after a few pages, be-
mused by how bizarre some Traditionalist ideas can seem.
This book is different from those other introductions in two
ways. Firstly, as I have already said, it does not seek to recruit
new Traditionalists, but rather to explain Traditionalism and
its project as neutrally and as comprehensibly as possible.
Secondly, it introduces Traditionalist ideas not as timeless
wisdom, which is how Traditionalists tend to see and pres-
ent them, but as contributions to ongoing intellectual de-
bates. Almost nothing about Traditionalism is entirely new.
Most elements of the Traditionalist philosophy connect to
discussions with which readers will already be familiar. What
is new and powerful about Traditionalism is what these
different ideas and elements all add up to.
This book will examine Traditionalism in four parts. First
come its foundations, the ideas and perspectives that are
fundamental for all varieties of Traditionalism, for Sufis and
presidential campaign managers alike. Most fundamental of
these is perennialism, the idea that beneath all the differ-
ent forms of tradition, from Catholicism to Buddhism, there
lies one single, timeless and esoteric sacred tradition – ‘the’
tradition. This is the basis of sacred order. The second fun-
damental idea is a view of history that replaces the general as-
sumption that things get better over time with the conviction

10

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that things are actually getting worse, giving rise to the Trad-
itionalist critique of modernity, seen as the opposite of sacred
order. The final foundation of Traditionalism is its perspec-
tive on how and when thought can change society.
We then look at the core projects of Traditionalism in
three central areas of human life: self-realization, religion,
and politics. These projects have interested all Tradition-
alists, and the applications of Traditionalism to them are
at the core of Traditionalism’s significance today. Differ-
ent Traditionalists have understood self-realization in dif-
ferent ways, but all have seen it as the fulfilment of one’s
true nature through some form of consciousness of the
transcendent. Non-Traditionalist understandings of self-
realization, in contrast, often omit the sacred. Tradition-
alist understandings of self-realization and of religion give
us the Traditionalist Sufi project, and Traditionalist un-
derstandings of self-realization and of politics give us the
Traditionalist political project. There could also have been
a chapter on symbolism, as nearly all Traditionalists have
also been interested in the interpretation and use of non-
verbal, usually visual, expressions of traditional teachings.
Traditionalist understandings of symbolism, however, have
not had any major impact, and so are of limited interest to
non-Traditionalists.
Traditionalism has also been applied beyond these cen-
tral areas. Traditionalist thought has been applied fruitfully to
four further areas: art, gender, nature, and interfaith dialogue.
These further projects are discussed in the book’s third part,
taken in chronological order. There are Traditionalist under-
standings of what art is and should be, and also Traditionalist

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artists. Similarly, there are Traditionalist understandings of

gender, though these have never really been put into prac-
tice. Traditionalist understandings of nature as sacred and in
need of protection have contributed to today’s environmental
movement. Finally, Traditionalist understandings of religion
have been used as a basis for interfaith dialogue.
The book’s final part contains only one chapter, and looks at
today’s radical right, and at what some call ‘post-Traditionalism’.
First of all, however, this chapter will introduce the major
thinkers who developed the foundations of the Traditionalist
philosophy. Their names will come up time and time again in
later chapters, so it is good to know who they were.

The Traditionalists
The first of the three major thinkers who developed the foun-
dations of the Traditionalist philosophy was René Guénon, a
French Orientalist and philosopher. Traditionalism might, in
fact, almost be called ‘Guénonism’, rather as communism is
often called ‘Marxism’. It was Guénon whose works began the
development of Traditionalist thought during the 1910s and
1920s and continued that development until his death in 1951,
and it was he who established Traditionalism’s most import-
ant foundations and who was responsible for Traditionalist
philosophy’s early application. The application of Traditional-
ism to self-realization is primarily his work. Then comes Julius
Evola, an Italian painter and journalist who developed the
political project of Traditionalism on bases laid by Guénon,
first under Fascism and then during the immediate post-war
period. The third name that will be encountered very often
is that of Frithjof Schuon, a Swiss Sufi who was younger than

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Guénon and Evola, and who was responsible for Traditional-

ism’s most important religious applications.
Today, some Traditionalists read both Evola and Guénon
and focus on politics, while some read both Schuon and
Guénon, or just Guénon, and focus on religion and self-
realization. Those who do not read Evola commonly regard
him with the horror with which fascists are generally regard-
ed in the post-war world. ‘Schuon and Guénon’ or ‘Guénon
only’ versus ‘Evola and Guénon’ is the most important div-
ision in the contemporary Traditionalist movement.

RENÉ GUÉNON
All three of these foundational Traditionalist thinkers led inter-
esting lives. Guénon’s was the quietest. He was born in 1886
to a respectable middle-class family in provincial France and
moved to Paris as a student. He became involved in the oc-
cultist circles that flourished there during the Belle Époque, and
in 1909, at the age of 23, founded a small and short-lived jour-
nal, La Gnose (Gnosis), subtitled ‘A Monthly Review Dedicated
to the Study of the Esoteric Sciences’. It ceased publication in
1911, but not before it had published the articles from which
the Traditionalist philosophy would later develop. Some were
written by Guénon, and some were written by Abdul-Hadi, a
Sufi who had made a deep study of the philosophical and theo-
logical works of the leading mystical theorist of Islam, Muhyi
al-Din Ibn Arabi, while living in Cairo. Abdul-Hadi was not an
Egyptian, but a Parisian painter and art critic of Swedish origin,
also known as Ivan Aguéli. He died in 1917, before the founda-
tions of Traditionalism were fully developed. He was more a
precursor of Traditionalism than an actual Traditionalist.

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After the First World War, Guénon moved on from those

occultist circles to Catholic ones. He studied philosophy and
Hinduism at the University of the Sorbonne and then inde-
pendently. His perspectives were incompatible with those of
the Orientalist scholars of his day, as he was more interested
in recovering and restoring sacred order than in philological
analysis or intellectual history. His early attempts at an aca-
demic career thus failed. He supported himself with a variety
of teaching jobs while writing the books that later became
the main Traditionalist canon, and also writing articles for
a longer-lasting journal, Études traditionnelles (Traditional
Studies), that a collaborator of his edited. Twelve books were
published in French during the 1920s and early 1930s. Some
were translated into English and other languages, mostly in
the 1940s and 1950s. Since 2000, all have been translated.
In 1930, Guénon moved to Cairo, where he lived the rest
of his life, supported by gifts from admirers. This move was
the most dramatic event in what was otherwise a quiet life. It
involved a change not just of residence, but also of religion –
Guénon in Cairo was a Muslim and a Sufi – and of national-
ity. When it became clear that he was never going to return
to France, Guénon, who had married an Egyptian woman
with whom he had had several children, took Egyptian na-
tionality so that his children could be citizens of the coun-
try in which they had been born. (Egyptian nationality then
passed solely through the father, not the mother.)
Guénon’s Cairo period was not an important one for his
writing, with only one major new book being published, in
1945. Instead, he focused on Études traditionnelles, on com-
piling and editing collections of his earlier articles, and on

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conducting an extensive correspondence with readers around

the world. His following was a loose network rather than a
formal group, but Guénon himself thought it was an import-
ant project and that it might lead to intellectual, social, and
political changes that would strengthen tradition against
anti-traditional modernity.
Guénon died in Cairo in 1951. His importance lies, above
all, in his writings, which are discussed in the remainder of
this book, as are their applications and implications. The net-
work that he had established did not survive his death.

JULIUS EVOLA
Julius Evola’s life was more dramatic than Guénon’s. He was
born in Rome in 1898 and christened Giulio. He served in the
Italian army during the First World War. He then became an
avant-garde painter, and the somewhat prosaic name Giulio
was replaced by its more classical version, Julius. It was
around this period that the title of ‘Baron’ somehow became
attached to his name. Evola’s Dadaist paintings are good, if
not first rate. His first two books, published in the 1920s,
were on art. He was also interested in philosophy, which he
studied privately, and he published four books in the late 1920s
that dealt with philosophical topics. Like many other paint-
ers of the time, he was involved in the occultist milieu, and it
was in this milieu that he encountered the work of Guénon.
Evola was an early supporter of the Fascist leader Benito
Mussolini, as were some others in Italian artistic and oc-
cultist milieus, and after Mussolini came to power he worked
as a journalist on a Fascist newspaper, while writing eleven
Traditionalist books, mostly on political topics; these later

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became a canon in their own right. The first, Pagan Imperi-

alism, was published in 1928.4 In 1936, Evola started writing
on race, and these writings attracted Mussolini’s attention.
They also interested some Nazis, and German translations of
Evola’s major works were published in the 1930s and 1940s.
Evola was never a major figure in the Fascist regime, how-
ever, and was at first kept at arm’s length by the Nazis. His
views were too unusual and too controversial.
After the fall of Mussolini, Evola took refuge in the
German Reich, where he was briefly involved in high polit-
ics and attempts to restore Fascism in Italy, once even visit-
ing the Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s headquarters in Rastenburg, East
Prussia (now Kętrzyn, Poland). He spent the last period of
the war studying and writing in Vienna, where he was badly
injured in an air raid in 1945. After the defeat of Germany,
confined to a wheelchair by his injuries, he returned to Italy,
and lived the rest of his life in a small flat in Rome, writing
books and articles that, together with some translations and
occasional donations, allowed him to live simply but com-
fortably. Seven books published between 1949 and 1963 form
a second Evolian canon. During this period, Evola was ar-
rested and tried for attempting to re-establish Fascism, but
was acquitted. This was probably the right verdict, as by then
what Evola wanted to establish was very different from Mus-
solini’s Fascism. He was turning instead to heroic political
action as a means to self-realization. After publishing five
books of lesser importance in the later 1960s and early 1970s,
he died in 1974.
Evola never led any group (at least after his early occultist
days), and none of his multiple political initiatives ever

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succeeded, so his significance today derives purely from his

writings. These writings were important in three very differ-
ent periods. First, they played a very minor part in the de-
velopment of Italian Fascist race laws and acquired a small
readership in Nazi Germany. Second, rather different writings
inspired post-war Italian neofascism, which was an important
political force in the 1970s, involved in both parliamentary
and extra-parliamentary politics, including terrorism. There
was some interest in Evola outside Italy in this period, but not
much. Third, starting in the 1990s, Evola’s books began to be
translated into more and more languages, and his readership
grew and grew, until he became one of the key intellectual
references of the radical right, the position he occupies today.

