Translation by Francesco Mazzaferro
Eugène Delacroix
Diario (Journal)
Edited by Lamberto Vitali
3 volumes, Turin, Einaudi, 1954
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| Eugène Delacroix, Self-Portrait (about 1837), Parigi, Louvre Museum Source: Wikimedia commons |
[1] We are displaying hereafter the text of the bibliographic card n. 30 (May 1954) which is located within the first volume:
"Written almost daily from 1822 to 1824, in 1832 and especially from 1847 to his death, the Journal by Delacroix is a unique case among autobiographical writings by artists: not only for its extension, but also because of the complexity of the reasoning, the depth of commitment and meditation, and the great wealth of documents and testimonies.
'The days that this writing did not mention... are like if had never existed" confesses the author; this may offer an indication of the value he attached to these very private daily notes of him.
As guest of intellectual and elegant salons, his notes are worth to recall – against the background of a firm and precise, in certain cases of a detached hardness, however an always clear-cut judgment, the cultural and social life of the France in the Louis Philippe age and during the Empire. Stendhal and Ms Sand, Chopin and Balzac, Hugo, Dumas, Berlioz, Thiers, Prince Napoleon, Gauthier, to name only the best known, are among the figures mentioned in the Journal.
A man of the world, but together and above all a painter: a vocation to painting without any reserve, a full commitment to it. And in the Journal we find a tireless and acute commentary to the creative activity, a reflective and conscious survey on procedures, means, needs, and nature of art. A notebook of the workshop, as we could call it, that, however, for the freedom and the relentless passion of investigation, the unconventional and concrete modern taste, may be included, alongside the Letters by Flaubert and the Curieusités by Baudelaire, among the most live documents of the criticism of his time.
But, besides of his contemporaries and his work, Delacroix in the Journal also manages to give account of himself: with a noble measure, a quiet and discreet firmness that put many of these notes from him to the level of the most rigorous literature of memoirs. And anyway, they are worth to draw a fully-fledged and unforgettable portrait of man: a young romantic, with his intemperance, melancholy, and shaking outbursts; and above all also a mature gentleman who, in the silence of all overcome passions, in the progressing refinement of intelligence and taste, knows how to develop, day by day, his virile, quiet and a little bitter wisdom. Known so far in Italy through fragmentary excerpts only, the Journal by Delacroix is finally published in a faithful translation and an issue of great critical commitment. The translation by Lamberto Vitali, conducted on the now classic issue by Mr Joubin, has expanded (with new letters and scattered fragments) the original integration with which Joubin himself had found necessary to complement the Journal, by attaching notebooks, notes, and sketches. An attentive apparatus of notes, of which many are original by the translator, enlightens the reader about facts and people. [...] "
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| Eugène Delacroix, Dante and Vergil in hell (1822), Paris, Louvre Museum Source: Wikimedia commons |
[2] Almost fifty years after the release of the first edition, i.e. in 2002, Einaudi has revived the work, this time in two volumes, with minimal updates
[3] We are displaying hereafter the original review of the work, appeared on July 3, 1954, at the signature of Emilio Cecchi in the newspaper Corriere della Sera. The original article is conserved in the collection of articles and other clippings by Luciano Mazzaferro, preserved at the Giulio Cesare Croce City Library in San Giovanni in Persiceto, Italy.
CORRIERE DELLA SERA – Readings
The «Journal by Delacroix»
by Emilio Cecchi
With a long break between 1824 and 1847, the Journal by Eugene Delacroix accompanies the life and work of the great French painter until the eve of his death (1863). But both for the years preceding 1822, since when the Journal was kept regularly, as well as for those of the aforesaid interruption, it is possible, at least up to a certain extent, to integrate it with scattered records and information and confessions that abound in the correspondence. Overall, as everyone knows, it is therefore one of the greatest monuments of autobiographical literature. And our interest in it is increased by the fact that he was an artist (not less interesting, however, as a man) who, with his work and his ideas, exerted an incalculable influence on the formation of French impressionist painting, and consequently on the whole of our contemporary art
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| Eugène Delacroix, The Massacre at Chios (1824), Paris, Louvre Museum Source: Wikimedia commons |
Apart from a certain physical resemblance, and numerous factual circumstances that the results of new studies and research seem to make more and more convincing, it was a widespread opinion that the real father of Delacroix was Talleyrand. The putative father, let us say like this, was instead a certain diplomat and prefect of Napoleon. His mother came from an Alsatian family of furniture makers who were famous on the end of the eighteenth century. Widowed, she died when the future painter was sixteen, and left him in poor economic conditions. A mysterious protection seems however to have helped the artist in the early decades of his career, when he was most bitterly fought by critics and the public; and it may have been precisely the protection from Talleyrand.
