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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[LOCKE]

Of the somnambulist Joseph Bayssac. That during his half-sleep, his mind grows and his heart expands. This sleep, brother of life.

July 16.

“She exhales her life (the rose) in her last perfume... You fade from memory.” (Mme Lucile.) “I lay these lilies on your little coffin; they are moistened with my tears.” (The same.) “To snatch him away, death needed only the lightest of its arrows.” And elsewhere: “The corrupt man’s heart is like a great ruin open on every side, which everyone can enter, but where no one finds a refuge.” (The same.)

July […]7.

Perhaps it is true that the reader’s mind likes to finish, and that one should give it only what it needs to finish easily and be recalled to the work of its own accord, etc. I finish too much.

July […]8.

Plato represented with butterfly wings (on his head), because he had been the first to speak of the soul and its immortality. (See Winckel. on allegory, page 143.)

He has hidden our origin from us, but not our destination, because we can influence the latter, not the other.

July […]1.

...when the organ was profaned by being made to resound on the stage.

July […]2.

“One does not live (Martin used to say after the ravages of the revolution), one does not live, one survives.” Martin was fond of good food and upright: “It is not beautiful to eat, but since one eats, one must eat well.”

July […]3.

...perfumed with the air you had breathed there.

...the pebbles of little Poucet.

August […].

Beauties of altitudes in those... and of whom it seems that their soul, indeed, carries their body.

August […]4.

Lost spirit. Judges without justice, priests without religion.

August […]1.

The sensitivity that comes from the nerves. Opinions exert a great influence on this part and can make fit for cruelty. Examples in the revolution.

August 12.

To say everything that is thought with reflection and everything that is felt with ardor; no chatter. (On seeing Mlle Dchns [Mlle Duchesnois].)

Talma. Too much body in the voice.

T244.Somnambulist retains the historical term without deciding from this fragment what kind of sleep or altered state is meant. The subordinate That and the final brother-of-life image remain fragmentary.

S1.Source editor’s annotationLucile de Chateaubriand, Mme de Caux.

T245.The facsimile reads Tu t’effaces, a second-person reflexive: You fade. The rose keeps the feminine personification she and her. The separate quotations and their attributions remain within one source paragraph; they are not joined into a single continuous speech. The masculine le in le ravir is rendered him, without supplying a name.

T507.Native isolated crop confirms Tu t’effaces, not Tu l’effaces; the reflexive second-person pronoun is preserved.

T246.The clipped beginning of rappellé is restored provisionally in French; recalled follows that qualified reading. Achever and finir remain close in the English repetitions. The final I finish too much suggests excessive finishing or elaboration, without turning it into a claim about how many works Joubert completes.

T508.Only terminal 7 survives in the day label. Clipped ne is completed from surviving text. The beginning of rappellé is lost, leaving ppellé; ra is restored provisionally. Modern French quotation witnesses corroborate rappelé, but no independent early facsimile was obtained. This is a disclosed restoration, not fully visible print.

T247.The claim and its abbreviated reference are translated as Joubert records them. The wings remain on the head; the passage does not identify a particular object more fully.

T248.The initial Il is retained as He. Although a divine agent may be intended, the fragment does not name one.

T249.The repeated does not live is retained before survives. Gourmand can suggest appetite or relish for food; fond of good food keeps it distinct from the following upright. Beau remains beautiful rather than being recast as morally right.

S1.Source editor’s annotation“Monday [July 26], dream. L. V.—Tuesday, July 27, St-Cloud, the terrace. [And Joubert draws the shape of the terrace]. Wednesday, 28. The expression ‘it is time to bring God down here.’—Same day, 9 Thermidor. [Stars.] Same day. Sad beginning to my mother’s anniversary! St. Anne, etc. [And Joubert draws tears.]—Ibid. 28. At least temper the day’s folly with the previous day’s wisdom.—To become a bean, etc.—August 1—Oh!—Ibid. M. V. has a frank silence, that is to say, etc.—August 2. And does not the butterfly enjoy the sun as much as, and even more than, the bee?—August 2, 1802: The same day, at the same hour, my poor mother! carried out of her house. Eheu!...—August 6, Friday. Return of M. V.”

T250.Embaumées is feminine plural, with no noun expressed. Perfumed renders the fragrant sense; embalmed is also within the verb’s range, but the fragment does not settle a funerary reading.

T254.The source editor’s supplied [July 26], stars, and descriptions of drawings remain within the quotation. No terrace or tears are reconstructed as images. L. V. and M. V. remain unexpanded; becoming a bean remains unexplained. Eheu is Latin for alas.

T251.The French fairy-tale name is retained. Gravier is rendered pebbles, the small stones of the familiar tale, rather than replacing the name with an English adaptation.

T252.Altitudes is retained rather than corrected to attitudes or postures. The interrupted those... and the awkward of whom... their construction preserve the incomplete connection.

T515.A damaged terminal 4 appears in the day label, but its left side meets the scan loss; no complete day is inferred.

T253.The French leaves the object of rendre unstated. English make fit retains that gap, without deciding whether the object is the sensitive person or the faculty just discussed.

T516.The rightmost 1 of the date is secure, with preceding material damaged. The missing object of rendre is not supplied; clipped initials of partie and Exemples are restored from surviving text.

S2.Source editor’s annotationOn August 12, 1802 (24 Thermidor, year 10, at the Comédie française. Voltaire’s Sémiramis: Talma is Ninias and, Mlle Duchesnois, Sémiramis. The Doctor in Spite of Himself is performed afterward. (Registers of the Comédie française.)

T255.The unmatched opening parenthesis before the Republican date and the comma after and reproduce the source’s irregular punctuation. The source editor’s calendar equivalence and casting information remain apparatus, not additional authorial entries.