FRITHJOF SCHUON
Frithjof Schuon was born in Switzerland in 1907 to a German
musician father and a French mother. He grew up in Swit-
zerland and then, after the death of his father when he was
thirteen, in France. He worked in France as a textile design-
er, reading Guénon, whose works inspired him to convert to
Islam and visit Algeria in search of a Sufi shaykh. He joined
the Alawiyya, a major Algerian Sufi order, in 1932, and then
established a branch of the Alawiyya in Switzerland, together
with some Swiss friends who were also readers of Guénon.
During the Second World War, Schuon moved from occu-
pied France back to neutral Switzerland and devoted himself
to leading his Sufi order and to writing, supported financially
by his followers. His first full-length book, The Transcendent
Unity of Religions, was his major work, published in French
in 1948.5 Five more books, all in French, followed during the

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1950s, and a further six during the 1960s and 1970s. These
were generally translated into English fairly soon after their
publication, and in some cases into other languages. During
these years, membership of his Sufi order, which became
independent of the Algerian Alawiyya, grew, mostly among
intellectuals and academics in Europe, the Americas, and
elsewhere. The order was renamed the Maryamiyya in honour
of the Virgin Mary, known as Maryam in Arabic, following a
series of visions in which Schuon saw the Virgin.
In 1980, at the age of 73, Schuon moved from Switzer-
land to America, where he had many followers, and where he
had been spending time since becoming interested in Native
American religion during the 1950s. Schuon and some of his
followers began attending Native American rites as sympa-
thetic observers, as well as practising Sufi and Islamic rituals.
Several more books were published with the help of his fol-
lowers during the 1980s and 1990s. He died in Indiana in 1998.
Schuon’s importance lies not only in his own writings but
also in his Sufi order and in the writings of other members
of that order. His own books were never bestsellers, but the
total sales of all the books written by all the members of his
order were significant. These books exercised only a limit-
ed influence on the general public but had a real impact on
scholars and intellectuals studying Islam, religious studies,
art, and some other subjects. The peak of their influence was
between the 1970s and the 1990s.

These, then, are the major thinkers who developed the

foundations of the Traditionalist philosophy: a French schol-
ar who led a retired life in Paris and then Cairo, an Italian

18

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 T RADIT IONALISM A ND TH E TR A DITION A LIS TS

activist who played a small part on the margins of great and

terrible events, and a Swiss religious leader who saw the
Virgin Mary in visions. There are others, who further de-
veloped and applied Traditionalism, like, for example, Dugin.
They will be introduced in later chapters.

Conclusion
Traditionalism is a radical project for restoring sacred order.
It finds that order in metaphysical tradition, and sees mod-
ernity as its opposite. It is a metaphysical religious philoso-
phy that has inspired Sufis, and a radical political ideology
that has expanded into the gap created by the decline of the
centre-left and the centre-right. It is ultimately based on the
foundations laid between the 1910s and 1950s by Guénon,
Evola, and Schuon: perennialism; a view of history in which
things are seen to be getting worse not better; a critique of
modernity; and certain perspectives on how thought can
change society. After surveying historical perennialism, we
will proceed to look at these foundations, and then at their
application to Traditionalism’s various projects.

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CHAPTER 2

Historical Perennialism

Traditionalists see tradition and myth as a body of under-

standings, handed down through the ages, that is the key
to making sense of the sacred order, and of the modern dis-
order that has replaced it. It is also fundamental that one
single, timeless tradition is understood to underlie all the
different forms of tradition, myth, and religion that exist
and have existed. Belief in such a single, timeless tradition
is known as ‘perennialism’, from the adjective ‘perennial’,
meaning everlasting or timeless. Perennialism is so central
to Traditionalism that some Traditionalists refer to them-
selves as ‘perennialists’. But, while all Traditionalists are per-
ennialists, not all perennialists are Traditionalists. There are
also non-Traditionalist perennialists who do not share Tra-
ditionalism’s other fundamental ideas, and perennialism has
a long history in Western thought.
Traditionalist perennialism builds on a discussion that
goes back to the Renaissance. That discussion is now mostly
forgotten, but it was once important, and survives in cer-
tain contemporary academic debates. This chapter there-
fore looks at the history of perennialism and of two related
concepts, tradition and myth. In line with my approach else-
where in the book, it seeks to introduce ongoing intellectual

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C HA PTE R 2

debates rather than to provide a comprehensive account of

them. Certain non-Traditionalist philosophers and think-
ers will be referred to from time to time, but not all non-
Traditionalists who contributed to every debate will be
mentioned. The following chapter will then move on to the
Traditionalist understanding of perennialism.

Tradition
Tradition is an important part of human culture. For pro-
gressives, certain traditions may be an obstacle to reform,
but even progressives usually follow family traditions when
it comes to birthdays and holidays. Festivals like Christmas
and Thanksgiving are built out of tradition quite as much as
they are built out of community. For conservatives, it is im-
portant to maintain traditions, which may offer protection
against hasty or unwise reform. Conservatives who have lost
a fight against reform may still attempt to recover particular
traditions, and the label ‘traditionalist’ is thus often applied
to those who are attempting to defend what are, actually,
already lost causes. Traditionalist Catholics, for example,
reject the liberalizing reforms introduced into doctrine and
liturgy by the Second Vatican Council of 1962–5. They have
become more and more marginal over the decades. This
more general sense of the word ‘tradition’ is quite distinct
from the Traditionalism that this book is discussing.
A tradition is, literally, something which is handed down.
The English word is a form of the Latin traditio, which is
derived from the verb tradere, which means to hand over
or hand down. One of the traditions which may be handed
down is a way of doing things, from conducting elections to

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 H IS TOR ICA L P ER EN N IA L IS M

celebrating Christmas or Thanksgiving. Another thing that

may be handed down is a teaching, and this is the primary
meaning of ‘tradition’ for the Traditionalist philosophy: a
teaching that has been handed down since time immemorial.
A historian might distinguish three overlapping catego-
ries of this sort of teaching. The oldest teachings that are
handed down take the form of myth, the stories which the
earliest human cultures developed that explain creation and
account for the invisible forces thought to be behind events,
often identified as spirits or gods. Then there is philosophy,
initially developed when some thinkers in Ancient Greece
moved beyond myth and sought to understand the struc-
tures of creation and human consciousness. Finally, there is
religion. For those living at the western end of the Eurasian
landmass and in the Americas, the most historically import-
ant religion is Judaism, which established the monotheistic
model that is sometimes called ‘Abrahamic’ and that, in its
Christian and then its Islamic versions, became dominant
first around the Mediterranean, then across northern Eur-
asia, and finally also in Africa and the Americas.
Myth, philosophy, and religion are all in some sense
tradition, as they are all handed down, though philosophy
also develops over time in a way that religion and myth do
not. All three also overlap, as religion contains myth, and
theology contains philosophy. All three forms of tradition
have lost much of their authority in the West since the En-
lightenment, which stressed reason against myth and reli-
gion, drew philosophy away from religion, and led ultimately
to the triumph of the scientific method. With the Enlighten-
ment, reason and science replaced myth and religion as the

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C HA PTE R 2

standard bases of a reliable explanation of reality, making

space for non-sacred conceptions of ‘natural’ order, and secu-
larized philosophy receded from the centre of the public
sphere. Neither myth nor religion vanished, however, and
we will now see what happened to them.

Myth
The triumph of Enlightenment rationalism was never com-
plete. The poets of the Romantic movement were quick to
challenge a purely material understanding of existence, as
the great British philosopher Isaiah Berlin showed in 1979 in
a famous essay, ‘The Counter-Enlightenment’.1 Philosophers
and artists like William Blake, Johann Gottfried Herder, and
Friedrich Schiller objected, Berlin thought, to ‘cold polit-
ical dehumanization, to the straitjacket of lifeless . . . rules
in which the living body of [the] passionate and poetical . . .
is to be held fast’.2 For these early agents of the Counter-
Enlightenment, the great Enlightenment thinkers ‘tell us
that men seek only to obtain pleasure and avoid pain, but
this is absurd. Men seek to live, create, love, hate, eat, drink,
worship, sacrifice, understand, and they seek this because
they cannot help it. Life is action.’3 Berlin never looked at
Traditionalism, but if he had, he would certainly have placed
it in the Counter-Enlightenment.
During the nineteenth century, myth took on new signifi-
cance for those who were interested in the passionate and
poetical, in life as action. Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm col-
lected and published Germanic legends and tales to gen-
eral acclaim,4 John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley drew on
Greek myth for the ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and Prometheus

