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The Sacred and the Profane Day

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Jean Starobinski
Jean Starobinski*
Affiliation:
de l'Institut de France, Université de Genève

Extract

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The day is one of the fundamental experiences of our natural existence. The obvious cycle of the sun, the alternation of sleep and being awake provide a link between the life of the body and the great regularity that assigns their successive moments to light and to darkness. Only a simplified abstraction allows us to consider time lived as an homogeneous flow. Our existence, in its proper substance and in its larger environment, is dominated by the rhythm of days and nights. Our very experience of the reality of objects is subject to it: the universe of things depends on the light of day that reveals it. It shrivels and becomes uncertain when night falls, with terror and dreams taking its place. The evidence that appears with the clarity of day is not of the same order as apparitions that arise from the depth of darkness.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 37 , Issue 146 , June 1989 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

References

1 See the excellent article "Journée chrétienne" by Emile Bertaud and André Rayez in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, t. VIII, 2, Paris, Beauchesne 1974, col. 1443-1469. The role of Ambrose in determining the ritual was important. Ambro se's hymns should not be overlooked, even though, in the following pages, atten tion will be directed exclusively to Prudentius.

2 Charles Baudelaire, Oeuvres complètes, 2 vols. (afterward cited as O.C.), ed. Claude Pichois. Paris, Pléiade 1975-76, t. 1, p. 61.

3 O.C., I, p. 15.

4 O. C., p. 671.

5 O. C., I, p. 673. The entry adds, "Work all day"…"say another prayer each evening…".

6 O. C., I, p. 672.

7 To which can be added, in Le Spleen de Paris, a "Crépuscule du soir" in prose.

8 O. C., I, p. 103.

9 Prudentius, Cathemerinon liber (Book of Hours), text edited and translated by M. Lavarenne, Paris, Belles-Lettres, 1943, p. 9.

10 Ibid.

11 O. C., II, p. 695.

12 O. C., I, p. 103.

13 Prudentius, op. cit., p. 5.

14 Prudentius, op. cit., p. 37, verses 137-145.

15 O. C., I, p. 94.

16 O.C., I, p. 104.

17 Ibid.

18 O. C., I, p. 46.

19 Prudentius, op. cit., p. 30-31.

20 O.C., I, p. 95.

21 O.C., I, p. 103-104.

22 Prudentius, op. cit., p. 11.

23 Prudentius, op. cit., p. 32-33.

24 O. C., I, p. 94.

25 O.C., I, p. 95.

26 Prudentius, op. cit., p. 4.

27 O.C., I, p. 82.

28 Paul Valéry, Cahiers, ed. by Judith Robinson, 2 vols., Paris, Pléiade 1973-74, t. II, p. 1355.

29 Cahiers, t. I, p. 369.

30 Alphabet, Paris, Blaizot, 1976 (unpaginated). Lettre Z.