Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

September 12.

To live with oneself, that is to say...

“To live medicinally” is not always to live unhappily, whatever the proverb may say, if during that time one lives with oneself.

Not how long he has lived, but how long with himself and within himself.

Within oneself means having no movements except those that come from ourselves or with our consent. And with oneself means experiencing nothing unknown to us. It means being the witness, the confidant, the arbiter of everything one does and everything one says and everything one thinks. It means both leading and contemplating one’s life. It means living known to oneself. It means serving oneself as companion, friend, and regulator. It means keeping watch, it means...

Happy (in literature) those who come after the worst, woe [to] those who come after the excellent. And the opposite in life in the world.

... and who say there are two deaths, one death of a moment and another that is eternal. But the eternal one is yours, since it has no return.

September […] (in the morning).

An ardor of mind from which jets of light spring. — Drops of light.

September […]3.

“To spiritualize bodies?” That is to go straight to their essence. One should count it as a merit rather than a fault in those who have attempted it with some talent.

Life is a duty one should try to make a pleasure, like all our other duties.

L- Lx [Delalot] in Virg. — His severity is cynical. His censure is licentious.

There are kinds of style pleasant to sight and hearing, silky to the touch, useless to smell and insipid to taste.

Bossuet would not have found in France in our day the language he would have needed.

This modesty so touching, though it comes less from distrust of oneself than from a just estimate of human nature; so that it is at once a light and a virtue.

Bossuet. If he could have concentrated himself...contented himself with the bounds of poetry; if he had learned to play the lyre.

All times, all doctrines were constantly present to him. All things and all words. Less a man than a human nature. Strength, temperance, justice, prudence; and the seven gifts, knowledge and gentleness; and the theological virtues, patience. But the temperance of a saint, but the justice of a bishop, but the prudence of a doctor, but the strength of a great mind...

September […]4.

L-L. He articulates his thoughts clearly, distinctly, and forcefully. His pronunciation even has something sonorous about it. But what he thinks is not as exact as what he says. When he jokes, he resembles those people who show ugly teeth when they want to laugh.

T169.Medicinally retains the unusual adverb for a life ordered by care of one’s health or medical regimen. The proverb is mentioned but not fully quoted in the source. The translation leaves it unexpanded and preserves the condition of living with oneself during that time.

T170.The two relations are deliberately distinguished and then explained. Movements retains the source’s broad term for what originates within us or with our consent. The repeated It means follows c’est, including the unfinished ending. Keeping watch preserves veiller without supplying what is watched.

T171.The source prints the noun malheur, without à, rather than the expected adjective malheureux. English woe keeps the noun; the translator supplies [to] and marks that intervention. The ending in life in the world follows the printed sequence without supplying a conjunction at the damaged margin.

T172.The relative-clause opening remains without a named subject. Yours preserves the direct address. No group is identified as the addressee, and no doctrine of the two deaths is added to complete the fragment.

T173.Ardor, jets, and drops retain the mixture of heat and liquid images. The dash separates the final fragment.

T428.The day numeral is lost at the damaged left edge; it has not been inferred. The clipped de before lumière is restored contextually.

T174.Spiritualize keeps the unusual proposed operation; bodies is not limited to persons. The passage contrasts credit with reproach without supplying a philosophical school for those who attempted it.

T429.Only the terminal 3 of the day is legible with uncertainty at the damaged margin. The opening portions of faudroit and avec are restored from the visible divided word and context.

T175.Cynical renders cinique with its older force of impudence or shamelessness, associated with the Cynics, as in the Académie’s 1798 definition. It need not mean modern skeptical distrust of motives. Censure is criticism here. The source’s [Delalot] remains an editorial name supply, and in Virg. stays an abbreviated reference involving Virgil.

T176.All five sensory relations remain. Useless to smell and insipid to taste are not reduced to a general criticism of prettiness.

T433.The pronoun il at the damaged line opening is contextually restored.

T177.The contrast is between distrust of oneself and a just estimate of human nature. Light preserves the illuminating image alongside virtue; the opening remains fragmentary.

T178.The two conditional clauses remain without a completed result. The next paragraph retains all the enumerations as printed, including the seven gifts and patience after theological virtues, without completing or rearranging them into doctrinal lists. Strength preserves both occurrences of force, with its resonance of the virtue fortitude. Doctor means a learned teacher in this religious setting, not a physician.

T179.The distinction between the precision of thought and the precision of speech is retained. L-L. remains abbreviated. The ugly-teeth image repeats the earlier critic passage and is not replaced with an abstract description of malicious wit.