24

24
 H IS TOR ICA L P ER EN N IA L IS M

Unbound, respectively, and Richard Wagner drew on Norse

myth for his Ring cycle. Myth was of great importance for the
nineteenth-century Romantic imagination.
Myth was also studied in the universities, notably at Cam-
bridge University by James Frazer, whose study of ‘primitive
superstition’, first published in 1890 as The Golden Bough, had
grown to twelve volumes by 1915. Frazer traced similarities
between different myths from different civilizations, find-
ing a universal common ground in which the most promin-
ent features were magic, the sacrifice of a divine king, and the
mirroring of the rhythms of the agricultural year – the death
and resurrection of vegetation. He saw his work as a contri-
bution to intellectual and institutional history, and also as
something that would help ‘to follow the long march, the slow
and toilsome ascent, of humanity from savagery to civilisa-
tion’. The study of myth had practical value for Frazer, as it
might ‘expedite progress if it lays bare certain weak spots in
the foundations on which modern society is built – if it shews
that much which we are wont to regard as solid rests on the
sands of superstition rather than on the rock of nature’.5 In
understanding progress in terms of the triumph of ‘the rock
of nature’ over ‘the sands of superstition’, and in taking pos-
itions that were generally hostile to religion, which he saw as
a development of magic, Frazer was placing himself squarely
within the Enlightenment project. His emphasis on the sacri-
fice of the divine king as a central feature of universal myth in
fact stood on shaky foundations and was soon forgotten, but
the idea of myth as a treasury of meaning persisted.
Myth was also used by Sigmund Freud, in whose hands it
formed part of an argument against the exclusive dominance

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C HA PTE R 2

of reason in human affairs, if not an attack on the Enlight-

enment as such. Freud’s reading of the myth of Oedipus was
central to his psychoanalytical theory. Myth was understood
slightly differently by Freud’s one-time Swiss pupil Carl
Gustav Jung, who proposed that just as instincts intervened
in human consciousness, so did the ‘primordial images’ that
he called ‘archetypes’. These inhabited the collective uncon-
scious. He thought that these images could be found most
easily in the myths of ‘primitive peoples’, where he found
ideas ‘of magic power or magic substance, of spirits and
their behaviour, of demons and gods and their legends’6 that
were very similar across cultures. Jung agreed with Frazer
that a universal common ground could be found in primor-
dial myths, and that these provided a key to understanding
modern society: ‘We see the perfection of those images, and
at the same time their envelopment by rational forms, in the
great religions of the world,’ Jung concluded.7
The idea of myth as a source of truth, then, survived the
Enlightenment rather better than one might have thought.
There was disagreement about quite what sort of truth myth
contained – the living body of the passionate and poetical for
the Romantics, the shaky foundations of modern society for
Frazer, the functioning of the unconscious for Freud, or arche-
typical ideas and images for Jung. But all agreed that myth mat-
tered. The Traditionalists, as we will see, thought the same.

Religion
Religion, or at least the Christian Churches, attempted to fight
back against Enlightenment rationalism. Even so, rational-
ism and the discoveries of natural science helped push the

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 H IS TOR ICA L P ER EN N IA L IS M

Churches in Europe and much of America down a long road

from dominance to marginality. It was not just rationalism
and natural science that pushed Christianity down this road,
however. Another issue was the problem of religious variety.
This issue is especially important for Traditionalism.
One classic understanding of the problem of religious var-
iety was advanced in 1979 by the American sociologist Peter
Berger. When all that anyone knew was Christian doctrine,
thought Berger, that doctrine was automatically believable.
Nothing else was plausible. Once other, contradictory doc-
trines became known, however, as they did in Europe from
the seventeenth century onwards, Christianity lost its appar-
ent monopoly of truth, and its plausibility suffered. This re-
sulted in what Berger called the ‘heretical imperative’, a play
on words, as ‘heretical’ is derived from the Greek hairesis, a
choice. Faced with religious variety, people had to choose,
and what they chose, implied Berger, was something other
than the old orthodoxy: a sort of heresy. He modified these
views later, but his 1979 understanding remains classic.

Perennialism
In fact, the pre-modern human religious landscape was never
quite as flat as Berger thought in 1979. One of the first Eu-
ropeans to confront the problem of religious variety was
a Catholic priest in fifteenth-century Florence, Marsilio
Ficino. The development of perennialism starts with Ficino
and ends with Aldous Huxley, the English novelist best
known for his dystopian Brave New World, who published
The Perennial Philosophy in 1945 – and, of course, with the
Traditionalists.

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C HA PTE R 2

RENAISSANCE PERENNIALISTS
Unusually for his time, Ficino learned Ancient Greek, and
read and translated rare pre-Christian manuscripts, notably
Greek texts by Plato, the late-antique philosopher Plotinus,
and Hermes Trismegistus, then also considered a great phil-
osopher, and now known to have been a mythical figure to
whom the authorship of a variety of texts was assigned. Fi-
cino’s problem was that, as a Catholic priest, he necessarily
regarded the Christian revelation as the ultimate and au-
thoritative source of truth, but the pre-Christian texts he
was reading and translating seemed to him also to be reposi-
tories of truth. What they were saying appeared to fit neatly
enough with what the Christian revelation was saying. His
solution to this problem, which others later developed fur-
ther, and which Traditionalism still relies on, was to pro-
pose that these pre-Christian philosophers were not pagans
but ancient theologians (prisci theologi) whose teaching was
compatible with Christian teachings. This argument was
assisted by giving the ancient theologians a Jewish origin,
as the Hebrew Bible was already understood to be compat-
ible with Christian teachings (hence its adoption into Chris-
tian doctrine as the Old Testament). Ficino thus proposed a
transmission of ancient theology from Moses and Zoroaster,
to Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Iamblichus (a follower of
Plotinus), Pythagoras, and finally Plato. This chain of trans-
mission makes no historical sense in terms of current know-
ledge, but seemed plausible in the fifteenth century.
Ficino’s solution was further developed by the Renais-
sance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and then

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 H IS TOR ICA L P ER EN N IA L IS M

by the sixteenth-century Italian scholar Agostino Steuco, who

named the teachings of Ficino’s ancient theologians the ‘per-
ennial philosophy’ (philosophia perennis), perennial because
they had endured over the years and were in a sense time-
less. For Steuco, the word ‘philosophy’ had a somewhat differ-
ent meaning from that which it has today. Today, philosophy
is generally placed by most non-philosophers in opposition
to religion, as the repository of reason, not of revelation. In
Steuco’s time, as in the ancient world, philosophy was a de-
scription of truth, just as was religion, and might well derive
ultimately from revelation. Philosophy was not then seen as
being in opposition to religion, a position that some philoso-
phers still take today.
Steuco expanded Ficino’s chain of transmission, starting
with Noah, and proceeding to the Chaldeans (Zoroaster), the
Jews (Moses), the Egyptians (Hermes Trismegistus), and then
the Greeks. Other, later perennialists embellished their chains
of transmission even further, sometimes starting with Adam
and Abraham, and occasionally introducing the Druids and the
Knights Templar. These chains of transmission were, however,
a weak part of early perennialist theory, and soon fell victim
to advances in historical knowledge. One immediate problem
was that the Ancient Egyptian civilization clearly preceded
Moses, even in the biblical account, so one could hardly base
Egyptian wisdom on a supposed transmission from the Jews.

EARLY MODERN PERENNIALISM

The ahistoricity of these chains of transmission was not
the only problem confronting early perennialism, how-
ever. A second problem was that, even if some writings of

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C HA PTE R 2

the ancients were compatible with Christian understand-

ing, others were clearly not. It was obvious that the An-
cient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had, in their worship,
all been polytheists. The solution to this second problem,
which Traditionalism also still relies on, was found by the
seventeenth-century Cambridge University theologian Ralph
Cudworth, who explained away the apparent polytheism of
the Ancient Egyptians in terms of the distinction between
a secret theology, ‘arcane and recondite . . . – that was con-
cealed from the vulgar’ and was monotheistic, and a ‘vulgar
and fabulous theology’ that was not concealed and was poly-
theistic. Cudworth compared this distinction to the ‘exoter-
ics’ and ‘acroamatics’ of Aristotle – the exoterics being his
public teaching, and the acroamatics (from the Greek akroao-
mai, ‘to listen’) being his supposed secret and oral teachings.8
This argument was repeated a century later by the Bishop of
Gloucester, William Warburton, who replaced the little-used
term ‘acroamatic’ with the easier term ‘esoteric’. This pairing
of exoteric and esoteric was an old one, going back to the An-
cient Greeks, who had distinguished between the exoterikos
(external) and the esoterikos (internal), and had also specu-
lated about the esoteric teachings of the Ancient Egyptians.
With Cudworth and Bishop Warburton, then, the perennial
becomes esoteric and what is taught to the vulgar becomes ex-
oteric. This satisfied Cudworth and Warburton, but those who
were losing faith in Christian doctrine as the Enlightenment
progressed were less accepting of this identification of the
esoteric with the teachings of Christianity. Among those who
had lost faith in Christian doctrine was John Toland, a contro-
versial Irish writer who had proposed in 1720 the existence of

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 H IS TOR ICA L P ER EN N IA L IS M

a two-fold doctrine: the one popular, accommodated to

the prejudices of the vulgar, and to the received customs
or religions; the other philosophical, conformable to the
nature of things, and consequently to truth, which . . .
they [ancient philosophers] communicated only to friends
of known probity, prudence, and capacity. These they
generally called the exoteric and esoteric, or the external and
internal doctrines.9

Toland then went on to explain exoteric doctrine as serv-

ing the interests of the powerful, a variation on the well-
established view, also expressed by Bishop Warburton, that
exoteric religion served the cause of public order. Toland
identified the esoteric philosophy not with Christianity but
with Deism, a then-popular response to the decline of Chris-
tianity that rejected the details of Christian theology, in-
cluding sometimes even the idea that Jesus was divine, and
focused instead on a set of clear and reasonable propositions
that they held to be universally true.
Thus, the idea of an esoteric perennial philosophy that,
as we will see, is so important for Traditionalism, started in
fifteenth-century Florence with Ficino, was developed over
the following centuries by scholars in Italy and England, and
reached a mature form with Toland, who identified the per-
ennial philosophy with Deism and exoteric religion with the
self-interest of the powerful.

