Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

We know anything well only when we know it after having learned it a long time ago.

March 19.

— And, indeed, if it were only a matter of making oneself understood, that would be easy, but one must make oneself listened to.

Opinions we hold only through a chain of connections. Beware the effects of the chaining of our ideas upon the freedom of our own mind. We entangle ourselves. (Entanglement.)

Cases in which the mind, believing it advances and accomplishes something, is in a sense merely fiddling and giving itself over to moving things about.

There is nothing the philosopher should take greater care to avoid in his style than what is musical or poetic in its sounds, because, etc., etc. Poetic in his ideas, dramatic in his turns of phrase, all his words must be brief, like those of a man speaking, but of a man who speaks well. Reverie, liveliness, sincerity: these must be felt in all his compositions.

Dance must give the idea of a lightness and a suppleness that are, so to speak, incorporeal. The whole effect of the fine arts has as its sole merit, and all must have as their aim, to make us imagine souls by means of bodies. This is a principal rule, or a principle.

The object of every representation is therefore to give an idea, but a fixed idea that unfailingly arises whenever the representation is seen and seen again. Now, to achieve this, the representation must be very determinate, that is, very exact and very finished in all the parts that must produce the effect completely.

But the arts that have movement [as] their means and sole instrument have a few slight differences in their procedures, the most remarkable being that their faults take them less far from the goal than their beauties bring them near it,—because the former, being fleeting and slipping, so to speak, from memory, they do not prevent the latter from making their impressions there. They are lost from sight so quickly that they are easily forgotten.

Always reserve feats of strength for farce. This is another rule and a secondary principle, dependent on the first. These feats displease only as out of place and not in themselves, for they have a determinate expression and are good for giving an idea of a suppleness and a lightness that cannot be attained through them. They show the absent beauty of which I once spoke so much. That is their true use. The clumsiness of the Paillasse clowns (that learned clumsiness) explains what I mean.

March 20.

Pascal, who was born ill, lived ill, and died ill. Voltaire always had a fever in the brain, but without delirium. J.-J. says he was infirm from childhood. Montesquieu had a liveliness that was almost an illness.

Unsound and limited minds. These two words have a meaning that makes them almost inseparable. And observe that an unsound mind is always a rigid mind. Rigidity, then, limits the mind, and the mind is unsound more often through its doctrine than through its nature. All limited minds, if active, are unsound minds.

All madness of mind comes from too much holding fast, tension, and exclusive attention.

Because there one will no longer be able to repent.

March 21.

Images, comparisons. Useful and necessary to double the impression ideas make on the mind by giving them at once a physical force and an intellectual force.

That is true, a king without religion always appears a tyrant.

March 22.

Love. How carefully the ancients avoided everything that might recall (not its pleasures) but at least its mechanism, its workings.

T89.Se faire entendre can mean make oneself heard or understood. Understood is adopted here in contrast with securing a listener’s attention; the aural association remains present in the French.

T90.Enchaînement is repeated before enchevêtrons and the colloquial Embarlificotage. The English keeps the movement from a chain of connections to self-entanglement; it does not turn the entry into a general objection to coherent reasoning.

T91.The first sentence stops its explanation at because, etc., etc. Poetic and dramatic grammatically hang before all his words in the source while characterizing the philosopher’s manner. The translation leaves that shift visible.

T92.The sentence moves from the singular effect of the arts to all the arts as its subject. The English retains that shift and the distinction between merit and aim.

T93.Beaunier supplies [pour], represented by [as]. The source resumes its subject les premières with elles after the intervening participles; the English retains that repetition. Faults and beauties remain the opposed terms, and the paragraph continues onto page 325.

T94.Tours de force and farce have a sound relationship not fully reproducible in English. The negative in on ne peut atteindre is retained: the passage says the lightness cannot be attained through the feats. Paillasse names a stock clown, used here with a plural article. Learned clumsiness and absent beauty preserve the apparent paradoxes.

T95.Tenue is read as mental holding fast in this sequence, rather than dress or outward deportment. Tension and exclusive attention remain separate terms; the English cannot reproduce the full French sound pattern.