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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

October 12.

To write not only in few words, but in few thoughts.

October 13.

One must not dare look duty in the face, but listen to it and obey it with lowered eyes.

[Bossuet.] And his “I am the voice,” “I am the word.” A mystic like Bossuet cannot be studied deeply without pleasure and without profit.

October […].

Good nature (in style). The language of one’s forebears makes itself felt in it. One sees that the speaker’s teachers of language were his fathers, his neighbors, etc., good men even more than good books.

October […].

Youth is truly an efflorescence; how truthfully it is compared to a flower, — vapor, — color etc.

October […].

If Bossuet is to be believed, trees have played a great role in human destinies. It is through a tree, etc.

Ah! We all content ourselves with a kind of literary, moral, and civic mathematics, and truly transcendent mathematics, for it has no application for us to each person’s practice.

October […].

In Montlosier. — And the little consideration for doctrines he respects. It is to immolate one’s feelings to one’s opinions.

Σπέρμα. Comes from the surplus of the organs, and not from the surplus of food. Proofs by induction. Hence the inheritance of diseases or of particular strengths. Peculiarities in the constitution. The soul too has its surpluses.

Womb. Is it an organ peculiar to one sex.

From each part, then, issues a principle, that is, a germ that carries within itself the property of producing something like what produces it. And these germs combined form the total germ, which is perfect when etc.

Everything is ceaselessly sprouting or germinating, except what is accidental in each individual, that is, except what is foreign to the thing that makes its germ. Now none can produce a germ unless it is united with all the others, — and germinate at the same time. For the total or perfect germ is produced, as we have said, by the universal union of the germs of each part. If certain animals are infertile, it is because not all their parts are complete or well adapted to one another, because, in short, there is something in the individual foreign to its nature or ill assorted in its construction.

October […]9.

[Fl[eu]r[y]]. Whether a thought comes from a head that has a thousand of them or one that has only one each month makes no difference to the reader or the listener as far as pleasure is concerned.

October 23.

— so that to be obliged to speak (on these matters) is to be obliged to be mistaken.

October 24.

They placed the dyad or mixture among the principles of evil, along with the infinite or the indeterminate, the formless. This word infinite must be taken in a bad sense in their philosophy. God was absolute and by that very fact perfect, but not infinite. Infinite, in their language, was an attribute of imperfection. The meaning of this word has changed.

October 25.

For composition or production, all that is needed is: a germ of movement, a point of emotion, a principle of an idea that seeks to unfold and is not yet fully unfolded.

Whatever has fully unrolled may enter a work as an ornament, even an essential one, but cannot suffice as its sole cause.

T1.The lowered eyes and the prohibition on daring to face duty are retained. The sentence is not recast as an invitation to examine duty critically.

S1.Source editor’s annotationSeveral pages of notes taken while reading Bossuet, whom Joubert calls “this great Bossuet.” But they are, so to speak, only extracts.

T2.The two first-person formulas remain quotations attributed to Bossuet here. No particular passage is supplied. Profit renders utilité as benefit from study. The source editor’s brackets around Bossuet remain visible.

T3.The source prints bonnehommie. Good nature refers here to a quality of style learned from earlier generations and ordinary good people. Fathers retains the plural pères beside forebears for ancêtres; the repeated good in good men and good books is preserved.

S2.Source editor’s annotation“October 15. Walk to St J. — The children...”

T4.The botanical image and the sequence flower, vapor, color remain distinct. No missing verb or explanation is supplied after the dashes.

T272.The quoted October 15 record does not silently repair the damaged main date. St J. remains unexpanded.

T5.The sentence ends with etc. The unspecified tree and the implied further argument are not completed.

T6.The source uses transcendante of mathematics with no application to each person’s practice. The translation preserves that explanation without substituting transcendental or assigning the passage to a particular philosophical system.

T7.Immolate keeps the sacrificial force of immoler. Joubert distinguishes the respect accorded to doctrines from the consideration shown for them, and feelings from opinions.

T8.The Greek word means seed; in this discussion of generation it denotes semen. It remains in the text, followed by Joubert’s physiological conjecture. Inheritance renders the printed héridité. Particular strengths follows forces partielles in the context of bodily parts, rather than weakening it to incomplete strengths.

T9.Matrice names the womb in this physiological sequence. The source gives the interrogative sentence a period; the translation retains it.

T10.Germ renders germe throughout this discussion of generation, not a microorganism. The phrase what produces it preserves the source’s pronoun relation, and perfect when etc. retains the unfinished condition.

T11.Two English verbs preserve the source’s paired germant ou germinant. None and all the others leave the feminine pronouns aucune and autres unsupplemented; in the account of the total germ they point back to the contributing parts or things. The passage’s account of infertility is retained as Joubert’s conjecture.

T12.The nested brackets and abbreviated name are retained exactly. No further identification is imposed.

T277.Only the terminal 9 of the date is secure. The enlarged facsimile confirms the nested brackets [Fl[eu]r[y]], which are not simplified. The clipped n’ in n’en and the opening of pour are contextually restored.

T13.The passage explicitly contrasts the older unfavorable sense of infini with its changed meaning. Its unnamed they remains unnamed; the dyad and the formless are not silently assigned to a specific school.

T278.Minor right-edge word endings are clipped and restored from their surviving letters. The historical philosophical account is retained without a supplied school or thinker.

T14.Unfold renders développer, while unrolled in the next paragraph renders déroulé. The germ, point, and principle remain three distinct images; the fully developed idea may still serve as an essential ornament without being a work’s sole cause.