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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1803

January 1.

She [Mlle Clairon] wanted the theater to be a school of language “for foreigners and that part of the nation which has neither the time nor the means to have teachers.” (Page 64.) There are indeed two things of which the actor is obliged to offer constant models: decency or good grace in every kind of bearing, and beautiful pronunciation.

January 2.

I shall add here, concerning Lekain, that M. de Montmorin used to say of this actor: “He always seems to express only half of what he feels.” Fine praise! M. de M[ontmorin] added: “All your other actors seem to express more than they feel, etc.”

At page 328. “Friendship is known by confidence, love by timidity.” That is what she means, but she has not said it well.

Mme Necker. This woman concerned herself with men and events only to compare them with books. Literatures were her world.

January 3.

Page 104. [New Miscellanies of Mme Necker, volume II.] “For Rousseau (she says very well) never saw vice except in violent and premeditated actions.” And nota-bene that even what is not premeditated was meditated. To explain that.

January 3.

Old men. They have a memory for old things and no memory for recent things. “Recollection from afar,” the people say. Old men have the same defect in their memory as in their sight; and one can say of them that they have a long memory.

January 4.

Nothing costs children so much as reflection. It is because the soul’s ultimate and essential destination is to see, to know, and not to reflect. Reflecting is one of life’s labors, a means of arriving, a path, a passage, and not a center. Everything tends ceaselessly toward its ultimate destination. To know and to be known: those are the two resting points. Such will be the happiness of souls.

January 5.

Time strikes me on the head. I feel it shaking my teeth.

January […].

Isaiah, chapter I. “The children I have raised and nourished have despised me. The ox has recognized its master (the ox recognizes the oxherd), and even the ass its stable.”

The most intelligent animals pay attention to persons, the others pay more attention to places (the ox and the ass, the dog and the cat, and among birds, etc.)

The ox loves the oxherd and the dog loves the huntsman more than the others... (Man too naturally loves the one who is his guide...) the one who instructs him, commands him, trains him. The lazy huntsman, the negligent oxherd, and the indolent tutor are less loved. There is in every rule a repose that attaches gratitude to every authority that establishes order.

January […]6.

Foolish error is not dangerous, but ingenious errors. Whatever poses no danger deserves no attack.

January 8.

What one writes must be of such worth that, if pressed, it can be reduced to a beautiful word, and that, if extended, beautiful sentences can be found in it. . If the test does not yield these results, one has produced only chatter or points of wit.

Points?—If it is the point of a pin; but if it were the point of a diamond?

Whence the difficulty of writing? Ambition, models, the luxury introduced into styles; all one must know and all one must forget; the variety of tastes one has to satisfy, given the great number of readers. Writing is difficult as furnishing one’s home is difficult. Readers want too much magnificence and too many conveniences. Finally, the need to please as much as others; and hence also the need often to please more than oneself. As M. de Montesquieu says, finally (and to speak as the people do), because one wants to outbid. For this century is also capricious, and it is no longer possible to do well without being a little singular.

S1.Source editor’s annotationThe first five paragraphs do not come from the notebooks, but from a small sixteen-page booklet, mostly containing quotations, which bears this title: “Mlle Clairon and Mme Necker. Mlle Clairon, her Memoirs, Paris, Buisson, 1798.”

T1.Maintiens denotes ways of carrying or composing oneself. Bearing keeps the actor’s bodily example alongside pronunciation. The source editor supplies [Mlle Clairon]; the quotation is translated from the French Joubert records.

T2.Beaunier assigns the first five paragraphs to a sixteen-page booklet rather than the notebooks. Its printed title and bibliographical wording remain within his apparatus; they do not supply new titles for the individual entries.

T3.The two halves of the comparison distinguish feeling from the amount expressed. The source’s partial name completion M[ontmorin] remains bracketed, while the earlier fully printed name remains unbracketed.

T4.The quotation and Joubert’s criticism of its formulation remain distinct. The English does not alter the quoted words to reconcile them with the criticism.

T5.The plural littératures is retained as literatures, rather than silently reduced to books or literature.

T6.The source-supplied title is translated as printed. The present is not premeditated and the past was meditated retain Joubert’s tense change and wordplay. His infinitive reminder To explain that is not a translator’s addition. Nota-bene means mark well.

S2.Source editor’s annotationNotebooks.

T7.English repeats the old men as They after the noun fragment to keep the finite assertion clear. Long memory retains Joubert’s comparison with sight that reaches farther than it does near; the colloquial recollection from afar is left visible.

T8.The repeated destination, path, passage, center, and resting points retain the spatial account of reflection. The final future will be is preserved rather than recast as a statement about present happiness.

T9.The bodily actions remain literal within the image. The French qui is a qualified restoration where a dark mark obscures the ending; the English follows that contextual reading.

S1.Source editor’s annotationI find this paragraph on a leaf that begins with an extract from “The Spirit of Things, Paris, Laran, Debrai, Fayolle, etc., year 8, volume I”; and Joubert says: “extract from a nebulous and empty book in which a stroke of wit, a ray of light, seems to have taken pleasure in painting this passage, of which more than one useful application can be made. Observ. May 1802, copied January 1803.” Then follow, under the date January 5, the quotation from Isaiah and the remarks. After that, insignificant quotations, and the date January 9.

T10.The quotation is newly translated from the French given here, including Joubert’s parenthetical oxherd comparison; it is not replaced with wording from an English Bible. Beaunier dates the quotation and remarks to January 5 in the apparatus, while the damaged main heading remains incomplete.

T205.The main day numeral is lost at the left margin. The source annotation separately dates the Isaiah quotation and remarks to January 5; that apparatus evidence does not replace the damaged printed heading. Clipped initial letters in the paragraphs are restored from surviving fragments.

T11.Piqueur denotes the huntsman who handles a pack of hounds. Gouverneur is rendered tutor in the context of instruction and training; the historical word can also denote a governor or commander. Rule, repose, gratitude, authority, and order retain the chain of the final sentence.

S2.Source editor’s annotationNotebook.

T12.The source moves from singular error to plural errors and leaves the contrasting predicate after but unstated. Its next sentence says that what poses no danger merits no attack; it does not claim that every danger must be attacked.

T206.The 6 is visible but its preceding margin is damaged; no missing leading digit is inferred.

T13.The material actions of pressing and extending remain in the comparison. Pointes names pointed conceits or turns of wit; points of wit keeps the word available for the next paragraph’s pin and diamond. The additional separated period after sentences reproduces the witness.

T14.The repeated pointe moves from a point of wit to a sharp tip. The English preserves the shift from present is to conditional were. Pointe de diamant can also name a diamond-tipped tool for cutting glass; no particular tool is specified in Joubert’s fragment.

T15.The comparison with furnishing one’s home continues in magnificence and conveniences. More than oneself preserves a compressed comparison whose exact force is not settled here. The broken construction As ... finally ... because remains; the English does not invent the missing Montesquieu quotation or a completed explanation.