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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

To ply Socrates’ trade by proving to them that they know nothing, a source of enmities.

May 25.

Plutarch (in his morals). This mind dyed with the purple of others,

Plato. Shining with his own light. (Sydus, a mind of flame by its nature, and not merely illuminated).

May 26.

That as the parts, the thoughts etc. that ought to be in a work arrive in it and arrange themselves better, words become more indifferent in it, are less important and seem to occupy less space. The author pays less heed to them. As long as he is so occupied with words, it is because he has not yet found his thing, or his turn.

May 31.

Chateaubriand has too little art, but an inexhaustible naturalness.

The faults—cold, insipid, languishing—of our old writers who sought to purify the language were those that most struck the critics of the time. (One still sees it in Boileau.) Our moderns have long sinned by the opposite excess.

To have an attention so firm that it sees ideas as though they were things, and in the way the eyes see the realities that stand before them as objects and paint themselves on their retina.

June 2.

What one writes with difficulty is written with greater care, engraves itself better.

All prose (of a certain kind, of a certain perfection) seems to be a translation of certain ancient verses.

June 3.

All these repeated words resemble blows one redoubles because one has not struck the blow that would be decisive.

One must (perhaps) cast seeds (only) into minds, not plant dead trees and full-grown plants in them.

Always to associate a new idea or expression with a common idea, expression or turn.

T26.The infinitive remains a fragment followed by its consequence, a source of enmities. No unnamed audience is identified.

T28.Morals refers to Plutarch’s moral writings and translates the printed lowercase morales without substituting a full bibliographical title. The dyed mind and borrowed purple remain physical images. The final comma is printed and is retained.

T29.Sydus is retained as printed. The surrounding light and flame suggest Latin sidus, a star or heavenly body; the spelling is not silently corrected. The mind has its own flame rather than merely receiving illumination.

T30.The initial That preserves the propositional fragment. Indifferent means of less consequence here, not emotionally unconcerned. Thing and turn retain chose and tournure without replacing them with a more specific account of a work’s subject or syntax.

T31.Naturalness keeps naturel in contrast with art, retaining the inexhaustible quality of what comes naturally without adding a specific kind of talent.

T32.Cold, insipid, and languishing remain adjectives naming faults. The following sinned preserves the moral vocabulary of pèchent within literary criticism.

T33.Attention remains the subject that sees ideas as things. The source spelling object is retained in French; the English renders the contextual objects before the eyes. The realities paint themselves on the retina rather than being passively compared to paintings.

T34.Engraves itself better retains the reflexive material image in se grave mieux. Memory may be implied, but no object or location for the engraving is supplied in the sentence.

T35.Perhaps and only remain parenthetical qualifications. Dead trees and full-grown plants are two distinct objects in the contrast with seeds; the English does not make all the plants dead.

T36.Common means familiar or shared in this context. The repeated idea and expression and the additional turn remain, without treating ordinary usage as necessarily vulgar.