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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

March 21.

Ferment or leaven that one must keep in one’s mind as a principle of action, life and fertility.—Of action for the worker, life for the work and fertility for the mind, where seeds sleep. (Alias: the mind where seeds are brooded over; they brood over themselves.)

The shrill cry of the saw, and of wit working against the grain. This surprises. Surprise makes us laugh. But there is in this laughter some sort of backwardness and, if one may put it so, pleasure against the lie of the hair.

Form is the male, the ancients said, the generative principle. And indeed it is form that gives being and a sort of personality to all works of art. Through it a block of marble is a statue and outlines are a face, feet, hands and almost a soul... Through it also etc.

Words that detach themselves from the paper and sentences from one another,—and the play of harmony and colors in style. It is through forms that objects strike the eyes; through forms that the arts strike the attention, and words the memory.

March […]3.

Long rolled about in my mind.

Not to write, on such occasions, from one’s own resources.

To gather my clay. First it will have to be kneaded. Then there will be nothing left but to mold it.

To make work easy for oneself.

March 25.

There is something restless in the movements of this style. Its pulse seems to beat too fast.

The same feature that is pleasing when fleeting becomes hideous if it remains fixed. This is because mobility is of the essence of charm.

In how few years France passed from the language of the abbé de Marolles to that of Patru, d’Ablancourt and Pascal.

Friday, March 25.

Bourdaloue’s censure of Tartuffe. He wished, and rightly, that religion alone should decry hypocrisy. Indeed, religion alone can tear this mask from herself without wounding herself. “So many actions, so many speeches, so many manners are common to them,” this orator said very well. Profane hands etc. The Theater reforming the church etc.

March 26.

G[eo]ffr[oy], professor of gallantry.

March 27.

The oratorical (genre or style) partakes of the draped. The philosophical, of the nude or the molded. Thus: You drape and I mold; you paint and I sculpt; you write and I engrave. But, to make my cutting gentle...

March 27.

Anecdotes.—Mr. Piscatori was playing a shade in a proverb play in which Mme Hqrt [Hocquart?] played Proserpina. On seeing her, he exclaimed: “Ah! if I had my body on me!” The same man said of Mr. de L...’s...: “In his translation, he has removed only the coarsest part of the German.” And at the treasury, where he was paymaster general during the revolution, he had had this written on his office door: “Here we give only the title of citizen.”

Mme de La Ferté Imbault said of the two brothers Sᵗᵉ Palaye: “As long as they lived, I could never decide which of the two I loved more. Now that the other is dead, I see clearly that it is this one.”

T136.The images shift from leaven to sleeping and brooding seeds. The reflexive they brood over themselves preserves the unusual ils se couvent eux même. Alias, retained in the text, introduces an alternative wording.

T137.Contre sens supplies a contrary direction; against the grain connects it to the saw. Rebours continues the reversal, while rebrousse poil literally runs against the lay of the hair. The English keeps this second tactile image distinct.

S1.Source editor’s annotationThe same idea, on a separate leaf dated March 24, with no indication of the year, and which must therefore be assigned to this year 1803: “Aristotle says that form is the male. Indeed, it is form that embraces and fertilizes matter and makes it produce in the soul the impressions with which it affects us. March 24, the day after my visit to M. le c. de Lg. [the chevalier de Langeac]. Nobility is a dignity that gives us the presumption that we will do well because our fathers did well.”

T138.Male and generative preserve Joubert’s sexual account of artistic form. The related Aristotle attribution is printed in Beaunier’s apparatus, not independently confirmed here. The unfinished Through it also etc. is retained; the source has a further period after the note call.

T142.The assignment of the separate March 24 leaf to 1803 is Beaunier’s inference. Its date and the visit remain within the apparatus, not new dates attached to the undated main entry. The abbreviated M. le c. de Lg. is kept beside the source editor’s expansion.

T281.The final source-note call is placed between the printed period after etc and an additional following period. That punctuation placement is retained. Several clipped line beginnings are completed from surviving fragments.

T282.The year attribution is Beaunier’s inference, retained as such. The facsimile confirms the abbreviation Lg. and source fairons. Clipped initial characters are restored from surviving fragments.

T139.The first paragraph names no subject for rolled about. The following infinitives remain notes to oneself. Fonds means a stock or resources; it is not silently reduced to money. Kneaded renders the printed historical or anomalous spelling paitrir.

T284.The terminal 3 survives in the day, but the leading digit is damaged; 23 is plausible but not certified. The facsimile confirms paitrir without an accent. The infinitive fragments remain.

T140.Trait may denote a facial feature, stroke or expressive touch; feature leaves its object unspecified. The movement from fleeting to fixed is maintained, as is the distinction between pleasing and charm.

T287.The initial M of Marolles meets the damaged margin and is restored. The exclamatory-looking fragment ends with a period.

S2.Source editor’s annotationThe paragraph and the judgment concerning Geoffroy (March 26) do not come from the notebook, but from an exercise book Joubert entitled “Readings”—which I shall designate thus in my subsequent references—and which runs from March 25, 1803, to March 5, 1804. Most of the extracts and notes contained in this exercise book concern newspaper articles Joubert was reading. Thus the note of March 25, 1803, is preceded by these words: “Today’s newspaper. Fénelon praised too much...” Etc.

T141.Censure denotes Bourdaloue’s condemnation or criticism, not an asserted legal ban. The feminine pronouns keep religion personified. Them refers to religion and hypocrisy, which share outward actions and manners. The two closing etc. fragments are not completed.

T143.Readings translates Joubert’s exercise-book title Lectures, as quoted by Beaunier. This apparatus identifies the source of the Tartuffe and Geoffroy entries; it does not supply dates to intervening undated fragments.

T288.The source note attributes this and the next Geoffroy entry to Lectures, not the carnet. Some clipped left-edge beginnings on 373 are restored from surviving fragments.

S1.Source editor’s annotationNotebook.

T144.Cutting gentle follows the unfinished taille douce construction while retaining the cutting or carving image. Taille-douce is also an engraving term: the Académie’s 1798 dictionary describes burin work on copper. The preceding I engrave makes this technical echo pertinent, but the sentence is not completed.

S2.Source editor’s annotationThis series of anecdotes, from a small exercise book entitled “Anecdotes March 1803”; various dates, the last of which is November 29.

T145.A proverbe here is a play built around a proverb, a form described in the Académie’s 1798 dictionary. The shade’s wish to have his body on him is retained as a bodily joke. The unspecified ... of Mr. de L... remains unspecified. Only the coarsest part of the German reads le plus gros in its coarse-versus-fine sense; the related sense of the bulk or main part remains possible. The Académie’s 1835 entry records both senses.

T290.The facsimile confirms raised te in Sᵗᵉ Palaye. The compressed Hqrt and uncertain source-editor expansion remain. Several clipped right-edge endings are restored from surviving fragments. The series dates remain in their printed source order.

T146.The other and this one are preserved without identifying either brother. The source’s abbreviated Sᵗᵉ Palaye is retained; the anecdote’s conclusion is not rewritten to resolve the speaker’s comparison.