Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

I love small facts. They take up, in a way, little room in memory, which retains them easily. And besides, they always have some characteristic trait. They are signs, very good for identification. For they have had existence, if I dare speak so, only because the manners of the time, a person’s temper, his tastes, his habits, his manias are a ground that brought them forth, a terrain where they have been seen. Great events are born of things and the chain of causes. But small ones are born of man. Spontaneous productions whose seed lies in the soil and which reveal its quality!

Fontenelle. A shadow of a voice. He was a shadow of a man who had only a shadow of a voice. One could no longer hear him, but one listened to him carefully. He resembled old Tithonus when he was changed into a cicada.

February 16.

The mind tends toward God as fire tends toward the sky, as lead tends toward the earth. A little cloth, a light veil, often lulls the tendency of what falls downward. Pleasures are a point of support that holds us back and stops us when we tend upward. We find some rest there. But minds born very sublime, like bodies born very heavy, make an unceasing effort toward their center and cease to be agitated only when they have reached it. The snares of pleasure are too weak and too loosely twisted for you; your mind is naturally too lively and too penetrating, your body offers too little an obstacle, or too inconstant an obstacle, to your mind for it to rest before reaching God.

Let us choose another example and explain through contrast what is high by what is below.

Thus you go irresistibly to religion by the nature of your mind, as others go to it by reason (by habit, by faith, and by the heart). Do not hold it back; it will rise of itself.

You tear the obstacle and find no rest in it, it being too weak for you, or rather you being too strong.

And notice that the stone on the ground enjoys the air, and that the mind in heaven enjoys the earth.

I was right to say: “this sex that believes innocent everything it dares.” Indeed, its timidity is its law, the rule of its judgments on what it does.

Laharpe.—Indulgence must not speak too loudly, for fear of waking justice.

February […].

The contredanse is its image. Men lead women in it.

[…] what am I saying? the promenade.

The eulogy of Washington is a work, the eulogy of Laharpe is a work. Why? Because there is a subject there and it is treated. Yet these writings are short. The article on Mme de Staël is longer. As much mind and talent unfolds in it; there is more fabric and more labor. And yet it is not a work, because there is no subject. So a mantle is not a coat, though in its fullness there is enough to clothe many figures. Let us make vests if we must, instead of wasting our time displaying draperies.

February […]8.

Pride of mind, and pride of heart. The heart high and the mind modest. That is the character of good centuries, and the contrary in the contrary. We have displaced virtues and made vices of them.

The will is to our soul what the heart is to our body.

Let us err with another’s error and not with our own errors. For then, if there is no truth in the soul, there is virtue, deference, docility, gratitude, or piety: virtues in habit, in act. Boileau said it to Racine: “I would rather be mistaken with simplicity than be proudly right as you are.”

The world has become ungovernable through the maxim contrary to what we establish.

To form a sect. It is better to aspire to catholicity.

S4.Source editor’s annotationWhat follows comes from leaf B.—Let us add to this passage a paragraph I find on an undated leaf: “Not everything is grave and important in the history of peoples, and often one finds pleasure there in the minutiae one enjoys looking at and that are not useless there, either because they relax and amuse the attention or because they enter the mind easily and, attaching themselves to memory, fix there the principal facts on which they depend. A few details after the masses introduce variety.” (These lines also have some analogy with a passage in the Anecdotes, volume I, page 97.)

S1.Source editor’s annotation“Adrien Baïllet has been mocked because he tells us that Descartes liked green taffeta, plumes, the wigs he had made in Paris, and that he had as many as four of them; that in Holland he exchanged taffeta for woolen cloth; that his great taste was for omelets made from eggs brooded for eight or ten days. (See art. Baïllet, p. 14 of the 2nd vol. hist. dict., in octavo, vol. 2.) Some are grateful to him for it.—And Voltaire himself: the regent’s ruff, Louis XIV’s two great meals, Charles IX’s blue coat with gilded copper buttons and buffalo-hide gloves.—Add Frederick the Great’s boots, even the faience niche where he liked to lie down,—Add Louis XI’s Parquédieu, Henry IV’s Ventre St gris—To welcome with more pleasure than approval... The world is full of those ungrateful readers who, after having etc., pretend to disdain what they are nevertheless glad to know (listening with a disdainful air to what they are glad to know). Either what is grave and important, or what is useless and mad...—Like the amateurs; those portraits painted with charcoal.—Their ink and their labor wasted. Crébillon, who later knew Mr. de Ch., liked to laugh at the adventure and admitted that he himself had given the advice that etc. had followed better than he had believed.”

