0001 Histoire d'une édition

Le Journal de Delacroix

Abstract

Delacroix's Journal is one of the most important works in the literature of art history. The new critical edition of the Journal (Paris, José Corti, 2009) offers a wholly new text, established from the original manuscripts and new manuscript sources; an important critical apparatus; a "Supplement" consisting of 400 pages of newly rediscovered or reconstituted notes; and a biographical dictionary of all contemporaries appearing in the diary. This article retraces the multiple processes by which Delacroix's work has been elucidated, restored to its original form and reintegrated from scattered or lost fragments, thus constituting a text which is a primary source on nineteenth-century France, an extraordinary reflexion on aesthetics, and a great work of literature in its own right.