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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

Friday, August 26.

We sometimes express our idea perfectly well with expressions we do not understand very well.

We often have thoughts that bridle our mind; ways of seeing that keep us from advancing.

Often, too, our mind goes farther than our thought and our words farther than our mind. Then we arrive, carried along by the word. (August 27.)

To make clarity, through the simplicity and purity of the substance.

Reconciling doctrines are worth more than exclusive ones.

Whoever has not observed himself carries within him an experience he does not know.

Flashes that pass through the mind and illuminate it so swiftly that it scarcely attends to them. In such cases, it has seen more than it has retained. Thus whoever has not observed himself carries within him an experience he does not know.

August 27.

Mercure of the 27th. “To paint nature, one must speak as she does.” A verse by the critic. Oh, the fool!

The critic is rather like certain people who show ugly teeth whenever they want to laugh.

Where, then, was the Version of the Seventy, since Plutarch did not know it?

September 8.

This soul, lodged first in a child’s body, then in a young man’s body, finally in an old man’s body, and yet always the same, and in some people always like itself. The human soul has four houses in the course of human life.

September 10.

Whenever form carries substance away, whenever comparison, metaphor etc. carry the mind along, it is because the mind is weak, tired, languishing, scarcely master of its own action.

September 9.

Of things, men, books, words, and events known to all, to which we can attach our allusions and comparisons as to threads already stretched and tested. For we compose our works as the spider weaves its web.

There is a corner in our mind through which we are always young and almost children. This is not for lack of sense or gravity in thought, but because we had destined ourselves for no serious role in life.

September 11.

Those for whom devotion is only one pleasure more.

T416.The clipped initial V of Vendredi and the beginnings of expressions, manières, paroles and le are restored. The block returns from September to August in printed order. The closing date August 27 belongs to paragraph 3 and remains inside it.

T161.Bridle preserves the restraining image. The following paragraph distinguishes mind, thought, and words, then lets the word carry the writer farther. Its August 27 date stays inside that paragraph.

T162.Experience remains something carried within oneself yet unknown. The next entry repeats this sentence after developing the image of swift flashes; both occurrences remain in order. The misspelling Quiquonque stays in French.

T163.Mercure and the 27th are retained without inventing a fuller article title or naming the critic. A verse renders the singular vers referring to the quoted line. Nature’s feminine pronoun is preserved in the quotation.

T164.The title refers to the Greek biblical translation commonly called the Septuagint. Version of the Seventy retains the form of Joubert’s title; French Septantes keeps its printed final s. The question about Plutarch remains a question, not a verified assertion about what texts he knew.

T165.The passage names the bodies of a child, young man, and old man, then says four houses. The number four is retained; no missing age or fourth dwelling is invented. Always the same and always like itself remain distinct.

T166.The physical movement of emporte and entraînent is retained. Substance renders fonds in the contrast with form. The final scarcely master concerns the mind’s control over its own activity.

T167.The sentence begins as a topic rather than a completed command. The allusions and comparisons are attached to familiar materials as threads; the spider’s web remains literal.

T423.Clipped right-edge word endings are restored from the visible continuations. The earlier date is retained in printed sequence.

T168.The past perfect had destined follows ne nous étions destinés. The en of gravité en pensées is restored contextually from the clipped e, as recorded in the French source qualification; the English in thought relies on that provisional reading.