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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

Whether, in paintings, the likeness is real for the eyes or only for the mind, and whether it does not arise from judgment even more than from sight. Indeed, does it exist for animals as it exists for us. Has a dog ever caressed his master’s portrait, or ever been frightened by a painted wolf. Zeuxis’s grapes prove nothing on this question. The anecdote is not certain. One can even say it is false. Besides, etc.

The painter’s art does not do everything in a painting; the spectator’s art, or rather his nature, also does much, perhaps half. — Their two intelligences need each other.

For my part, I believe that for the dog or any other animal there is only black, red, white, a colored object that may well make some impression […] it, but no human likeness, nothing living, nor any expression. There are no eyes.

August […].

Those ancients, who had need of virtue, not being drawn to it by […] precept, led and conducted themselves toward it, so to speak, through reasonings and light considerations.

The last being of the Peripatetics, which, always in motion, had no power to impart motion. The first being gave motion while keeping its immobility. Finally an intermediate being was admitted, which received and gave motion in turn.

It is astonishing how many ingenious ideas those ancients had had, and even how many truths they had discovered, by supposing, for example, that a thing always has its contrary or opposite and by seeking it; that it is always intermediate, last, or first, and by supposing two others that they also sought to determine. This opened up a method and paths for them that often led them very far.

To give motion while keeping immobility is therefore to resemble God himself.

Women are beautiful only through love; and religious things only through respect, piety.

To savor high truths until one grows weary of them and lets oneself be possessed by them.

Someone said (Publiciste September 6, 1803, Tuesday): “Variety rests attention and tires memory.” Could one not say as much of concision, of brevity?

What to do?... Like a short tune that prolongs itself in its last sounds through their own resonance... Not everything resounds.

September […]ᵉʳ.

... of which we have an apperception.

Pause and movement in dance, sound and silence in music, the full and the empty in architecture (in which sculpture shares), the dark and the light or the black and the white in painting.

Likewise, everything that shows passion and temperance together, such as love and reason, pain and generosity or attention to the ills of others, is beautiful.

The ancients said there was a muse who presided over the science of government.

September 2.

— And this proves that one must make oneself loved. For men are never just, except sometimes, and only toward those they love.

T139.Whether keeps the opening question-like fragment; subsequent questions retain the source’s full stops. Compare Pliny, Natural History XXXV.65–66, for stories of birds attracted by grapes painted by Zeuxis. Joubert explicitly disputes the anecdote’s reliability; the allusion is identified without certifying the story as fact.

T140.The spectator’s art is immediately revised to his nature in the source. Their two intelligences refers to painter and spectator, and the provisional perhaps half remains.

T141.The facsimile completely obscures the preposition before lui. The English preserves the gap after impression rather than silently choosing on or in. The final eyes belongs to the discussion of what a painted object presents to the animal, not an added claim about whether the animal possesses eyes.

T142.The article before précepte is lost in the facsimile; the gap is retained. The two movements led and conducted and the light considerations remain distinct.

T143.Peripatetics identifies the school named by the anomalous printed Péripatiticiens, which remains unchanged in French. The first sentence remains a relative-clause fragment. The last being receives motion without imparting it; the first imparts motion while unmoving; the intermediate both receives and imparts it.

T144.The printed en supposait is irregular in the sequence of constructions beginning en supposant. English by supposing follows the parallel sense; the source anomaly remains visible in French. Contrary and opposite, and intermediate, last, and first, are not collapsed into a single contrast.

T145.Savor retains the tasting image. Grow weary and be possessed both remain: the translation does not turn the first into an unambiguously positive absorption or the second into mastery of the truths.

T146.The Publiciste reference is part of the text, not an entry date. September expands the conventional French abbreviation 7bre; the printed day, year, and weekday are retained. The quoted claim is followed by Joubert’s question about concision and brevity.

T400.The September 6 newspaper reference remains bibliographical text, not an assigned date for this source block. The abbreviation 7bre is not expanded in the French. Clipped initial letters in l’attention, de, Que and par are restored.

T147.Apperception renders the unusual appercevance as an apprehension or awareness. No particular philosophical system is assigned to the fragment. Its unstated antecedent remains unspecified.

T148.The full and the empty retain the spatial opposition. The parenthetical participation of sculpture in architecture remains. The following paragraph carries the pattern into passion with temperance and pain with concern for others.

T149.Never, except sometimes, and only retain the source’s successive qualifications. The opening this remains without an invented antecedent.