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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

Almost everywhere the word of the soul, of the soul moved and softened.

A compilation, a jumble, but one that happily bears the effect [two or three illegible words] his finger. [They] leave no fixed idea in the readers’ minds. All this gives more pleasure than happiness.

April […]0.

Full of those soft beauties that enervate the arts. I was right to say there was some t’-t-n.

There is some genius and some burned brain here.

April […]1.

He is right: in driving out the gods, one enlarges the world.

April […]0.

“Fruitful lips,” says Milton, as though in that state of life and innocence the mouth had been the organ, the kiss the sole instrument.

April 21.

The mixture of the polished state and the savage state composes the barbarous state, and the mixture of the savage state and the religious state carried to its highest degree forms the heroic state.

April 22.

“Of sin (he says), which is only Virgil’s mala mentis gaudia.” That is beautiful, and beautiful in skill and truth, beautiful in meaning and resourcefulness. The guilty joys of the heart. Let us employ (as he says) the repetition of sounds in pastoral paintings and in dark harmonies.

Metusque laborque. The que are for symmetry.

That is very beautiful.

Nothing is more just than his rules, and nothing more opposed to them than his examples. (See Enler, Dante etc., and above all page 289 of volume 2.) His principles are worth more than his conclusions.

—and stronger in reasons than in reasonings.

—But is that truly Christian?

... becomes no more than a bleating.

To put Christianity into a poem is the way to lose its reality.

—There are not enough forms of assertion.

April 23.

Words warm with the soul’s breath and moist with its breathing, with its warmth, if I may express myself so.

—Pompous as hundred-petaled roses.

“Its scent, that is, its spirit,” says Chateaubriand. That is charming!

Everything passes through our brain. But in him everything comes straight out of his heart.

T202.The missing two or three words remain marked. French Ne laissent is a finite plural verb without an expressed subject, following singular compilation and jumble. English supplies [They] to preserve the declarative sense; its antecedent remains unidentified, and these brackets are the translator’s. Pleasure and happiness remain distinct.

T203.Énervent means weaken or deprive of force, not irritate. The repeated t’-t-n remains abbreviated here; its earlier source-editor expansion appears on page 340.

T472.The day has terminal 0 only; no leading numeral is inferred. The abbreviated t’-t-n is not expanded here. The initial qu’ is partly clipped and restored from surviving text.

T204.Cerveau brûlé is a figurative expression for a reckless or extravagant mind. Burned brain retains the literal image rather than asserting a physical injury.

T473.Only terminal 1 survives in the day label; the date is not reconstructed.

T205.The phrase is translated from Joubert’s French, without substituting wording from an English edition of Milton. Organ and instrument are left without a supplied object specifying the act.

T474.The clipped day preserves terminal 0 only. The source’s reproductive image and incomplete-looking predicate are retained. Initial d’innocence and the continuation of instrument are clipped and restored from surviving endings.

T206.Polished, savage, barbarous, and heroic retain the distinctions Joubert makes among states of society. Religious modifies one state, which is carried to its highest degree; the English does not attach that qualification to the mixture.

S1.Source editor’s annotationGénie du Christianisme, volume II, pages 283 ff.

T476.The source-note call follows the date heading, not a word in the author paragraph. The quoted Latin and repeated que remain literal. The standalone italic que is the third literal occurrence of que within paragraph 2. The left edge clips initial letters of Cela and continuation of industrie and harmonies, restored from visible text.

T207.Metusque laborque means and fear and labor. The repeated enclitic que supplies the symmetry Joubert identifies. The form is retained as printed; the nearby Virgil passage has et Metus and Letumque Labosque, which are not substituted here.

T208.The facsimile appears to print Enler, retained here with the source transcription’s glyph qualification. Euler is a possible reading or intended name, but it is not substituted as certain.

T209.Souffle and haleine are differentiated as breath and breathing. The warmth and moisture retain the bodily metaphor, including the final with its warmth, which is not rearranged into a more regular relation.

T210.Pompeux can mean magnificent or splendid as well as ostentatious. Pompous keeps the connection with Joubert’s recurrent pomp and the image of a rose with many petals; it need not be read as a merely dismissive insult.

T478.The contrast between notre and lui/son is retained without assigning the unnamed referent a supplied name.