Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

Divorce? it does not please even in birds. Buffon has defamed the turtledoves by telling us, etc.

They are first—not the first to have done—but the first to have done well. Before Homer there were a thousand poets.

If a higher intelligence wished to give the inhabitants of the heavens an account of human things and an exact idea of them, it would express itself like Homer.

February 25.

Why the instruments painters have sometimes put in angels’ hands are ridiculous. 1° because their sound is known. 2° because, in the earthly imperfection of our very voices, we use them only to draw from them effects suited to giving us an idea...

1st A mouth slightly open, with a certain roundness, in a face depicting the expression proper to singing makes one imagine a voice. But an organ keyboard beneath fingers, a violin between hands, a flute beneath a mouth, does not make one imagine sounds at all.

2nd Our instruments, whose effect is known, determined, fixed, invariable, do not lend themselves to the ideal.

3rd We use these instruments in our earthly imperfection only to draw from them effects suited to giving us the idea of a higher harmony such as we can easily imagine from celestial voices.

Painters, make the angels sing, but do not make them play the lute, and still less the bass. It is ridiculous to put such an orchestra either in the air or in the heavens. And Raphael himself was wrong when in the Saint Cecilia...

One paints a mouth that sings, because there is life there. But one cannot in any way paint an instrument that resounds, because it is made of wood and has no face that can express any of it.

In everything, it is not so much a question of painting anything whatsoever as of giving the idea of it. But one never succeeds in giving the idea of a thing except by painting truthfully what is suited to giving it.

Thoughts must follow and link to one another, like sounds in music, through their relation alone—harmony—and not like the links of a chain, like strung pearls.

And perhaps, indeed, all marked talents come from some inner singularity that puts us all in a more or less sickly state and makes us only bizarre beings, if it is not also united with a perfect organization.

I always have an image to render. There, then, are an image and a thought, two things for one and double work for me. Besides the thought and the image, I still have a third thing to express: the disposition, posture, or movements of the mind in passing from one idea to another.

In the oratorical there is a complete movement, and consequently one easy to make; in the philosophical there is only a half movement, or a movement held back, and consequently a difficult one.

February […].

Contrasts. They please and are beautiful only insofar as they partake (and in fact are not) of the one within us between soul and body, mind and matter. Thus, when in some object or some work there is something suited to striking the mind and the senses, in such a way that the mind dominates, the object and the work are beautiful.

February […]8.

God. Since we imagine his essence under the appearances of air, we can best picture his action under the appearance of a breath.

March […].

This love doubtless comes from the senses, but it has separated itself from them. Or rather it enters through the eyes and remains there like a charm. It descends into the heart, but stops there and goes no farther. The lower part of ourselves is opposed and hostile to it.

March […].

In philosophy, Plato’s manner and Fontenelle’s, both excellent. Why.

March […] (Shrove Tuesday).

I spend my life hunting these butterflies—taking as good those ideas that accord with common ones, and the others merely as mine.

T62.The repeated first and the distinction between doing and doing well remain. The unstated object of done is not supplied.

T63.The initial 1° and 2° belong to the first paragraph; the following 1st, 2nd, and 3rd begin separate paragraphs and a fresh enumeration. Both sequences remain, including the unfinished idea... in the first. The pronoun en can point back to instruments or, more locally, voices; the English them preserves that uncertainty.

T72.Imagine from celestial voices reads des as de + les, making the voices the imagined source of the higher harmony. A direct-object reading, imagine celestial voices, is also possible, with a looser connection to the preceding harmony.

T64.Basse denotes a bass instrument here; the passage does not specify a modern double bass or cello. Joubert’s criticism of Raphael ends mid-sentence, and the translation does not complete it or infer details of a particular painting.

T65.The last en may look back to life or to the sound being discussed. English any of it retains the unresolved reference; the translation does not supply an explanatory noun.

T66.Organisation denotes the constitution and arrangement of a living being, not an institution. The physical comparison of inner singularity, sickness, and organization remains.

T67.The image, thought, and movement of the mind remain distinct. The second paragraph continues the entry’s contrast between complete movement in the oratorical and restrained movement in the philosophical.

T68.The source begins a new sentence after Contrastes without repeating a subject. English supplies They to preserve the finite declarative sense of Ne plaisent, with contrasts as its antecedent. The assertion that the mind must dominate remains. The parenthetical et ne sont en effet is anomalous: and in fact are not preserves its negative and copula. A lost restrictive que is conceivable, but neither that word nor a reading meaning born is supplied.

T69.The progression through eyes and heart, the corrective Or rather, and the lower part’s opposition remain. The unnamed love and unnamed recipient are not identified.

T70.The butterfly hunt remains literal in the metaphor. Ideas judged good because they accord with common ones are distinguished from those claimed only as mine.