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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1801

[La Harpe. Cours,] p. 334. “There would be (Diderot used to say) three great pleas to make, one for Seneca and for Burrhus, a second for Nero, a third for Agrippina.” This last remark (Laharpe says very well) explains everything by giving you the measure of the man and of the interest he took in morality and truth. And above: Let me be told whether all that is most sacred among men has ever been more formally put in question and in dispute than in the three great pleas Diderot gravely proposes for the examination of sensible men, the second of which is for Nero!

[La Harpe.] It would have been better to say — thought is an assertion (of the mind), and an idea is a glimpse. Through the one, we take a position, and through the other we have a view. The former depends more on reason, the latter on imagination. There is more will in the one and intelligence in the other.

September 18.

I see only a single thing that can leave some innocence to suicide and some esteem to its author. It is remorse. I mean when remorse is its cause; but a sudden and swift remorse. Jocasta. Œdipus, Ninon’s son; Ajax gone mad.

July […]3.

Creat. — Admit, permit, tolerate, and if necessary even endure.

July 21.

In those times we drew our allusions from the world, and today we are forced to draw them from books. This is a disadvantage.

August 1.

Yes, we have three eyes, we also have three ears (as the Chinese author says). For to the body’s two eyes and two ears, to make a correct count, we must add the soul’s ear, the mind’s invisible eye.

Imagination is an eye in which images always remain.

August 3.

Imperfection that turns into virtue. This is what makes the action of one mind upon another delightful to exercise and to experience.

It is not metaphysics that has ruined us, but its cruelest enemy, hollow paltry reasoning.

Saturday, August 8.

At ten o’clock in the evening. My poor mother! My poor mother!

Sunday, August 9. (Monday, id.)

My poor mother!

Monday, August 10 (in the evening.)

My poor mother! (Id., id., id., id., id.)

August 20.

“To bury your life” is beautiful. (Volt. Irèn.)

Heights that make one uneasy...

T46.The bracketed source identification remains supplied by the edition; Cours is its abbreviated French title, meaning Course. The passages following Laharpe says and And above remain Joubert’s cited La Harpe wording, distinguished by the edition’s italics. Their judgment of Diderot is preserved as reported.

T238.The bracketed La Harpe cues are supplied source-editor attributions within the printed paragraphs, not invented Joubert titles. The native crop confirms unaccented a in a la vérité and the source’s different La Harpe/Laharpe spellings; retained. The left edge damages the opening parenthesis before dit, initial l’homme, parmi, litige, gravement, Néron, and several other line-opening letters; restored from surviving words and syntax. The final punctuation after Néron is an elongated exclamation stroke with no clear separate dot; represented by ! and not silently made a question mark.

T47.Thought and idea remain distinct. The former and latter refer respectively to thought and idea; the repeated one and other preserve the contrast in will and intelligence. Glimpse retains aperçu beside view.

T48.The passage records Joubert’s stated moral exception and its abrupt examples. The exact sequence Jocasta. Œdipus, Ninon’s son; Ajax is retained, without making Ninon’s son a silent explanation of Œdipus or inventing an omitted separator.

T49.Creat. remains unexpanded. Admit, permit, tolerate, and endure preserve the progression and the qualification if necessary even.

T240.A terminal 3 survives at the damaged left edge; no preceding digit is inferred. The abbreviation Creat. remains unexpanded; the initial e of endurez is clipped and completed.

T51.No name is supplied for the Chinese author. The ear of the soul, the invisible eye of the mind, and the enduring images in imagination remain distinct.

T52.Paltry reasoning renders the derisive raisonnaillerie; hollow retains creuse. The target is left distinct from metaphysics itself.

T245.The parenthetical Lundi, id. is printed in the date heading and is not made into an invented second entry/date.

T53.Id. means the same. All five reminders remain, alongside the repeated cries across the separately dated entries; no event or explanation is supplied.

T54.The burial image remains literal. The abbreviation Volt. Irèn. is retained without adding words from another edition.

T55.Heights preserves hauteurs without choosing between physical elevation and figurative loftiness.