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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1801

May 26.

Politeness is to goodness what words are to thought.

May 28.

(At Savigny.) Studies that give no knowledge, but give memory.

These sickly sensitivities. Passions of the soul are its health in you[th], are ills in mature age.

Saturday, May 29.

Virgil’s 2nd eclogue. Not shameful, for it is not love of sex, but rather of youth, of etc. and of beauty.

June 1.

(Temples, churches.) He is everywhere, but there one sees him better.

One must describe objects only to describe the feelings they make us experience.

June 4.

— the impression of this armor is by itself an aegis that makes us, as it were, invulnerable. — And if I may speak thus, no pleasure soils the soul when the pleasure has passed through the body of this purifying net. (Or: if it has passed through a body where its incorruptibility dwelt until this point.)

June 7.

There is established between our senses and all our perceptions, between the impacts of all things and all their concussions, between all disturbances and our determinations a distance, an interval, a time, a void, an extent where everything grows calm, is tempered, dies away, falls silent, slows.

June 5.

And consider caresses when you are no longer susceptible to love.

Tuesday, June 9.

(Before the painting of the Sabine women.) Certain women must in those times have inspired greater passions — and almost all the others lesser ones — than the women of our day.

July […].

After that I saw you no more, but you have often appeared to me in my dreams.

July […].

Conscience, — that is to say — knowledge of truths (rules or duties) whose innate notion we carry within ourselves or with ourselves.

T37.You[th] mirrors the source editor’s partial-word completion jeune[sse] by an analogous English division; it is not a letter-for-letter expansion. The contrast between youth and mature age remains explicit.

T38.The unspecified quality in of etc. remains missing. The judgment of Virgil’s second eclogue is Joubert’s, kept without paraphrasing its distinction between sex, youth, and beauty. Sex need not mean sexual acts here: the historical sexe can denote bodily sex, while le sexe can also designate women. The English leaves that choice open in the Virgil and youth context.

T229.The printed weekday/date combination is preserved even though May 29, 1801, was Friday; no date is silently corrected. The incomplete de la etc. is printed and retained.

T39.He retains the unnamed masculine subject of Il; no proper name is inserted.

T40.Impression, armor, aegis, and purifying net preserve the succession of images, including the difficult body of this net. The parenthetical Or introduces Joubert’s own alternative formulation. Its incorruptibility leaves the possessor unnamed as in son incorruptibilité. The pleasure makes the masculine il explicit, keeping it distinct from the feminine âme, soul.

T41.The five nouns distance, interval, time, void, extent and their setting among impacts and determinations remain concrete. The final five verbs retain the gradual calming rather than summarizing it as peace.

S1.Source editor’s annotationThen, June 28: “Learn the power of a word put in its place. I shall give an example. La Harpe, in his observations on Demosthenes, p. 414 of the course of literature, vol. 2, says: It was indeed the matter of a pure piece of reasoning. You will see how Demosthenes knows how to make it oratorical, how he raises it through the nobility of the thoughts and feelings at the same time as he makes self-evidence radiate, etc. Radiate is only an expression here. But when Buffon said: When one has an idea, one must consider it for a long time and until it radiates, radiate is here a thought and a principal thought.”

T43.Must have inspired reads devoient as a retrospective inference. The comparison is between women of the two periods, with the first group inspiring greater passions and almost all the others lesser ones.

T50.Radiate repeats rayonner at each step, keeping the distinction between a mere expression and a principal thought. Self-evidence renders évidence. The quoted reports remain within Beaunier’s source annotation.

T235.In the annotation, the isolated italic Rayonner occurs after etc.; the lower-case isolated rayonner follows the Buffon quotation. The other occurrences lie within longer italic quotations. The source note’s dated June 28 fragment remains apparatus.

T44.The simple-past saw and present-perfect have appeared preserve the source’s tense shift. The feminine apparue is evidence of a female addressee, whose name is not supplied.

T236.The day has only an incomplete curved/dotted tail at the damaged left edge; no complete numeral is certified. Initial m of mes is clipped and completed from the sentence; feminine apparue retained.

T45.Conscience preserves conscience in its moral setting of rules and duties; science here means knowledge. Within oneself and with oneself retain the source’s distinction.

T237.The day is damaged beyond a secure numeral reading; no value is inferred. The initial d of devoirs is clipped and completed; the printed notion-innée hyphen is retained.