Whatever the case may be, it is certain that Delacroix was educated in an environment rich of direct artistic traditions, and attended by notable literary, political and society personalities. This painter of the romantic revolution knows how to read a Latin quote or a Latin verse. Apart from what has drawn from his job, where he masters the most subtle secrets, he has the most varied culture. He has a strong critical spirit; and his judgments on the great romantic contemporaries (Hugo, Dumas, Ms Sand, Balzac, etc.), which are valid even today, are constantly and carefully revisited retouched, and refocused by him. Even more than of literature, and almost as much as of painting, he is insatiable of music, but always with absolute independence. If Beethoven inspires reverence in him, Wagner disturbs him because of his profile as a theoretician (capital defect in an artist, according to him, who was nevertheless a highly conceptual artist); and has an inexplicable and peevish dislike for the music of Verdi. He approves of Cimarosa, Bellini, but especially Mozart, Mozart, Mozart and Mozart again. This confirms that the great revolutionaries of art are always full of classic spirit.
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| Eugène Delacroix, Liberty leading the People (1830). Paris, Louvre Museum Source: Wikimedia commons |
Jealous of his freedom of taste, he even suspects the devotion, the fanaticism, and the abnegation by Baudelaire, who never tires of exalting with special emphasis “the feverish, morbid and gamy aspects” of the painting by Delacroix. Once, precisely about Baudelaire, he finished by saying: "He bothers me, at the end". Phrase that, in comparison of the dedication by the former, has the sound of cruelty and ingratitude; and that nevertheless expresses exactly the psychological and moral detachment between the revolutionaries of the first Romantic generation, and their heirs and successors of the second generation.
Besides making minutely account of the daily work of the brush (a bit like the Journal held by Pontormo, when he worked on the frescoes in San Lorenzo), the Journal by Delacroix informs us on his readings, conversations, reflections; on his travel experiences in Morocco and Spain; on commissions and sales of paintings, on society acquaintances, and on the many female sympathies. And the Journal ends by offering, against the background of a nervous and lively self-portrait, a picture of large part of the whole era. The excellent translations provided by Lamberto Vitali, and now published in three large volumes (Eugène Delacroix, Diario, with about two hundred illustrations in black and colour; Einaudi Publishers, Turin), highlights these different aspects, as one could have not done better.
Who saw the Letters by the Macchiaioli, collected and annotated by the same scholar (as we already wrote in these columns) at the same publisher, knows what to expect from the expertise and the good taste of Vitali. Of course, he has worked on the basis of the second edition of the Journal, and on that of the Correspondence edited by the late Andrea Joubin; the latter had already provided certain additions to the text, to which is referred at the beginning of this note. In fact, Vitali has expanded such supplements. Similarly, he has departed from the, even indispensable, records by Joubin on the Journal, considering the multitude of the people mentioned and the tingling of facts, anecdote and allusions, as elusive without any further clarification. Thus he has often developed the French annotations; and has augmented the critical apparatus by many other original notes, in order to offer the best guide to our readers. Nor do I need to talk about the critical introduction, where the spirit and (with its contradictory episodes) the particular evolution of the romanticism by Delacroix are very clearly interpreted. He will finally recognize his aesthetic ideal in the wisdom of painting by Titian.
In choosing the illustrative material, instead of insisting on the best known works, Vitale proposes (not always but with justified prevalence) drawings, sketches, studies, album sheets. With their sudden and provisional features, they beautifully blend in the pages, which are always written with the same fire and abandonment. The result is a beautiful publication by itself, also rich in terms of art teachings and redundant of moral force. And if certain of our painters did learn about it, it would certainly be a nice gain for them and for all of us.
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