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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1799

Beyond the world and life, there is no more groping. There is only direct seeing, and everything one looks upon is truth.

December 13.

To be unoccupied with oneself and occupied with one’s duty, — to walk toward the goal without greeting the onlookers, — to be one’s own character and not play a part, — to think only of usefulness (and of the spectators’ pleasure, if that pleasure is a good for them), but to heed neither their coldness nor their smile, to turn one’s eyes from their eyes, to forget what is fleeting in them, to aspire only to an esteem that is constant, inward, entire, rooted, and needs no care to endure nor little to establish itself, to await it and not think of it; to wish for approval, but only once in a lifetime and forever, and not at every hour and for a moment; — to care what others will think in the end, but not at all what they think; to lose the vanity and the good behavior of children, to be anxious neither about the mood nor the look of the XXX, as though one were at school or at court; to be a man and cease to be a fop; — finally, to go straight ahead, but without turning back, — tell him so for the year 1800.

Nota bis idem. — Not to please everyone.

The ancients always praise firmness as a heroic and extraordinary quality. By nature they must have been very far from our dryness of heart and manners.

December 14.

— ... finally, all these little tips of servitude’s whip that make it keenly felt.

Fénelon’s “too artfully turned”: dialogue of Virgil and Horace.

December 16.

— On the fulcrum — or — point of suspension.

But in your balances, where is the point of suspension?

Nothing is worse than a dark clarity, for it illuminates only to make one feel privation and to show chaos, nothingness.

Feelings free of disturbance and an intelligence free of exertions and misapprehensions.

December 17.

There is an ideal model of good government to which, despite ourselves, we bring back all our political institutions, whatever fancy we may at first have had to depart from it.

All those sciences whose objects are things of which we carry within us no innate notion or primitive idea are still more imperfect and less satisfying than the others.

That monarchy is poetic; that poets resort to it.

They have wished too much to mingle religion with life, and worship too much with the daily occupations of society. By occupying the eyes, the ears, and all the senses too much with it, they have sated minds with it. By lavishing ceremonies and solemnities too freely, they have made people long for their absence. The multitude of prayers has wearied people of piety. Ambition has undone them.

T12.Direct seeing renders inspection, understood here as immediate apprehension rather than a procedural examination; it contrasts with groping.

T13.The odd phrase ni de peu is retained as nor little, without silently substituting an expected expression such as or only a little. Personnage and rôle are distinguished as one’s own character and a part played.

T14.Good behavior renders sagesse in its sense of a child’s moderation, restraint, or good behavior; wisdom is another possible sense. The printed XXX remains an unidentified placeholder. Réversion is rendered turning back, preserving the contrast with going straight ahead.

T36.The stated an 1800 is prospective author text within the 1799 source section, not an entry date. The source prints ni de peu, sagesse des enfans, and réversion; these unusual phrases are retained.

T15.Nota bis idem: roughly, note the same thing twice. The compressed Latin reminder is retained in Joubert’s text.

S1.Source editor’s annotation“What are you doing, my dear V[ictor]? — Papa, I am stamping my foot. — And why are you stamping your foot? — Because I cannot read a word in my lesson that is too difficult. — And tell me, have you been stamping like that for long? — Oh! no, Papa, surely it has not been a minute. — A minute? Let us see how much time you need to read this difficult word. There is my watch on the table. Try. — Ar... Achi... Architect... Papa, it says architect — Well! to decipher it, you took only 15 seconds. — That is only a quarter of a minute. — Exactly, my son. This is like everything else. Another time, and forever, remember well that the time impatience spends stamping would have been enough and more than enough to [ ] and to arrive.” And: “On the time impatience wastes stamping.”

T16.Too artfully turned renders trop tourné, preserving the image of a fashioned turn of phrase rather than silently reducing it to a general charge of excessive ornament.

T17.Exertions takes applications as acts of concentrated mental attention. The plural could also suggest particular applications of thought; the fragment does not resolve the distinction.

T38.The source prints eu after fantaisie que; agreement is not silently corrected.

T18.The opening they has no named antecedent within this fragment. The final them is understood to refer back to those who promoted the excess of worship, while people in the intervening sentences supplies the implied recipients of satiety and weariness.