UNIVERSALIST AND THEOSOPHICAL PERENNIALISM

A second response to the decline of Christianity and the
problem of religious variety was universalism. This resembles

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perennialism, but differs in one important respect. Peren-

nialism proposes one single truth found in different places,
while universalism finds multiple truths of comparable value,
or even regards all religious claims as equally true. One of the
first great universalist events was the World’s Parliament of
Religions, held in Chicago in 1893, a massive public event
during which representatives of America’s various Christian
Churches were joined by representatives of Hinduism, Bud-
dhism, and Islam. In their speeches, these representatives
spoke in favour of religious universalism, and presented their
own religions in universalist terms. Swami Vivekananda, rep-
resenting Hinduism, quoted from a Hindu hymn:

As the different streams having their sources in different

places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord,
the different paths which men take, through different
tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or
straight, all lead to thee.10

Vivekananda did not mention the previous lines of the

‘Hymn About the Greatness of Shiva’ that he was quoting,
which make clear that the ‘different streams’ in question are
those of three specific astika schools of Veda Hinduism: Sam-
khya, the School of Shiva, and the Vaisheshika. Nobody else
spotted this at the time, and Vivekananda’s universalism was
widely welcomed.
In practice, universalism is usually restricted or qualified
in some way. No ‘Indians’, as Native Americans were then
still called, were invited to the World’s Parliament of Reli-
gions in Chicago. When, almost a century later, Pope John
Paul II gathered the religions of the world to pray for peace

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 H IS TOR ICA L P ER EN N IA L IS M

in Assisi in 1986, the various Christian Churches and the Jews

were put in one group, while other religions such as Mus-
lims and Hindus were put in another group. On this occa-
sion, Native Americans were invited, but Neopagans were
not. Even the most dedicated universalists do not normally
extend their universalism to Satanists.
Universalism remains widely popular, though the term is
not now widely used. People who read poems by Rumi or
Kahlil Gibran at Christian funerals are universalists, whether
or not they realize it. Universalism is the default position of
many contemporary Westerners, even if that position is not
often named.
A further response to the decline of Christianity, one
which became very popular and then declined precipitously,
was the Theosophy of the Theosophical Society. Founded in
New York in 1875, the Theosophical Society was so named
because it proposed to investigate the divine in a scientif-
ic, philosophical fashion. It was perennialist and esoteri-
cist, identifying its esoteric philosophy – which it called
the ‘secret doctrine’ – not with Christian monotheism like
Bishop Warburton or with Deism like Toland but with Hin-
duism and Buddhism, two systems that were then becoming
more widely known in the West. This was an important de-
velopment in the history of the West.
The English Theosophist Alfred Sinnett explained in his
Esoteric Buddhism in 1883 that the ‘secret doctrine’ was that
of esoteric Buddhism and also of ‘Brahminical philosophy’
(that is, Hinduism).11 Sinnett’s esoteric doctrine was im-
aginative and in fact had little to do with what most Bud-
dhists would see as Buddhism. Since his standard reference

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C HA PTE R 2

was secret teachings that had allegedly been communicated

to him alone, there was little to constrain him. His esoteric
Buddhism included many elements that would later be taken
up in the New Age movement, including the astral sphere
and Atlantis, and even the Illuminati. Sinnett’s book was
far from scientific. What had started with Ficino as serious
thought was now passing into the absurd. This is the fate
from which Traditionalism later rescued it, as did Huxley.
Huxley moved to America in 1937 and was subsequently
in contact with the Vedanta Society, which derived from the
Chicago World’s Parliament of Religions and taught a univer-
salist understanding of Hinduism, and with Jiddu Krishna-
murti, who had for a long time been a central figure in the
Theosophical Society. In 1945, Huxley published The Per-
ennial Philosophy, which brought together accounts and
writings by a wide variety of mystics.12 This became the best-
known non-Traditionalist expression of perennialism in the
later twentieth century.
Sinnett had used the term ‘occult knowledge’ more or
less interchangeably with ‘esoteric science’, and the general
modern understandings of the terms ‘occultism’ and ‘esoter-
icism’ owe much to him, as does the generally low reputation
of both. In 1971, the American sociologist Marcello Truzzi
argued for occultism as ‘a residual category, a wastebasket,
for knowledge claims that are deviant in some way, that do
not fit the established claims of science or religion’.13 This
is how many people still regard the occult – as a wastebas-
ket, the contents of which are best left unexamined. This,
without doubt, is one of the reasons for the decline of The-
osophy. In fact, Theosophy was not just a wastebasket. It was

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34
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
saints livres qui me parlent quand je veux, m’éclairent, me consolent,
me fortifient, répondent à tous mes besoins. Les quitter me fait
chagrin, les emporter est difficile ; ne pas les quitter est le mieux.
Je lis dans mes loisirs un ouvrage de Leibniz qui m’enchante par
sa catholicité et les bonnes choses pieuses que j’y trouve, comme
ceci sur la confession : « Je regarde un confesseur pieux, grave et
prudent, comme un grand instrument de Dieu pour le salut des
âmes ; car ses conseils servent à diriger nos affections, à nous
éclairer sur nos défauts, à nous faire éviter l’occasion du péché, à
dissiper les doutes, à relever l’esprit abattu, enfin à enlever ou
mitiger toutes les maladies de l’âme ; et si l’on peut à peine trouver
sur la terre quelque chose de plus excellent qu’un ami fidèle, quel
bonheur n’est-ce pas d’en trouver un qui soit obligé par la religion
inviolable d’un sacrement divin à garder la foi et à secourir les
âmes ? »
Ce céleste ami, je l’ai dans M. Bories. Aussi la nouvelle de son
départ m’afflige profondément. Je suis triste d’une tristesse qui fait
pleurer l’âme. Je ne dirais pas cela ailleurs, on le prendrait mal,
peut-être on ne me comprendrait pas. On ne sait pas dans le monde
ce que c’est qu’un confesseur, cet homme ami de l’âme, son
confident le plus intime, son médecin, son maître, sa lumière ; cet
homme qui nous lie et qui nous délie, qui nous donne la paix, qui
nous ouvre le ciel, à qui nous parlons à genoux en l’appelant,
comme Dieu, notre père : la foi le fait véritablement Dieu et père.
Quand je suis à ses pieds, je ne vois autre chose en lui que Jésus
écoutant Madeleine et lui pardonnant beaucoup parce qu’elle a
beaucoup aimé. La confession n’est qu’une expansion du repentir
dans l’amour [14] .
[14] Le lecteur retrouvera le passage qui précède
reproduit textuellement dans le cahier suivant, page 108.
Nous n’avons pas dû supprimer cette répétition : Que
prouve-t-elle, sinon l’importance particulière que Mlle de
Guérin attachait à ces pensées et peut-être la secrète
satisfaction qu’elle aura éprouvée, sans le savoir, en
 réussissant à les exprimer d’une manière si nette et si
ferme ?

Le 5 [mai, à Gaillac]. — On ne parlait hier au soir que d’une jeune

fille qui est morte au sortir du bal où elle avait passé la nuit. Pauvre
âme de jeune fille, où es-tu ? J’ai trop d’occupations pour écouter
mes pensées. Qu’elles rentrent.

Le 9. — Et moi aussi je sors d’une soirée dansante, la première

que j’aie vue et où j’aie pris part ; mais mon cœur n’était pas en train,
et s’en allait au repos. Aussi ai-je mal dansé, faute de goût et
d’habitude. J’entendais rire à mes dépens, et cela ne m’amusait
pas ; mais j’amusais les rieuses, ce qui revient au but de nous prêter
au plaisir. Je l’ai fait de la meilleure volonté du monde ; mais cette
complaisance m’ennuierait bientôt, comme tout ce qui se fait dans le
monde où je me trouve étrangère. Sur un canapé, je pense à la
pelouse ou au marronnier, ou à la garenne, où l’on est bien mieux.

« Oh ! laissez-moi mes rêveries,

Mes beaux vallons, mon ciel si pur,
Mes ruisseaux coulant aux prairies,
Mes bois, mes collines fleuries
Et mon fleuve aux ondes d’azur.

« Laissez ma vie, au bord de l’onde,

Comme elle, suivre son chemin,
Inconnue aux clameurs du monde,
Toujours pure, mais peu profonde
Et sans peine du lendemain.

« Laissez-la couler, lente et douce,

Entre les fleurs, près des coteaux,
Jouant avec un brin de mousse,
Avec une herbe qu’elle pousse,
Avec le saule aux longs rameaux.
« Mes heures, à tout vent bercées,
S’en vont se tenant par la main ;
Sur leurs pas légers, mes pensées
Éclosent, belles et pressées,
Comme l’herbe au bord du chemin.

« On dit que la vie est amère,

O mon Dieu ! ce n’est pas pour moi :
La poésie et la prière,
Comme une sœur, comme une mère
La bercent pure devant toi.

« Enfant, elle poursuit un rêve,

Une espérance, un souvenir,
Comme un papillon sur la grève,
Et chaque beau jour qui se lève
Lui semble tout son avenir.

« Les jours lui tombent goutte à goutte,

Mais doux comme un rayon de miel ;
Il n’en est point qu’elle redoute.
O mon Dieu ! c’est ainsi, sans doute,
Que vivent les anges au ciel.

« La mort doit nous être donnée

Douce après ces jours de bonheur.
Comme une fleur demi-fanée
Au soir de sa longue journée,
On penche la tête et l’on meurt.

« Et si l’on croit, si l’on espère,

Qu’est-ce mourir ? Fermer les yeux,
Se recueillir pour la prière,
Livrer l’âme à l’ange son frère,
Dormir pour s’éveiller aux cieux. »

JUSTIN MAURICE.
 C’est la plus douce chose, la plus de mon goût que j’aie trouvée
depuis que je suis ici. Aussi je m’en empare. S’il fait beau, je partirai
ce soir. Cette idée m’enchante, je verrai papa, Mimi : la douce chose
qu’un retour !

