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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

The Athenians were delicate in mind and ear; the French are so only in mind.—They would not have tolerated a word apt to displease, even if it were merely quoted.

Indeed, “say security instead of liberty and everyone will understand one another.”

April […].

The abbé Delile.—There is more art in his first works and more naturalness in these. One recalls the verses he made formerly more quickly, but will reread more often these latest verses he has just made.

These beauties that give more exercise to taste, reflection, imagination are not so delicious.

Souls... Savor the charms of repose; it is not inaction.

You put something of the spirit of the age, of fashion, into your judgments. Ah, let your good disposition prevail there, the good-nature of your originality.

April 5.

Before taste reaches mind, reason, imagination...

Let sounds fit sense, words thought, thought affection, affection what causes it. Let sound square with thought.

April 7.

... because what must be put to work and what must be omitted is infinite.

April 4.

... and I would like to think under glass.

April 8.

For the idea and first form of a work must be a space, a mere place where its matter will place itself, arrange itself, and not matter to be placed and arranged.

Comitas. They always seem in good humor when they write. They disapproved in style of an austerity that suggested difficult manners. Harsh, gloomy, severe were qualities they regarded as faults.

April 11, Easter Monday.

—And when Plato said that to philosophize is to learn to die, O my dear friend, what did he mean, if not that to philosophize is to learn to be dead. All the truths our mind can discover are a preparation for living the immortal life of souls and an anticipation of their intellectual felicity.

Debts shorten life.

“Man was born for me alone.” The animal was right in judging man’s purpose solely by the use it derived from him.

April 12.

Poetics is the soul of criticism as morality is the soul of history.

April 12.

“It has been said that the sublime is the artlessness of greatness. An admirable definition!” (Journal de Paris of 16 Germinal, April 6, 1803.) Indeed, there is always something artless in the sublime, and it always depends on the nature of the one who sees or the nature of the thing seen.

T169.Delicate denotes sensitivity or refinement of mind and ear. The final They could return to the Athenians, whose ear is central to the contrast, or refer to the French; the pronoun remains unresolved rather than replacing it with a people’s name.

T170.The quotation’s speaker is not identified in the entry. Understand one another retains the possible movement from shared understanding to agreement in s’entendra. Sûreté is rendered security, not certainty.

S1.Source editor’s annotationReadings. No doubt there is an article on the abbé Delille in that day’s newspaper (probably the Journal des Débats).

S2.Source editor’s annotation“See the April exercise book, same date.” And likewise, in the notebook, before “there is always...” Joubert refers to Readings: “Vid. le cay. lect. même datte.”

T171.The source editor supplies [s] to make fait agree with vers. English made cannot reproduce that letter-level intervention naturally; it is therefore recorded here. The distinction between quicker recollection and more frequent rereading is kept.

T176.The first instruction is translated; the second abbreviated reference is retained as printed: Vid. le cay. lect. même datte. It means approximately ‘See the readings exercise book, same date.’ The abbreviations and historical spelling remain visible, and do not create a new date.

T172.Good-nature is already English in Joubert’s French and is retained exactly, including its hyphen. Good disposition renders bon naturel so that the shift to his borrowed expression remains perceptible.

S3.Source editor’s annotationNotebook.

T173.The printed sequence after mind is separated only by commas. The preceding meditation on taste catching up with mind and reason catching up with imagination suggests a parallel, but no missing verb or conjunction is inserted here.

T174.Affection retains the philosophical breadth of an affective state, not only fondness. Fit and square with distinguish s’ajustent and quadre. The soundplay of sons and sens is echoed by sounds and sense.

T175.Under glass keeps the literal sous verre. The fragment does not specify a glass cover, enclosure, display, or greenhouse; none is supplied.

T177.The matter places and arranges itself in the first clause; the final infinitives describe matter to be placed and arranged. The translation preserves this change of agency. The singular source verb after idea and first form is not artificially reproduced in English.

T178.The Latin comitas denotes courtesy, affability or kindliness. It remains Latin in the English text. The opening They is not replaced with the name of a group; the passage moves from present seem to past disapproved.

T179.Joubert’s distinction between learning to die and learning to be dead is retained. It leads to the immortal life and intellectual felicity of souls, rather than to a paraphrase about accepting mortality. The printed question-like sentence ends with a period.

T322.The clipped right-edge à, philosopher, esprit, and des are restored from surviving fragments. The question-like construction ends with a period after mort.

T180.The edition prints eut raison, a past-tense assertion: was right. The apparent irony or tension is not resolved by changing it to would be right. The animal’s species and the speaker of the quoted claim are not supplied.

T181.Poëtique here is poetics, the account or principles of poetic art, distinct from poetry itself. This keeps the parallel with morality as the animating principle of history.

S1.Source editor’s annotationReadings. Joubert also notes: “The child who, on seeing ice, exclaimed: ah! there is dry water!” He also refers to the Journal de Paris of April 9.

T182.Naïf is rendered artlessness or artless, preserving the sense of an unforced, natural expression rather than modern credulity. The following it most naturally returns to the sublime, but could refer to its artless quality; the English keeps the pronoun. The newspaper date remains a citation inside the April 12 entry.