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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

November […].

And perhaps it is thoughts alone that must be expressed with such care.

November […]0.

Great merits and poor health by nature. That is, constitutional, or become natural through an old habit in which the soul and mind have molded themselves, etc. Mme de Beaumont etc, — The others are in a strained situation.

Heaven casts into it from time to time (into the course of the sciences) a few slight novelties.

December […]ʳ.

Two kinds of truths: I. concerning what one must think, II. concerning what one must do.

— Like the jolts of a light seeking to free itself.

Gland of the brain. Everything that hastens or constrains its movements harms my health.

December […].

First man. All things, he imagined their names at the very moment when, seeing and touching them, he received their various images. As for his feelings and his thoughts, their expression came to him at the same time as he became conscious of them.

This hypothesis is very convenient.

And notice indeed that the first language one learns is learned without difficulty and even, to use Father André’s [expression] here, “with inattention”; but that the second and all the others demand much work. That is because the first is necessary and commanded by God. The others are only useful to us and come from a command we alone have prescribed for ourselves or that comes to us from other men. In the first case, God instructs us; in the other, we help ourselves alone.

Thoughts at a distance, or far away, only half present to us. The difficulty of expressing them when... Routine alone can train us; but routine...

Saturday, December 3.

I. Truth in style. It is an indispensable quality, and one that suffices to make a writer worthy of esteem.

II. If we wished to write today on all kinds of subjects as people wrote in the time of Louis XIV, we would have no truth in style, for we no longer have the same manners, the same tempers, the same opinions.

III. A woman who wished to write like Mme de Sévigné would be ridiculous, because she is not Mme de Sévigné. A writer who wished to make verses like Boileau would be right, though he were not Boileau, because here it is only a matter of taking up a poet’s mask: one plays a role rather than being a character.

IV. — The more the genre in which one writes is bound to the character of the man, to the manners of the time in which one writes, the more truth in style then demands that one depart from the true models, which have not been models [except] because they possessed this quality to an eminent and happy degree. Good taste itself then permits one to depart from the best taste. If one employed only the latter’s methods, there are circumstances in which one would represent nothing true to life.

V. Taste changes with manners, even good taste. Nothing is truer. But what can be said and painted only through bad taste must be neither said nor painted.

VI. There are immutable genres and subjects. In such cases, one must observe the models and conform strictly to them. I believe a sacred orator would do well always to write and think as Bossuet would have written and thought. It is not a matter of tempers here, and ecclesiastical manners and opinions must always remain the same, despite other changes.

VII. The philosopher may speak of philosophy differently in one age than in another. For he may proportion himself to his listeners, whose jargon he needs to imitate in order to be understood.

Necessarily, all writers who are exact, judicious, and wish to be very clear find their work long and difficult. It is a necessity born of the nature of the thing.

Let each sentence be, so to speak, tinted and lightly imbued.

December 4.

The Swift One in the fairy tale who hobbled his legs in order to reach.

T53.Constitutive is rendered constitutional, as the following alternative concerns illness made natural by habit. The soul and mind molding themselves within that habit remains a material image. The others are not identified beyond the source.

T322.Only the raised ordinal r is securely visible in the damaged date; the day is not supplied. The Roman I and II are inline enumeration labels, not separate entries.

T54.The gland is not named more precisely than in the source. The first-person report is retained without turning the fragment into a modern anatomical explanation.

T55.The first man remains unnamed. The hypothesis connects the invention of names to sensory images and expression to consciousness; neither connection is recast as the receipt of ready-made language.

T56.Command renders ordre in the contrast between what God requires and what we prescribe for ourselves or receive from other people. The source editor supplies [l’expression], mirrored by [expression]. The quoted with inattention is retained rather than silently becoming unconsciously.

T57.Routine can train, yet the repeated word ends in an ellipsis. No verdict about whether that training is ultimately beneficial is supplied.

T58.Mœurs denotes ways of living and conduct, not only etiquette; humeurs denotes tempers or dispositions. Their distinction remains through the later paragraph on ecclesiastical manners and opinions.

T59.The gendered examples and the difference between Sévigné’s personal writing and Boileau’s poetic role remain. Personnage is rendered character in the theatrical contrast with playing a role; the apparent paradox is not removed.

T60.The edition prints n’ont pas été modèles [que] parce qu’ils ont eu ... cette qualité. The added [que] points toward a restrictive sense, while pas leaves the syntax irregular. The English not ... [except] preserves the negative and marks the supplied restriction; only because would be a smoother alternative. The phrase concerns the models’ outstanding possession of truth in style. True models, good taste and best taste remain distinct.

T61.The orator’s religious function remains explicit without replacing the broader term with a particular clerical office. The passage’s claim that ecclesiastical manners and opinions must not change is retained.

T62.The spatial or quantitative se proportionner is preserved instead of simply becoming adapt his message. Jargon remains the listeners’ language that the philosopher must imitate to be understood.

T63.The sentence combines coloring with absorption. The substance with which it is imbued is not supplied.

T64.The Swift One renders the source’s capitalized Le Léger as a descriptive fairy-tale name. The tale is not identified here. The legs’ impediment and the incomplete reach without an object remain.