[Sans date.] M’y voici à ce cher Cayla, et depuis plusieurs jours,

sans te le dire. C’est que j’avais mis mon cahier sous un tapis en le
sortant de mon porte-manteau, et qu’il était là depuis. En tripotant,
ma main s’est posée dessus ; il s’est ouvert, et je continue l’écriture.
Ce fut un beau moment que le revoir de la famille, de papa, de Mimi,
d’Érembert, qui m’embrassaient si tendrement et me faisaient sentir
si profond tout le bonheur d’être aimée.
Ce fut un beau jour hier ; il nous vint quatre lettres et deux amis,
M. Bories et l’abbé F…, le frère de Cécile. Je ne sais qui des deux
nous fit le plus de plaisir et fut plus aimable, l’un par l’esprit, l’autre
par le cœur. Nous avons causé beaucoup, nous avons ri, bu à nos
santés, et, pour fin, nous sommes mis à jouer au passe-l’âne,
comme des enfants, en nous trichant l’un l’autre. Point de sérieux du
tout, c’était un jour de détente où l’âme se met à l’aise en conservant
son pli ; c’était gaieté de prêtre et d’amis chrétiens.
Comme nous étions au dessert, deux lettres nous sont venues,
l’une de Lili, l’autre de ce pauvre Philibert [15] , toujours plus
malheureux. Sa lettre fend le cœur ; j’en ai fait la lecture à table, et
j’ai vu des larmes dans les yeux de nos bons curés. M. Bories a
rappelé que, le matin de son départ, Philibert courut à son lit lui faire
ses adieux et lui dit : « Je pars, monsieur le curé ; c’est peut-être
pour toujours que je quitte ma patrie ; dites, je vous prie, la messe à
mon intention aujourd’hui. » Il la dit, je me souviens, et nous y
assistâmes, ma tante et nous, autant pleurant que priant. Ce bon
cousin me dit des amitiés charmantes, des choses qui vont au cœur
et ne peuvent passer sur les lèvres. Je les ai supprimées en lisant la
lettre. Il parle de ma poésie à ma pauvre amie du Val que papa lui
avait envoyée. Ainsi ce souvenir à traversé les mers, et l’on sait au
bout du monde que je vous aimais, ma pauvre Marie ; mais l’on ne
sait pas que je vous pleure à présent et que vous nous avez été si
vite enlevée. On le saura aussi, car je l’ai écrite cette mort à nos
amis de l’Ile de France, et je vous saurai regrettée par les cœurs les
plus dignes de vous donner des regrets.
[15] M. Philibert de Roquefeuil.

Philibert nous envoie deux éventails et des graines de plantes

marines, cueillies par lui et sa femme dans la baie du Tombeau. Qu’il
me tarde de les avoir, de les semer, de les voir naître, et pousser, et
fleurir ! Cela me vient en retour d’une feuille de rose que je lui
envoyai le printemps passé. Je tenais la rose à la main, une feuille
tomba sur la lettre, et je la pliai dedans ; je la laissai aller, me disant
qu’elle s’était détachée pour aller porter à ce pauvre exilé un peu
des parfums du pays. Et vraiment cela lui a fait un plaisir bien doux.

Le 18. — Qui aurait deviné ce qui vient de m’arriver aujourd’hui ?

J’en suis surprise, occupée, bien aise. Je remercie, et regarde cent
fois ma belle fortune, mes poésies créoles, à moi adressées par un
poëte de l’Ile de France. Demain, j’en parlerai. Il est trop tard à
présent, mais je n’ai pu dormir sans marquer ici cet événement de
ma journée et de ma vie.

Le 19. — Me voici à la fenêtre écoutant un chœur de rossignols

qui chantent dans la Moulinasse d’une façon ravissante. Oh ! le beau
tableau ! Oh ! le beau concert, que je quitte pour aller porter
l’aumône à Annette la boiteuse !

Le 22. — Mimi m’a quittée pour quinze jours ; elle est à ***, et je
la plains au milieu de cette païennerie, elle si sainte et bonne
chrétienne ! Comme me disait Louise une fois, elle me fait l’effet
d’une bonne âme dans l’enfer ; mais nous l’en sortirons dès que le
temps donné aux convenances sera passé. De mon côté, il me
tarde ; je m’ennuie de ma solitude, tant j’ai l’habitude d’être deux.
Papa est aux champs presque tout le jour, Éran à la chasse ; pour
toute compagnie, il me reste Trilby et mes poulets qui font du bruit
comme des lutins ; ils m’occupent sans me désennuyer, parce que
l’ennui est le fond et le centre de mon âme aujourd’hui. Ce que
j’aime le plus est peu capable de me distraire. J’ai voulu lire, écrire,
prier, tout cela n’a duré qu’un moment ; la prière même me lasse.
C’est triste, mon Dieu ! Par bonheur, je me suis souvenue de ce mot
de Fénelon : « Si Dieu vous ennuie, dites-lui qu’il vous ennuie. » Oh !
je lui ai bien dit cette sottise.

Le 23. — Je viens de passer la nuit à t’écrire. Le jour a remplacé

la chandelle, ce n’est pas la peine d’aller au lit. Oh ! si papa le
savait !

Le 24. — Comme elle a passé vite, mon ami, cette nuit passée à
t’écrire ! l’aurore a paru que je me croyais à minuit ; il était trois
heures pourtant, et j’avais vu passer bien des étoiles, car de ma
table je vois le ciel, et de temps en temps je le regarde et le
consulte ; et il me semble qu’un ange me dicte. D’où me peuvent
venir, en effet, que d’en haut tant de choses tendres, élevées,
douces, vraies, pures, dont mon cœur s’emplit quand je te parle !
Oui, Dieu me les donne, et je te les envoie. Puisse ma lettre te faire
du bien ! elle t’arrivera mardi ; je l’ai faite la nuit pour la faire jeter à la
poste le matin, et gagner un jour. J’étais si pressée de te venir
distraire et fortifier dans cet état de faiblesse et d’ennui où je te vois !
Mais je ne le vois pas, je l’augure d’après tes lettres, et quelques
mots de Félicité. Plût à Dieu que je pusse le voir et savoir ce qui te
tourmente ! alors je saurais sur quoi mettre le baume, tandis que je
le pose au hasard. Oh ! que je voudrais de tes lettres ! Écris-moi,
parle, explique-toi, fais-toi voir, que je sache ce que tu souffres et ce
qui te fait souffrir. Quelquefois je pense que ce n’est rien qu’un peu
de cette humeur noire, que nous avons, et qui rend si triste quand il
s’en répand dans le cœur. Il faut s’en purger au plus tôt, car ce
poison gagne vite et nous ferait fous ou bêtes. On ne désire rien de
beau ni d’élevé. Je sais quelqu’un qui, dans cet état, n’a d’autre
plaisir que de manger, et d’ordinaire c’est une âme qui tient peu aux
sens. Cela fait voir combien toute passion nous bestialise. C’en est
une que la tristesse, et qui consume, hélas ! bien des vies. Je
regarde à peu près comme perdus ceux qu’elle possède. Faut-il
remplir un devoir ? impossible. Ce sont des hommes tristes ; ne leur
demandez rien, ni pour Dieu, ni pour eux-mêmes, que ce que leur
humeur voudra.

Le 27. — Dans ma solitude aujourd’hui, je n’ai rien trouvé de

mieux à faire que de paperasser, de revoir mes vieux souvenirs, mes
écritures, mes pensées de jadis en tout genre. J’en ai vu de bonnes,
c’est-à-dire de raisonnables, de pieuses, d’exagérées, de folles,
comme celle-ci : « Si j’osais, je demanderais à Dieu pourquoi je suis
en ce monde. Qu’y fais-je ? Qu’ai-je à y faire ? je n’en sais rien. Mes
jours s’en vont inutiles, aussi je ne les regrette pas… Si je pouvais
me faire du bien ou en faire à quelqu’un, seulement une minute par
jour ! » Eh ! mon Dieu, rien n’est plus facile, je n’avais qu’à prendre
un verre d’eau et le donner à un pauvre. Voilà comme la tristesse fait
extravaguer et mène à dire : « Pourquoi la vie, puisque la vie
m’ennuie ? Pourquoi des devoirs, puisqu’ils me pèsent ? pourquoi un
cœur ? pourquoi une âme ? » Des pourquoi sans fin ; et on ne peut
rien, on ne veut rien, on se délaisse, on pleure, on est malheureux,
on s’enferme, et le diable qui nous voit seuls, arrive pour nous
distraire avec toutes ses séductions. Puis, quand elles sont
épuisées, le suicide reste encore. Dieu ! quelle fin ! quelle folie ! et
comme elle gagne chaque jour, même dans les campagnes ! Un
jeune paysan de Bleys, riche et aimé de ses parents, s’est tué de
tristesse. Tout l’ennuyait, surtout de vivre. Il était religieux, mais pas
assez pour surmonter une passion. Dieu seul nous donne la force et
le vouloir dans cette lutte terrible, et, tout faible et petit qu’on soit,
avec son aide on tient enfin le géant sous ses genoux ; mais pour
cela, il faut prier, beaucoup prier, comme nous l’a appris Jésus-
Christ, et nous écrier : Notre Père ! Ce cri filial touche le cœur de
Dieu, et nous obtient toujours quelque chose. Mon ami, je voudrais
bien te voir prier comme un bon enfant de Dieu. Que t’en coûterait-
il ? ton âme est naturellement aimante, et la prière, qu’est-ce autre
chose que l’amour, un amour qui se répand de l’âme au dehors,
comme l’eau sort de la fontaine ? tu comprends cela mieux que moi.
M. de La Mennais a dit là-dessus des choses divines qui t’auront
pénétré le cœur, si tu as pu les entendre ; mais, par malheur, il en a
dit d’autres aussi qui, je le crains, auront empêché le bon effet de
celles-là. Quel malheur, encore une fois, quel malheur que tu sois
sous l’influence de ce génie dévoyé ! Pauvre Maurice ! ne pensons
pas à ces choses.
Mimi m’a écrit ; elle est à M***, vieux castel des Villefranche, où
Julie demeure avec sa famille. La visite de Mimi lui fait un plaisir bien
senti et bien exprimé par ses façons empressées et tendres. Je ne
sais plus rien, parce que la voyageuse écrit en arrivant et ne donne
qu’un aperçu.

