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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

June 25.

Do these tendernesses in which the senses play no part need caresses?... (against Gesner.)

...to friends, to relatives, to assure oneself of their presence; mothers, their sons, because in their eyes they are always children.

June 8.

What is called wit is as necessary to the world as what is called genius.

June 9.

...because in taking away their dignities she also relieves them of many inconvenient duties.

June 11.

“Crude self-evidence” (in mathematics.)

June 30.

Chateaubriand’s phrase, “the lazy mind and the active imagination.” A poor disposition for being an author. In such a case one has scarcely any genius except for oneself.

One must have genius for oneself.

Those who are cheerful seem to me to be children; those who are too serious, and especially those who are so with pride, seem to me to be dwarfs. Or else, those who are vain seem to me to be children; those who are proud seem to me to be dwarfs.—Children and dwarfs. Their difference: a dwarf has a child’s stature and a man’s bearing.

Chenedollé. Varieties in style. A strong head. To receive in thought what others have received in imagination. Judicial jargon.

June 27.

Mme Necker. What she says about style, study, etc.—All that is the art of swelling oneself, and not the art of making oneself greater.

April […].]

Diderot. Sometimes he rises to the beautiful, but he never stops there.

When Diderot praises Racine, it always seems to me that he is lying; and surely he must have lied to himself.

...And you mistook what stirs for what moves.

—Emotion is worth more than movement.

He adds: “Clarity, however one understands it, harms enthusiasm.” But Virgil, but Racine are clear. O Diderot, you had a taste [one illegible word].

April […] (before departure).

The first impulse of a man who dislikes God is to say to himself: I must arrange the world without him.

April […]7.

In Diderot’s Salon of 1767, from page 255 to page 263.

—and the words: “Poets, be dark. Clarity is good for convincing, it is worthless for moving.”

And on page 262, he claims that “the tyrant is more beautiful than the king; crime, more so perhaps than virtue, cruel gods than good gods.” That makes one shudder as it astonishes.

June […]0

Mr. de Bonnal. “It is (he used to tell me) with wit as with money. Everyone has a little (and indeed everyone has a little simply through the force of circulation); but few own it as property” (in mines, in real capital).

T493.The printed 25 juin precedes 8 juin in source order and is retained without chronological rearrangement.

T227.The fragment leaves the action unstated. Parens may mean relatives or parents; relatives keeps the broader circle alongside friends. The mothers and their sons remain without an inserted verb.

T228.Esprit here denotes an intellectual quality contrasted with genius. Wit retains that familiar distinction; the word can extend beyond verbal cleverness to intelligence.

T229.Elle has no named antecedent within the fragment and is retained as she. Dignités may denote high offices or honors; the associated duties suggest rank rather than personal self-respect.

S1.Source editor’s annotation“June 22 (Tuesday). Mousseaux (the temple).—The columns and the trees: imitation more beautiful than reality.”—“June 23. Bezons. O...! L-V-.” Then Joubert reads a work by Mme Necker.—“June 28. L-V-. 27, badly coiff[ed].”—“29, L-V-.”—“June 30. Pencil. L-V-.”

T230.Evidence here means evident certainty or manifest obviousness, not a collection of supporting facts. The adjective grossière retains the adverse sense crude.

T232.L-V- and O...! remain unexpanded. English coiff[ed] carries the source editor’s completion in coiff[ée], while its ending does not express the French feminine gender.

T494.Native crop confirms source bracket expansion coiff[ée], the O...! fragment, and the repeated unexpanded L-V-.

S2.Source editor’s annotationThen: “and born. Composed of elements that prove incompatible because of the opposition that existed between those of the father and the mother.—Incompatible elements that, ceaselessly tending to flee one another and forced to be together, make the soul feel the repercussions of a perpetual agitation.—These elements occupied in fleeing one another and forced to be together.”

T233.The source quotation begins with the fragment et nés, and born. Its unstated plural subject and the repeated images of mutual flight and enforced companionship remain unresolved in the translation.

T495.The quotation opens with the fragment et nés. Printed éxistoit has an acute accent and is retained.

S3.Source editor’s annotationJoubert had first written: “Cheerful minds...”

T231.Tête forte is retained as a bodily image that may indicate strength of intellect. The brief observations are not combined into a continuous argument.

T497.The source returns from 30 juin to 27 juin; the order and dates are retained.

T498.The opening date is damaged; its closing square bracket survives, while the day and opening bracket do not. No day is inferred. The left edge clips several initial letters. Certes and l’enthousiasme are restored from surviving fragments. In the final phrase, only vois and a damaged preceding trace survive; avois is a contextual restoration, not a fully legible word. The source editor’s indication un mot illisible remains bracketed and italic.

S1.Source editor’s annotationI am not absolutely sure of the reading “Racine.” The n and the a are very clear; the c (if it is one) resembles an uncrossed t. No dot over the i. Yet I believe one must read “Racine.” But then it is very strange. In the alphabetical index to the edition of the Complete Works, I see Racine mentioned only for Rameau’s Nephew, which was not printed until later.It is certainly Racine. And Tourneux’s index is doubtless incomplete. There must be a passage concerning Racine in the Salon of 1767, for that is the work Joubert is reading.“Clarity... harms enthusiasm,” page 147.

T234.Il dut se mentir is read as an inference, he must have lied to himself, rather than an obligation to lie. Beaunier’s separate note records his doubt about the name Racine and then his own resolution of that doubt.

T235.Remuë and meut are distinguished as stirs and moves. The following émotion and remuement contrast inward emotion with movement or agitation; the similar word forms are part of Joubert’s distinction.

T236.The reading avois in tu avois un goût is a contextual restoration of a word whose left edge is damaged in the scan. English you had follows that qualified reading. The editor’s separate [one illegible word] remains an unresolved manuscript gap.

T501.Only the terminal 7 of the date survives; no preceding numeral is supplied. The source’s sallon, Poëtes and cruëls remain unnormalized. Several clipped initial letters are completed from surviving fragments.

S2.Source editor’s annotationThe notebook bears this printed label: “At the Golden Quill, rue Saint-Honoré, no. 110, between rue de l’Echelle and the Petites Ecuries. Neuville, keeps a shop selling writing paper and generally everything concerned with office supplies.”

T237.The comparison runs through money in circulation to owned sources of wealth. Mines is retained, and fonds is rendered capital; landed property is also within its range. The metaphor distinguishes shared currency from a resource one possesses.

T240.The shop sign A la plume d’or is translated as At the Golden Quill; the street and place names remain in French. The printed comma between Neuville and its verb is retained.