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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

Gessner made little simulacra, insipid, mannered, affected, tedious; simpletons with pretensions, pretensions to virtue. He spoiled our morals by persuading men that there was merit and that they were good men when they loved water and trees. Danton in prison spoke of flowers and of (illegible).

March […]7.

— Yes, and just as one owes society the sacrifice of a portion of one’s independence, one also owes it the sacrifice of a portion of one’s mind, of one’s reason.

March […]3.

By what kind of skill (which we would not have while awake) do we sometimes make the characters painted in our dreams act in a manner so perfectly suited to their manners, their character, their features? The words and tones, the conduct and bearing, everything is marvelously harmonized and admirably imagined in these kinds of dramas that take place within us despite ourselves and in which we ourselves play a part in the immobility and inaction of sleep.

It is good, it is beautiful for thoughts to radiate, but they must not sparkle: except very rarely. That they shine is best.

Nobility (not ancient), but brilliant and such as history should mention.

To have one’s talent in manuscripts and one’s nobility in parchments.

March […]9.

We will then know not only what will be, of which we will be, as it were, witnesses, but also all that has been, indestructible contemporaries of the eternity to come and tireless contemplators of the mirror where everything remains painted. Our books on earth are only too faint an image of the marvelous way we will then be informed of what we will not have seen.

March 14.

It is said that adversity forms men. Austerity in morals, severity in education, take its place. And it is only through the severity of the treatment one experiences, and through the austerity of morals one is forced to have in adversity, that it forms men. (The substance of this idea suggested by Mr. de B[onald.])

March 15.

Intellectual correspondence between men through God, the center to which all the points of all the circumferences correspond.

March 16.

Tacitus. A beautiful nature would have made his pictures more beautiful.

March 17.

[Bonald.] If you say: “Those who had a constitution were not destroyed,” that pleases. But if you were to say (as has been done: “Those were not destroyed: it is because they had a constitution,” that displeases. Why? Because the thought and the word, which have meaning but no evident certainty, do not offer the mind a reason that gives it repose and serves as a sufficient final point of clarity, of solidity. (See page 493 of volume I of the Théorie.)

March 12.

Scrupulous taste. The scrupulous rarely do great things.

March 8.

Ancients (in their compositions). Had minds more at ease than ours. They were not hampered by a thousand considerations we are forced to show for an infinity of works our readers know and that we cannot help perpetually opposing or recalling. They sang their solo in peace. And we are obliged to keep in harmony or put ourselves at odds with all the books that exist. We must occupy our minds with a host of concerns that do [not] relate to the subject but to all those who have treated it. And we play our part in the midst of the cacophony.

T80.The merit clause has no stated object; the translation does not supply one. Good men repeats the moral claim mocked in the preceding phrase. The parenthetical illegibility is the edition’s report, not a word guessed by the translator.

T374.Printed simulachres retained. The source’s illegibility label is not filled with a conjectured object.

T81.Industrie denotes resourcefulness or skill here. The actors, dramas, and role preserve the theatrical account of dreams; the final immobility and inaction remain distinct.

T82.Rayonnent, étincèlent, and reluisent are differentiated as radiate, sparkle, and shine. The repetition of the advice and its rare exception are retained.

T83.Fasse mention is rendered prospectively as should mention. The two brief paragraphs remain one source entry. Parchments suggests the documentary records of nobility, while manuscripts holds the parallel with literary talent.

T84.The future tense is retained throughout the promised knowledge, including knowledge of what has already happened. Indestructible contemporaries and the mirror in which everything remains painted preserve the passage’s unusual images.

T85.The parenthetical acknowledgment of Bonald is part of Joubert’s text. Its period remains within the supplied expansion B[onald.]. The distinction between severe treatment and austere morals is retained.

T379.The closing period belongs inside the supplied name bracket B[onald.], followed by the closing parenthesis. The parenthetical fragment has no supplied verb. Clipped initial letters in several continuations are completed; the full day 14 is legible.

T86.Correspondance and correspondent connect intellectual communication with the geometrical center. The English preserves that relationship without specifying a geometrical system beyond the source.

T87.The source moves from dites, say, to disiez, rendered were to say, while retaining the present result. The parenthesis opened before comme is not closed in the French witness and remains unclosed in the English. Évidence denotes evident certainty or self-evidence here, not documentary evidence. The final bibliographical reference belongs to Joubert’s paragraph.

T88.The clipped Had retains the French omission of a repeated subject. The solo, harmony, discord, part, and cacophony sustain one musical comparison. The source editor supplies [pas], represented by [not].