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Updated: June 4, 2025
If religious self-examination has its dangers, so also has philosophical self-analysis for its own sake. It is a fascinating study for those who care for thought for thought's sake the so-called Hamlets of the world, who are for ever revolving round the axes of their own ideas and dreams, and who never progress towards any clear issue. Amiel's "Vie Intime" is a study of this kind.
The story of the "Journal Intime" is a story to make us think, to make us anxious; but at the same time, in the case of a nature like Amiel's, there is so much high poetry thrown off from the long process of conflict, the power of vision and of reproduction which the intellect gains at the expense of the rest of the personality is in many respects so real and so splendid, and produces results so stirring often to the heart and imagination of the listener, that in the end we put down the record not so much with a throb of pity as with an impulse of gratitude.
The Renaissance is treated as a disastrous but inevitable crisis, in which the idealism of the Middle Ages was dethroned by the naturalism of modern times "The Renaissance perhaps robbed us of more than it gave us" and so on. The tone of criticism is instructive enough to the student of Amiel's mind, but the product itself has no particular savor of its own.
And if the thinker is at home with him, so too are the religious minds, the natures for whom God and duty are the foundation of existence. Here, indeed, we come to the innermost secret of Amiel's charm, the fact which probably goes farther than any other to explain his fascination for a large and growing class of readers.
He was buried in the cemetery of Clarens, not far from his great contemporary Alexander Vinet; and the affection of a sculptor friend provided the monument which now marks his resting-place. We have thus exhausted all the biographical material which is at present available for the description of Amiel's life and relations toward the outside world.
Nobody could call Mr Arnold a Philistine or one insensible to finesse, grace, sehnsucht, the impalpable and intangible charm of melancholy and of thought. And his comments on Amiel's loaded pathos and his muddled meditation are therefore invaluable.
They were Amiel's Wanderjahre, spent in a free, wandering student life, which left deep marks on his intellectual development.
He awakened in us but one regret; we could not understand how it was a man so richly gifted produced nothing, or only trivialities." In these last words of M. Scherer's we have come across the determining fact of Amiel's life in its relation to the outer world that "sterility of genius," of which he was the victim.
And, in truth, if he was occupied with the aspects of nature to such an excellent literary result, still, it was with nature only as a phenomenon of the moral order. The powers, the culture, of the literary producer: there, is the centre of Amiel's curiosity.
Never mind; let me welcome truth, albeit in such sere and sorry garb, and look forward to the time when I shall be able to do so unmoved, as does my photograph. As I stood there, Bimal came in from behind. I hastily turned my eyes from the niche to the shelves as I muttered: "I came to get Amiel's Journal." What need had Ito volunteer an explanation?
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