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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

(March 28.)

“Our soul has no secrets that conduct does not reveal.” This maxim of the Chinese may not be exactly true.

(March 31.)

Mr. J[ulien?] said very well of Mr. P[iscatori?]: “He is upright and adroit.”

(April 4.)

Mme H. said of Mr. H..cht, who is very tall and somewhat stooped at the shoulders: “He always looks as though he were riding into a room on horseback.”

Mr. J[u]l[ie]n to his sister’s chickens: “Peace! peace! you will make yourselves thin.”

R. said very unjustly of Mr. P.: “He is harsh-acrid.” He said of Mme de St[aël]: “That Swiss woman who is so subtle.”

Of B[enjamin] C[onstant], whom the D[irectory] had taken for a dupe after the day of...: “He looks like a big dog that has had a rough currying.”

(April 12.)

Mme H[oc]q[ua]rt said that [...] looked like a lazy lackey whose only occupation was warming himself by a stove.

(May 17.)

“One must wear one’s velvet on the inside” (Mr. Julien), that is to say, show one’s amiability above all to those with whom one lives at home.

September […]0. Villeneuve.)

The peasant’s remark: “It is true, I had divorced, but I have revorced.”

March […]8.

To choose, and the difficulty of choosing. Nothing is more important and more painful in the art of writing.

March […]0.

More thoughts than words. More practiced in reflecting than in writing. Knowing the beauties of the language better than its [ ] And whose dictionary is short.

March […]0.

Indeed, V[oltaire] long had a fop’s mind and ridiculous manners. When this greenness had ripened...

March […]1.

Everything in it must be precise, yet nothing too tightly packed.

... this archangel’s quill...

The only enemies are those who do not understand one another. (Literally.)

T147.Upright and adroit preserves the moral and practical senses of droit and adroit, with an echo of their soundplay. Both uncertain name expansions and their question marks belong to the source editor.

T291.Both uncertain name expansions retain their source question marks. The clipped et is completed from the continuation.

T148.Harsh-acrid keeps the doubled description in âpre-âcre, although it cannot reproduce the near rhyme. Very unjustly remains Joubert’s explicit judgment on this characterization. The separate subtle renders fine without making the Swiss woman merely physically thin.

T149.Étriller means to curry an animal and, figuratively, to beat or severely mistreat someone; both senses appear in the Académie’s 1798 dictionary. Rough currying keeps the animal image and the suggestion of rough treatment. The day after which Constant was taken for a dupe remains unstated.

S3.Source editor’s annotationIllegible word, erased by Joubert. One thinks one can make out “Lertu”.

T150.The source prints call 2 after [...], but the corresponding footer is numbered 3 and discusses the erased name. The printed call is retained and linked to the corresponding source note. Lertu is Beaunier’s tentative reading in the apparatus, not a name restored in the main text.

T151.The literal clothing image is followed by Joubert’s own explanation: amiability is to be shown especially to those at home. The two remain in one paragraph across the source page break.

S1.Source editor’s annotationAfter this, dated Monday, November 29, 1803, there is an anecdote concerning the maréchal de Balincour, entirely in quotation marks and taken from Mme de Genlis’s Souvenirs of Félicie.

T152.Revorced mirrors Joubert’s revorcé, a playful reversal of divorcé. The context suggests a return to marriage, but the coined word is not replaced by remarried. The initial French r is a contextual restoration at the damaged scan margin.

T158.Beaunier describes an anecdote without printing it; no new reconstruction is supplied. The source’s Monday, November 29, 1803 is retained, although that date fell on Tuesday. This apparatus date does not replace the main entry’s damaged September heading.

T296.Only terminal 0 is secure at the clipped date margin; neither a preceding digit nor the lost opening parenthesis is supplied. The place and closing parenthesis remain. The source prints j’avais. The initial r of revorcé is lost at the left edge and is restored contextually from the visible evorcé and the coined reversal of divorcé. No accented é is inserted into that first syllable.

S2.Source editor’s annotationNotebook. And, March 29: “Poor Nanette!”

T297.The terminal 8 survives; the lost preceding numeral is not inferred. Clipped initial p of pénible is restored.

T153.The bracketed blank belongs to the printed text and remains unfilled in both languages. The capital And reproduces Et after langue without an intervening printed period. The fragment gives no explicit subject.

S3.Source editor’s annotation“Readings.”

T154.Petit maître denotes a fop or affected fashionable man. A fop’s mind keeps the application to the mind itself. Greenness and ripened preserve the vegetal image and its implication of immaturity; the unfinished When clause remains.

T299.Only terminal day 0 is visible; no leading digit is inferred. The clipped opening of manières is restored. The handwritten marginal cross is not part of the author text.

S4.Source editor’s annotationNotebook.

T300.Only terminal 1 is secure; no leading numeral is inferred. The clipped first letters of serré are restored.

T155.Plume can mean both feather and writing pen. Quill carries both senses without identifying the writer imagined here.

T301.The initial ellipsis is retained; no governing clause is supplied.

T156.S’entendre can mean hearing, understanding one another, or agreeing. The parenthetical Literally belongs to Joubert. The translation chooses understand one another while preserving the possibility that the remark plays on hearing.