Le 27. — Je me trompai de date hier, et j’anticipai sur un jour ; je

me ravise, n’allons pas plus vite que le temps qui marche, hélas !
assez vite. Ne voilà-t-il pas déjà la fin du mois, qui finit par un beau
vacarme ? Au moment où j’écris, tonnerre, vents, éclairs,
tremblement du château, torrents de pluie comme un déluge.
J’écoute tout cela de ma fenêtre inondée, et je n’y puis écrire comme
chaque soir. C’est bien dommage, car c’est un charmant pupitre, sur
ce tertre du jardin si vert, si joli, si frais, tout parfumé d’acacias.

Le 28. — Notre ciel d’aujourd’hui est pâle et languissant comme

un beau visage après la fièvre. Cet état de langueur a bien des
charmes, et ce mélange de verdure et de débris, de fleurs qui
s’ouvrent sur des fleurs tombées, d’oiseaux qui chantent et de petits
torrents qui coulent, cet air d’orage et cet air de mai font quelque
chose de chiffonné, de triste, de riant que j’aime. Mais, c’est
l’Ascension aujourd’hui ; laissons la terre et le ciel de la terre,
montons plus haut que notre demeure, et suivons Jésus-Christ où il
est entré. Cette fête est bien belle ; c’est la fête des âmes
détachées, libres, célestes, qui se plaisent, au-delà du visible, où
Dieu les attire.

Le 29. — Jamais orage plus long, il dure encore, depuis trois

jours le tonnerre et la pluie vont leur train. Tous les arbres s’inclinent
sous ce déluge ; c’est pitié de leur voir cet air languissant et défait
dans le beau triomphe de mai. Nous disions cela ce soir, à la fenêtre
de la salle, en voyant les peupliers du Pontet penchant leur tête tout
tristement, comme quelqu’un qui plie sous l’adversité. Je les
plaignais ou peu s’en faut ; il me semble que tout ce qui paraît
souffrir a une âme.

Le 30. — Toujours, toujours la pluie. C’est un temps à faire de la

musique ou de la poésie. Tout le monde bâille en comptant les
heures qui jamais ne finissent. C’est un jour éternel pour papa
surtout qui aime tant le dehors et ses distractions. Le voilà comme
en prison, feuilletant de temps en temps une vieille histoire de
l’Académie de Berlin, porte-sommeil, assoupissante lecture, qui m’a
fait courir dès avoir touché le volume. Juge ! je suis tombée sur la
théologie de l’Être. Vite j’ai fermé, j’ai cru voir un puits, un puits sans
eau ; le vide obscur m’a toujours fait peur. Il y a cependant des
profondeurs qui me plaisent, comme l’Existence de Dieu, par
Fénelon. J’ai encore présente l’impression que j’eus de cette lecture,
qui me fit un plaisir infini, ce qui ne serait pas arrivé si je n’y avais
rien compris. Pour sentir, il faut être touché. Je sentis, donc… Je
raisonne à la Salabert, n’est-ce pas ? Quoi qu’il en soit, cette lecture
me fut bonne ; il me sembla connaître Dieu davantage et par l’esprit
et par le cœur, à la façon de Fénelon. Je voudrais bien avoir ses
œuvres spirituelles, les lettres de piété surtout où Fénelon est si
élevé, si tendre, si aimant. J’ai celles de Bossuet qui font mes
délices, les autres font mon envie. Puisque j’en suis à cela, je veux
te dire toutes mes fantaisies en fait de livres de piété. Depuis
longtemps je me crée une bibliothèque, dont les rayons, hélas ! sont
toujours vides. La voici : d’abord de saint Augustin, la Cité de Dieu,
ses méditations, ses sermons, ses soliloques, et autres ouvrages à
ma portée ; les lettres de saint Jérôme, ses traités d’éducation pour
la petite Marcella ; les lettres aussi de saint Grégoire de Nazianze ;
les poésies de saint Paulin, le Pré spirituel de Jean Mose ; les écrits
de sainte Thérèse, de Louis de Blois, les lettres de saint Bernard, et
son opuscule à sa sœur ; les écrits de sainte Catherine de Gênes,
estimés de Leibniz ; saint François de Sales. Je continuerai plus tard
mon catalogue ; il faut que je dise mon chapelet.

[Sans date.] — Depuis cette pause, il s’est passé plusieurs jours,

plusieurs événements au Cayla, qui m’ont tenue loin de ma
chambrette ; m’y voici pour une minute où tu verras mes quatre
jours, tout ce temps passé sans écrire ; mais non : est-ce la peine de
marquer mon temps ? c’est écrire sur la poussière. Je ne sais
pourquoi je me figure que cela te fera plaisir, ce fatras de choses, de
jours et de papier.
Mimi est arrivée hier avec Élisa, à qui j’ai cédé ma chambrette.
C’est te dire que j’y viens moins, que je lis moins, que je pense
moins. Je suis à Élisa, je vais la joindre à la promenade.

Le 13 juin. — Je retrouve mon cahier abandonné, et j’y mets ce

qui m’est venu aujourd’hui : deux beaux livres, l’Imitation de
Lamennais, et le Guide spirituel de Louis de Blois. Merci à toi,
Maurice, de ce pieux souvenir. Ce nous seront deux reliques pour
l’âme et pour le cœur, et nous prierons pour toi chaque fois que nous
lirons, Mimi son Guide, et moi mon Imitation.

Le 18. — M. le curé sort d’ici et m’a laissé une de tes lettres, qu’il
m’a glissée furtivement dans la main au milieu de tout le monde. Je
lui ai tremblé tout doucement un merci, et, comprenant ce que
c’était, je suis sortie et suis allée te lire à mon aise dans la garenne.
Comme j’allais vite, comme je tremblais, comme je brûlais sur cette
lettre où j’allais te voir enfin ! Je t’ai vu ; mais je ne te connais pas ; tu
ne m’ouvres que la tête : c’est le cœur, c’est l’âme, c’est l’intime, ce
qui fait ta vie, que je croyais voir. Tu ne me montres que ta façon de
penser ; tu me fais monter, et moi je voulais descendre, te connaître
à fond dans tes goûts, tes humeurs, tes principes, en un mot, faire
un tour dans tous les coins et recoins de toi-même. Je ne suis donc
pas contente de ce que tu me dis ; cependant j’y trouve de quoi bénir
Dieu, car je m’attendais à pis. Je te dirai tout cela dans ma lettre, ici
c’est inutile ; mes réflexions seraient de l’histoire ancienne quand tu
les lirais.

Le 19. — Ne suis-je pas malheureuse ? Je voulais écrire une

lettre, je l’ai commencée et n’ai pu continuer, faute d’idées. Ma tête
est vide à présent ; il y a de ces moments où je me trouve à sec, où
mon esprit tarit comme une source, puis il recoule. En attendant
l’aiguade, j’admire ma tourterelle qui chante à plein gosier sous ma
fenêtre.
Je vais t’écrire à la dérobée, et, pour dépister les curieux qui
viennent dans ma chambre, j’aurai deux lettres, une dessus, l’autre
dessous, et dès qu’on viendra je n’aurai qu’à tourner les cartes. Ce
que je te dis ne serait compris de personne, hormis de Mimi qui est
du secret. Papa en aurait de la peine et se tourmenterait sur ton
compte. Mieux vaut le tromper et lui laisser croire que c’est à Louise
que j’écris, comme je viens de le lui dire. C’est que tout de bon je
vais commencer ma double lettre et parler à deux voix. Voyons.
Il passe une noce au chemin de Cordes ; tout à l’heure on
sonnait de ce côté pour un mort ; voilà bien la vie. Je la vois toute
dans mon petit tableau.

Le 12. — Nous avons perdu une de nos pauvres, Annette la

boiteuse, celle qui m’avait si fort baisée pour un raisin que je lui
donnais. La pauvre fille ! j’espère qu’à présent elle prie pour nous
dans le ciel. Elle est morte sans y penser, ou plutôt elle y pensait
tous les jours, mais elle n’a pas vu venir sa dernière heure.
 Le 17. — Jour de deuil. Nous avons perdu ma grand’mère. Ce
matin, papa est venu de bonne heure dans ma chambre, s’est
approché de mon lit et m’a pris la main qu’il a serrée en me disant :
« Lève-toi. » — « Pourquoi ? » Il m’a serré la main encore : « Lève-
toi. » — « Il y a quelque chose, dites ? » — « Ma mère… » J’ai
compris ; je l’avais laissée mourante.

