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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

A feeling named Love and another called Regret.

—The tendencies of matter never so closely resemble the instincts, the intentions, the loves, and the wills of the... etc.

May 12. (evening, 10 o’clock.)

Mme Krudner. Has something alight about her.

May 14.

Mr. de Bonnal.

May 19.

To consult oneself. The soul, mirror of the universe; and above all mirror of other souls, for they all resemble one another. The same nature, and varieties.

May 21.

My mind and character are sensitive to cold; I need the temperature of the gentlest indulgence.

May 23.

Of sciences with which one builds bridges. Bonaparte.

May 25.

The Greeks. God, unable to bestow truth upon them, gave them poetry.—Mme de Vintimille.

“She has (Mme de B. used to say) all her intelligence in results, and one never sees through what lines of descent her ideas came to her.” That is to say, there is no movement of life in this mind, nor anything accessory to what it produces. The difference between a cherry and the ball of a cup-and-ball toy, and between a turner’s works and the fruits of a tree, etc. Like painted marble fruits, which one is tempted to mistake for the real thing.—Acquired taste and natural taste, the desire and not the need to please.

Opinions and no idea.—Yes, through the force of assertion.

May 27.

Fear nourishes the imagination.

May 29, Saturday.

Hall of the Seasons. Love is serious. If it were modern, one would say its head looked dressed in brushwood.

Our artists imitate fairly well what is lively in the ancients, but not what is gentle, serious, tender, peaceful.

May 30.

Nothing that does not transport is poetry.

T219.The final des... leaves a plural noun unstated. English of the... preserves that unfinished grammatical relation rather than supplying a class of beings.

T220.Allumé literally means lit or kindled and may suggest animation or excitement. The English preserves the image without assigning a diagnosis or a particular cause.

T487.Printed Krudner remains unnormalized. The recorded evening time is retained with the date.

S1.Source editor’s annotation“May 20. Alas, I am a butterfly [this word crossed out by Joubert], and of [three small signs resembling the paragraph sign, §] I have only my L.—Butterfly of providence—!” a)a) Cf. Chênedollé, fragments of the private journal communicated by Mlle L. de Lamarre: “Joubert says that, for his mind to be at ease and to have a flow to it, it must be in the mild air of indulgence.” (February 2, 1807.)

T221.Frilleux, the spelling printed here, describes sensitivity to cold. The temperature of indulgence retains the extended bodily metaphor instead of reducing it to a general request for kindness.

T222.Beaunier describes three signs and prints § as their likeness; only that single example is reproduced. L. is not expanded. His nested comparison from Chênedollé remains a separate apparatus paragraph with its own 1807 date. Avoir du jet suggests flow, impetus, or a ready outpouring of thought.

T489.The source editor describes three signs but prints a single example § within brackets; no manuscript symbols are invented. The nested a) comparison is kept as the second apparatus paragraph, including its own later date. The letters L. are not expanded.

S2.Source editor’s annotation“26 Wed. G-ffr-. D-ss-lt.”

T223.The printed G-ffr-. and D-ss-lt. remain unexpanded. Handwritten glosses visible beneath the printed note in the scan are not incorporated into the edition’s text.

T224.Filiations retains the image of ideas descending through a lineage. Bilboquet names the cup-and-ball toy; a turner shapes such objects on a lathe. The contrast between manufactured and growing fruit is preserved. Neither the woman discussed nor Mme de B. is identified more fully by this passage.

T225.The room name and the conditional comparison appear to concern a representation of Love. No particular artwork or artist is identified here. Coëffé de broussailles preserves the odd image of a head dressed in brushwood rather than replacing it with a conventional description of untidy hair.

T226.Transporte preserves the sense of being carried beyond one’s ordinary state. No object is expressed in French, and none is supplied in English.