YEAR 1801 January.
Close your eyes and you will see.
Monday, January 26.
(Eve of departure.)
January 27.
Plato is right: in every kind of color there is a sort of blazing. (See the Timaeus.)
January 28.
Evil is the manure of good.
They write so young!
On the necessity of good taste for excelling in the criticism of historical points.
January 29.
S1. Source editor’s annotation For January, the notebook begins on the 26th and has only five written pages: Joubert left the other pages blank. But two separate leaves allow this gap to be filled. The first contains the three paragraphs I give first. It is not dated in any way. But its handwriting and paper are exactly like those of the second of these leaves, which is dated. Moreover, the similarity between “Close your eyes and you will see” (on the first leaf) and “Close your eyes...” etc. (on the second leaf) makes it possible to associate them with certainty. The second leaf contains the following dates: “January 26, 27, January 28, 1801, 29, January 30.” Joubert had no notebook. He obtained one and began copying into it (with corrections) the thoughts written on the second leaf: he did not continue this work beyond January 28. That the notebook copies the leaf is proved by the improvement of the text; also by the fact that in the notebook there is not a single crossing-out, but perfect handwriting.
T1. Distance renders le lointain in its pictorial as well as temporal sense. The January heading supplies a month, not a day. Beaunier states that the first three fragments derive from an undated loose leaf; his reconstructed placement does not give those fragments individual dates.
T195. The note states that the first three supplied leaf paragraphs are undated; its January 26–30 notebook dates must not be assigned to those three units. Printed laissés after les autres pages is retained.
T2. Believe in him takes y croire to concern the credibility of the wicked man portrayed. The requirement includes the best of good men.
T3. Passenger boat selects the waterborne sense of coche , supported by the later disembarking. The land-coach sense is also possible; the mode of travel remains an inference from context. The circumstances remain separate body paragraphs.
T199. The source supplies A[mes] with its printed capitalization and without an added circumflex. The source’s paragraph 1 circumstance (Dans le coche. ) is roman body text, distinct from the italic date.
S1. Source editor’s annotation Text of the leaf: “...your eyes and direct your thought toward him and at once you will reach him...”
T4. Him retains the unnamed masculine object. Sun of S[ouls] mirrors the source editor’s partial-word completion A[mes] ; the English distribution of supplied letters is necessarily an analogy, not a letter-for-letter expansion.
T5. Hear and understand distinguish entendre from comprendre while retaining the source’s self-clarification.
S2. Source editor’s annotation The name Gessner is not on the leaf.
T6. Rouged preserves fardée , the image of bad poetry given a cosmetic covering of morality.
S3. Source editor’s annotation Leaf: “and that, to lead a happy life, one must...”
T7. The awkward and that: preserves et que : rather than silently completing the reported formulation.
T8. Happy reads the source annotation’s printed heueruse as the intended heureuse ; the French anomaly remains visible.
S4. Source editor’s annotation The notebook gives February 27 as the date of the “arrival”: this is a slip. Before this, in the notebook and on the leaf, several extracts from the Timaeus. And the notebook’s text stops at “...smoke or good.” What follows, through the end of January, I take from the leaf.
T9. The source annotation quotes fumée ou bien , rendered smoke or good, where the main text has fumier du bien , manure of good. The discrepancy remains as printed. The date correction is Beaunier’s, not a new translator-supplied date. The words ou bien can also mean or else; smoke or good is a deliberately literal reading of the anomalous quotation.
T201. The apparatus prints fumée ou bien , differing from the main fumier du bien ; the annotation’s distinct wording is retained. The printed right edge clips the final punctuation after lapsus and the word endings le and fin ; completions are qualified restorations from the visible stems and syntax. The mistaken notebook date 27 février is reported and corrected by the source editor; no absent main-text date is invented.
T10. The uncompleted if clause, the shift from she to they, and the separate final paragraph remain as in the source. Bringing it to completion renders achever with her mind as its object.
T11. Theater renders Spectacle as the entry’s reminder of an entertainment. To rummage retains the physical image and infinitive of Fouiller . No connection between the throat, palm tree, and men is supplied.