Le 31. — Ce cahier que je laisse et que je reprends, à quoi

servira-t-il si je le continue ? Une pensée me vient. Si je meurs avant
toi, je te le lègue. Ce sera à peu près tout mon héritage ; mais ce
legs de cœur aura bien quelque prix pour toi. Je le veux donc
enrichir, afin que tu dises : « Ma sœur m’a laissé tout ce qu’elle a
pu. » La belle fortune que quelques idées, des larmes, des tristesses
dont se compose presque la vie ! S’il y vient du meilleur, c’est rare, si
rare qu’on s’en enivre, comme je le fais, quand il me vient quelque
chose du ciel ou de ceux que j’aime.
Depuis quinze jours, j’ai eu beaucoup de ces jolis moments.
Toutes mes amies m’ont écrit au sujet de ma grand’mère, et me
disent sur sa mort bien des choses tendres et consolantes ; mais
Dieu seul peut consoler. Le cœur, quand il est triste, n’a pas assez
des secours humains qui plient sous lui, tant il est pesant de
tristesse. Il faut à ce roseau d’autres appuis que des roseaux. Oh !
que Jésus a bien dit : « Venez à moi, vous tous qui pleurez, vous
tous qui êtes accablés. » Ce n’est que là, que dans le sein de Dieu,
qu’on peut bien pleurer, bien se décharger. Que nous sommes
heureux, nous, chrétiens ! Nous n’avons pas de peines que Dieu ne
soulage.

Le 1er août. — Ce soir ma tourterelle est morte, je ne sais de

quoi, car elle chantait encore ces jours-ci. Pauvre petite bête ! voilà
des regrets qu’elle me donne. Je l’aimais, elle était blanche, et
chaque matin c’était la première voix que j’entendais sous ma
fenêtre, tant l’hiver que l’été. Était-ce plainte ou joie ? Je ne sais,
mais ces chants me faisaient plaisir à entendre ; voilà un plaisir de
moins. Ainsi, chaque jour, perdons-nous quelque jouissance. Je
veux mettre ma colombe sous un rosier de la terrasse ; il me semble
qu’elle sera bien là, et que son âme (si âme il y a) reposera
doucement dans ce nid sous les fleurs. Je crois assez à l’âme des
bêtes, et je voudrais même qu’il y eût un petit paradis pour les
bonnes et les douces, comme les tourterelles, les chiens, les
agneaux. Mais que faire des loups et autres méchantes espèces ?
Les damner ? cela m’embarrasse. L’enfer ne punit que l’injustice, et
quelle injustice commet le loup qui mange l’agneau ? Il en a besoin ;
ce besoin, qui ne justifie pas l’homme, justifie la bête, qui n’a pas
reçu de loi supérieure à l’instinct. En suivant son instinct, elle est
bonne ou mauvaise par rapport à nous seulement ; il n’y a pas
vouloir, c’est-à-dire choix, dans les actions animales, et, par
conséquent, ni bien ni mal, ni paradis ni enfer. Je regrette cependant
le paradis, et qu’il n’y ait pas des colombes au ciel. Mon Dieu,
qu’est-ce que je dis là ? aurons-nous besoin de rien d’ici-bas, là-
haut, pour être heureux ?

Le 2. — La pluie et une de tes lettres. Cette lettre était bien

attendue à cause des événements d’ici et de ceux de Paris. Tu avais
appris de la famille un projet de mariage et une mort, et tu devais
m’apprendre ce que c’est que cette machine infernale qui a éclaté,
et ce qui s’en est suivi. Des morts, des calamités, des larmes. Que je
te plains d’être sur ce volcan de Paris !

Le 3. — Rien.

Le 4. — Ce jour-là, je voulais parler de ta naissance, de ma joie

lorsque je l’appris, et comme je m’empressai d’ouvrir ce
portemanteau où papa m’avait dit qu’il te portait. Je voulais dire tout
cela, et bien d’autres choses du baptême et de ta vie ; mais j’ai été
triste, affligée, pleurante, et quand je pleure, je n’écris pas, je prie
seulement, c’est tout ce que je puis faire ; mais voici qu’un peu de
sérénité me vient. Dieu m’est venu, puis des livres, et une lettre de
Louise, trois choses qui me portent bonheur. J’ai commencé toute
triste, et puis j’ai senti presque de la joie et que j’avais Dieu au cœur.
O mon ami ! si tu savais comme l’âme dans l’affliction se console
doucement en Dieu ! que de force elle tire de la puissance divine !
Le livre, je voulais dire l’ouvrage qui me fait tant de plaisir, c’est
Fénelon que papa m’a acheté. Toute ma vie, j’avais désiré d’avoir
ses lettres spirituelles si douces, si célestes, si propres à tout état, à
toute position d’âme. Je vais les lire et les mettre dans mon cœur,
j’en ferai ma consolation, mon soutien à présent que M. Bories va
me manquer, et que mon âme se trouve comme orpheline. J’avais
demandé quelque chose à Dieu, et ces lettres ne sont venues ;
aussi, je les regarde comme un don du ciel. Merci à Dieu et à mon
père.

Le 20. — Je viens de suspendre à mon cou une médaille de la

sainte Vierge, que Louise m’a envoyée pour préservatif du choléra.
C’est la médaille qui a fait tant de miracles, dit-on. Ce n’est pas
article de foi, mais cela ne fait pas de mal d’y croire. Je crois donc à
la sainte médaille comme à l’image sacrée d’une mère, dont la vue
peut faire tant de bien. J’aurai toute ma vie sur mon cœur cette
sainte relique de la Vierge et de mon amie, et y aurai foi si le choléra
vient, mal pour lequel il n’est pas de remède humain ; ayons donc
recours au miraculeux. On ne compte pas assez sur le ciel, et on
tremble. Je ne sais pourquoi, ce choléra qui avance ne me fait rien ;
je n’y pense pas, si ce n’est pour les prières que l’archevêque a
ordonnées. D’où me vient cela ? serait-ce indifférence ? je ne le
voudrais pas ; non, je ne voudrais être insensible à rien, pas même à
la peste. D’où me vient ma sécurité ?

Le 21. — Voilà un ornement de plus à ma chambrette : sainte

Thérèse que j’ai pu enfin faire encadrer ; il me tardait d’avoir cette
belle sainte devant mes yeux, au-dessus de la table où je fais ma
prière, où je lis, où j’écris. Ce me sera une inspiration pour bien prier,
pour bien aimer, pour bien souffrir. J’élèverai vers elle mon cœur et
mes yeux dans mes prières, dans mes tristesses. Je commence à
présent, et lui dis : « Regardez-moi du ciel, bienheureuse sainte
Thérèse, regardez-moi, à genoux devant votre image, contemplant
les traits d’une amante de Jésus avec un grand désir de les graver
en moi. Obtenez-moi la sainte ressemblance, obtenez-moi quelque
chose de vous ; faites-moi passer votre regard pour chercher Dieu,
votre bouche pour le prier, votre cœur pour l’aimer. Que j’obtienne
votre force dans l’adversité, votre douceur dans les souffrances,
votre constance dans les tentations. » Sainte Thérèse souffrit vingt
ans des dégoûts dans la prière sans se rebuter. C’est ce qui
m’étonne le plus de ses triomphes. Je suis loin de cette constance ;
mais je me plais à me souvenir que, quand je perdis ma mère, j’allai,
comme sainte Thérèse, me jeter aux pieds de la sainte Vierge et la
prier de me prendre pour sa fille. Ce fut devant la chapelle du
Rosaire, dans l’église de Saint-Pierre, à Gaillac. J’avais treize ans.

Le 23. — Sans le songe que j’ai fait cette nuit, je n’écrirais pas ;
mais je t’ai vu, je t’ai embrassé, je t’ai parlé, et tout cela, quoique
erreur, il faut que j’en parle, parce que mon cœur en est touché. J’ai
tant de regret de ne pas te voir, à présent que les absents
reviennent ! Raymond est arrivé. Qui sait s’il m’apporte de tes
lettres ? Je serais bien contente d’avoir quelque chose de particulier,
comme tu l’as fait par des occasions semblables. C’est notre signe
de vie et de tendresse que cette chère écriture ; écrivons-nous donc,
écris-moi. Je viens d’envoyer une lettre de neuf pages à Louise. Ce
serait long, infini pour tout autre ; mais, entre nous, il n’y en a jamais
assez. Le cœur, quand il aime, est intarissable. Je voudrais bien
t’écrire de la sorte. Voilà un nuage qui passe, si sombre que je vois à
peine sur mon papier blanc. Cela me fait souvenir de tant d’idées
noires qui passent ainsi sur l’âme parfois.
 Le 24. — La matinée a commencé agréablement par une lettre
d’Auguste qui me parle beaucoup de toi ; il t’aime, ce bon cousin,
cela se voit. Je voudrais bien que le joli projet de voyage
s’accomplît, et que moi je fusse du voyage. Oh ! venir te voir à
Paris !… mais non, ce serait trop joli pour ce monde, n’y pensons
pas. J’ai presque l’idée que nous ne devons nous revoir qu’en
l’autre : voilà le choléra ; sans doute il viendra ici. Je l’attends et
dispose mon âme de mon mieux, afin de ne pas mourir à
l’improviste, seule chose à craindre, car le malheur n’est pas de
quitter la vie. Je ne dis pas ceci dans le sens des dégoûtés de vivre :
il y a de saints désirs de la mort qui viennent à l’âme chrétienne.
Encore un nuage qui me force de quitter. Le nuage amenait un
déluge, le tonnerre, le vent, tout le vacarme d’un orage. Dans ce
temps, je courais de çà, de là, pensant à mes poulets ; je chauffais
une chemise pour ce petit garçon qui nous est arrivé noyé ; à
présent tout est calme et dans son cours. L’extraordinaire ici dure
peu. Mon cousin Fontenilles nous est venu voir ; il couchera dans la
chambrette, mon cher réduit qui sert à tout : excellent emploi des
choses humaines, toutes à tous. Mais, mon cahier, va dedans : ceci
n’est pas pour le public, c’est de l’intime, c’est de l’âme, C’EST POUR
UN.