T89.Signs and identification retain signes and signalement. Ground, terrain, seed, soil, and spontaneous productions preserve the extended growth image. The source’s grands and petits événements remain great and small rather than being changed into true and false facts.

T90.Masses preserves the visual comparison between larger groupings and details. The paragraph belongs to a separate undated leaf introduced by Beaunier. Its analogy to the Anecdotes is recorded without using that other arrangement to replace the present source.

T91.The historical anecdotes remain Joubert’s reports. Fraize is read as a ruff: Voltaire describes the regent putting one on, which supports this clothing sense. Faience denotes glazed earthenware; the niche remains a niche. Parquédieu and Ventre St gris retain the printed expressions associated here with the two kings. Add. is rendered Add. The broken after having etc., mad..., and the final advice that etc. remain incomplete. In après l’avoir etc., the object pronoun l’ has no completed verb to attach to in English; the broken after having etc. leaves that relation unresolved.

S2.Source editor’s annotationLeaf B.

T92.The three shadows remain repeated. Hear and listen keep the difference between entendoit and écoutoit. Titon is rendered by the conventional English Tithonus; the transformation is retained as Joubert’s mythological comparison.

S3.Source editor’s annotationNotebook.

T93.The upward and downward tendencies retain the comparisons with fire, lead, cloth, and a veil. Lacs means cords or snares here, not lakes; retors keeps the literal twisting of their fibers. Snares that are too loosely twisted cannot hold the ascending mind.

T94.The source’s feminine forte indicates a feminine addressee, but the passage does not name her. English you does not express that grammatical gender. The correction from the obstacle being weak to you being strong remains, as does the final comparison between the stone on earth and the mind in heaven.

T95.This sex remains Joubert’s expression, with its repeated grammatical reference. The preceding text addresses an unnamed woman; the English does not add a named person or turn the assertion into a modern explanatory claim.

T244.The initial E of En and beginning of the final fait are lost or abraded at the left edge. The latter is restored from the surviving terminal it and sentence context, not certified as fully visible.

T96.Contredanse is the dance form; it is not replaced with a modern named dance. The pronoun its lacks an explicit antecedent. The following paragraph begins with illegible material before what am I saying?; the gap marker preserves that loss. Promenade retains the short replacement image without deciding whether a walk or a dance figure is intended.

T246.The day is lost at the left edge. The second paragraph begins in a damaged margin: traces before que cannot establish their original letters or punctuation, so a gap is shown rather than inventing an opening.

T97.The eulogies and article are referred to as Joubert refers to them, without supplied bibliographical titles. Fabric keeps étoffe available for the mantle, coat, figures to be clothed, vests, and draperies. A mantle is not a fitted coat in this comparison; no implication that it is not clothing is intended.

T98.High heart and modest mind retain the spatial opposition. The contrary in the contrary preserves the compressed repetition rather than silently adding bad centuries or a completed contrasting sentence.

T248.The terminal 8 is legible, but the preceding numeral is obscured by scan damage; 18 is not certified. Initial letters of modeste and the contraire continuation are restored.

T99.The singular another’s error remains distinct from our own errors. Virtues in habit, in act keeps the final noun phrases. The quotation is freshly rendered from the French attributed here to Boileau; no external English version supplies it.

T100.Catholicity keeps the term’s sense of universality alongside its religious association. The contrast is with forming a sect; the English does not silently reduce it either to institutional membership alone or to a wholly secular tolerance.