Le 25. — Saint-Louis aujourd’hui : grande fête en France

pendant longtemps, et qui ne se fait plus qu’au ciel, maintenant que
les rois s’en vont. Saint Louis, priez pour la France et pour vos
descendants ; obtenez-leur le royaume des cieux !

Le 26. — Comme la grâce est admirable ! Je l’admire aujourd’hui

dans saint Genès qu’elle fit chrétien comme il jouait sur le théâtre les
mystères du christianisme. Tout à coup Dieu se fit voir à cette âme,
et le comédien fut martyr.
 Le 27. — J’ai l’âme tout émue, toute pénétrée, toute pleine de la
lettre de M. de La Morvonnais que j’ai reçue ce matin ; il me parle de
Marie, d’un autre monde, de ses tristesses, de toi, de la mort, de ces
choses que j’aime tant. Voilà pourquoi ces lettres me causent un
plaisir que je craignais de trop sentir, parce que tout plaisir est à
craindre. Mais tu l’as voulu, et, pour l’amour de toi seulement, j’ai
soutenu cette correspondance qui maintenant aura bien des
charmes, d’abord ceux de la sympathie ; comme tu me l’avais
appris, je trouve à ton ami une trempe d’idées fort semblables aux
miennes pour le religieux et le triste ; son âme pleure et prie souvent
comme la mienne.
Aujourd’hui, il me dit que sa prière est tiède et distraite, et que je
l’aide devant Dieu. Assurément je le ferai, car son âme m’est chère,
et cette âme est souffrante et me porte pitié. Je lui verserai donc le
baume de la prière qui, tout loin que je suis, lui arrivera par le ciel. Je
le crois du moins : admirable foi qui me donne l’espérance de
consoler un affligé ! C’est de ce côté-là encore que cette
correspondance me plaît : faire du bien est si doux ! consoler qui
pleure est divin. Jésus le fit sur la terre, et c’est de lui que je
l’apprends. Oui, mon ami, c’est de la croix que viennent ces pensées
que ton ami trouve si douces, si inénarrablement tendres. Rien n’est
de moi. Je sens mon aridité, mais que Dieu, quand il veut, fait couler
un océan sur ce fond de sable. Il est ainsi de tant d’âmes simples
desquelles sortent d’admirables choses, parce qu’elles sont en
rapport direct avec Dieu, sans science et sans orgueil. Aussi, je
perds le goût des livres ; je me dis : que m’apprennent-ils que je ne
sache un jour au ciel ? que Dieu soit mon maître et mon étude ! Je
fais ainsi et m’en trouve bien ; je lis peu, je sors peu, je me refoule à
l’intérieur. Là se dit, se fait, se sent, se passe bien des choses. Oh !
si tu les voyais ! mais que sert de les faire voir ? Dieu seul doit
pénétrer dans le sanctuaire de l’âme. Mon âme aujourd’hui abonde
de prière et de poésie. J’admire comme ces deux sources coulent
ensemble en moi et en d’autres.
L’aveugle prie et chante en son chemin, le soldat sur le champ de
guerre, le nautonier sur les mers, le poëte sur sa lyre, le prêtre à
l’autel ; l’enfant qui commence à parler, le solitaire dans sa cellule,
les anges au ciel, les saints par toute la terre, tous prient et
chantent ; il n’y a que les morts qui ne chantent pas, qui ne prient
pas : pauvres morts !

Le 28. — Saint-Augustin aujourd’hui : un saint que j’aime tant

parce qu’il a tant aimé. Je porte d’ailleurs son nom, et je l’ai supplié
de me donner aussi un peu de son âme. La belle âme, et comme
elle se peint divinement dans ses Confessions ! A chaque mot de ce
livre, on sent l’amour de Dieu qui vous pénètre goutte à goutte le
cœur, si dur qu’il soit. Que n’ai-je une mémoire à tout retenir ! mais
par malheur je l’ai si fugitive, qu’autant vaudrait ne rien lire ; il n’en
était pas de même jadis. C’est que je décline et que mes facultés
baissent, excepté celle d’aimer. L’amour, c’est l’âme qui ne meurt
pas, qui va croissant, montant comme la flamme. Je tiens une lettre
de Louise, de ma belle amie, de celle qui me dit toujours qu’elle
m’aime. Cette lettre est courte, de trois pages seulement, parce
qu’elle était pressée, toute à sa sœur la comtesse qui venait
d’arriver. C’est dans ses bras que Louise me dit le tendre memento
qui me suffit bien aujourd’hui, C’est l’abbé de Bayne d’Alos qui me
l’a apportée, venant de Rayssac.

Le 29. — Beau ciel, beau soleil, beau jour. C’est de quoi se

réjouir, car le beau temps est rare à présent, et je le sens comme un
bienfait. C’en est bien un, qu’une belle nature, un air pur, un ciel
radieux ! petites images du séjour céleste, et qui font penser à Dieu !
J’irai ce soir à Cahuzac, mon cher pèlerinage. En attendant, je vais
m’occuper de mon âme et voir où elle en est dans ses rapports avec
Dieu depuis huit jours. Cette revue éclaire, instruit et avance
merveilleusement le cœur dans la connaissance de Dieu et de lui-
même. N’y avait-il pas un philosophe qui ordonnait cet exercice trois
fois le jour à ses disciples ? et ses disciples le faisaient. Je le veux
faire aussi à l’école de Jésus pour apprendre à devenir sage, d’une
sagesse chrétienne.
 Le 31. — Je passai la journée d’hier à Cahuzac, et quelques
heures seule dans la maison de notre grand’mère. Je me mis
d’abord à genoux sur un prie-Dieu où elle priait, puis je parcourus sa
chambre, je regardai ses chaises, son fauteuil, ses meubles
dérangés comme quand on déloge ; je vis son lit vide ; je passai
partout où elle avait passé, et je me souvins de ces lignes de
Bossuet : « Dans un moment on passera où j’étais, et l’on ne m’y
trouvera plus. Voilà sa chambre, voilà son lit, diras-tu, et de tout cela
il ne reste plus que mon tombeau où l’on dira que je suis, et je n’y
serai pas. » Oh ! quelle idée de notre néant dans cette absence
même de la tombe, dans la dispersion si prompte de notre poussière
dans les souterrains de la mort ! Demain, je change et vais à
Cahuzac pour des réparations à la maison qui me tiendront
quelques jours. Ce seront des jours uniques, aussi je veux les
marquer et prendre mon journal. Je vais écrire à Antoinette, mon
amie l’ange.
Il y a quelques heures de cela. Voilà que j’ai écrit à Antoinette et
à Irène, et pourtant je n’avais rien, presque rien à leur dire. Ma vie
fournit peu et le Cayla aussi, parce que tout y est tranquille. Mais les
communications du cœur sont douces et je m’y laisse aller aisément.
Cela d’ailleurs me fait du bien et me décharge l’âme du triste. Quand
une eau coule, elle s’en va avec l’écume et se clarifie en chemin.
Mon chemin à moi, c’est Dieu ou un ami, mais Dieu surtout. Là je me
creuse un lit et m’y trouve calme.

Le 1er septembre. — M’y voici à Cahuzac, dans une autre

chambrette, accoudée sur une petite table où j’écris. Il me faut
partout des tables et du papier, parce que partout mes pensées me
suivent et se veulent répandre en un endroit, pour toi, mon ami. J’ai
parfois l’idée que tu y trouveras quelque charme, et cette idée me
sourit et me fait continuer ; sans cela mon cœur resterait fermé bien
souvent, par indolence ou par indifférence pour tout ce qui vient de
moi.
 J’ai quelquefois des joies d’enfant, comme celle de venir pour
quelques jours ici. Tu ne saurais croire combien je suis venue
gaiement prendre possession de cette maison déserte. C’est que là,
vois-tu, je me trouve seule, tout à fait seule, dans un lieu qui prête à
la réflexion. J’entends passer les passants sans me détourner du
tout ; je suis au pied de l’église, j’entends jusqu’à la dernière
vibration de la cloche qui sonne midi ou l’Angelus, et j’écoute cela
comme une harpe. Puis je vais prier quand je veux, me confesser de
même : en voilà assez pour quelques jours de bonheur, d’un
bonheur à moi. Papa me viendra voir cette après-midi. J’ai plaisir à
cette visite, comme si nous étions séparés depuis longtemps.
Le diable m’a tentée tout à l’heure dans un petit cabinet où j’ai
fait trouvaille de romans. Lis-en un mot, me disais-je, voyons celui-ci,
voyons celui-là ; mais les titres m’ont fort déplu. Ce sont des Lettres
galantes d’une religieuse, la Confession générale d’un chevalier
galant et autres histoires de bonne odeur. Fi donc, que j’aille lire
cela ! Je n’en suis plus tentée maintenant et vais seulement changer
ces livres de cabinet ou plutôt les jeter au feu.

Le 22. — Depuis le jour où je revins de Cahuzac, mon confident

dormait dans un coin, et il y dormirait encore, si ce n’était le 22
septembre, jour de Saint-Maurice, jour de ta fête, qui m’a donné un
peu de joie et rouvert le cœur au plaisir d’écrire et de laisser ici un
souvenir. Je me souviens que l’an dernier, à pareil jour, je t’écrivais
aussi et te parlais de ta fête. J’étais contente, je voyais aujourd’hui et
toi, espérant t’embrasser à la Saint-Maurice, et te voilà à cent lieues.
Mon Dieu, que nous comptons mal et qu’il faut compter peu dans la
vie !
M. le curé et sa sœur sont venus faire ta fête et boire à ta santé.
Mais ce qui vaut mieux, c’est que M. le curé s’est souvenu de toi à la
messe et que Françoise a prié pour toi aussi. Que saint Maurice te
protége et te rende fort dans les combats de la vie ! Me rapporteras-
tu son image que je t’ai donnée ?