Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

Certain beauties, certain thoughts, certain feelings, certain strokes of imagination that are entirely new. One did not expect them. Their novelty leaves one undecided. One fears risking one’s judgment, compromising the honor of one’s opinion. One is slow to decide to approve them. One does not dare savor them; one lets the trial take its course. One is quite astonished that these things charm us long after we first saw them.

In the longest works, in the shortest, the style must keep the same character to the end. — As in a piece of music the clef remains the same to the end.

The natural! The natural! Yes, certainly, the natural; but what do they mean by this word? Are the sounds of the flute a natural thing if by this word one means something nature alone makes?

December 15.

The mind too has great strokes, movements, masterstrokes that do not depend on it. One notices them, they astonish, one does not even know what to think of them; sometimes one disapproves of them, they end by subjugating. Even in charms there is something that comes from heaven (from nature, etc.) and eludes men’s efforts when they wish to disparage it.

Good sense concerns itself with others (and above all with God). Or: wit keeps us occupied with ourselves; good sense keeps [us] occupied with others.

December 17.

Simplicity? Yes. But simplicity in art. For, whatever the amiable Mme de Sévigné may say, one can, in a certain sense, have “hair naturally curled with a hundred curling papers, and naturally powdered with a pound of powder.” Many adornments are called simple; they are those in which no disproportionate detail prevents one from seeing the whole ensemble at a single glance; and by a kind of displacement, we call simple in objects what, in contemplating them, elicits only a simple act or a single act of the mind, transferring to what exercised it a quality that is within us.

Good Father Yves André’s reflection that “pleasure and pain, which it depends so little on our will to give ourselves or take away, perpetually make us feel that we are under the hand of a master who has the power to make us happy or unhappy.” Very good, good Father Yves André. There, then, is a great moral idea attached to the almost physical idea of pleasure and pain!

“The ill one suffers against one’s will.” A consoling idea flows from it, like a balm from a wound. The sound mind binds this idea to this fact.

He is right, and the good man is never as good, nor the wicked man ever as wicked, as he would like to be. The latter through the perfection, and the former through the imperfection of our nature.

Being. He who is, who is being. To plumb these words; to find in them, and as it were in their meaning, the idea that [is] enclosed there, that they contain.

December 18.

God! God! “You are,” he says to him, “existence and essence...” These words are not ridiculous to a scholar who understands them. And in God, indeed, existence is his essence; his possibility is essentially act. All these terms are as natural to metaphysics as: I put down 3 and carry 2 are natural to arithmetic.

— and who have made themselves a trade that narrows their character because they refer even their flights to it. (It obambulando.)

T73.The test is left to take its course; the text does not specify who conducts it or a fixed length of time. The honor of one’s opinion is kept as an unusual object of concern.

T74.Clef retains the printed musical term clef. The comparison’s claim of constancy remains; it is not silently changed into a claim about a piece’s tonal key.

T75.The noun repeats three times before the question about the flute. The distinction between nature alone and the production of an instrument’s sounds remains the point of the question.

T76.Strokes, movements and masterstrokes remain separate. Subjugating keeps the force of subjuguer, and disparage renders dépriser, to lower the estimate of something, not deprive.

T77.Esprit is read as wit in this contrast with good sense and self-concern. In the second version of the thought, the French omits the object after occupe; the translator supplies [us], following the preceding nous.

T78.Papillottes are the papers used to curl hair. The twice-repeated naturally retains the deliberate paradox of elaborate preparation. Livre is rendered pound as the historical unit, without implying an exact modern conversion. Simple act and single act preserve acte simple and un seul acte.

T79.The nominal opening introduces a quoted reflection and remains without a new governing verb. Good repeats in the approving address; pleasure and pain remain joined under the master’s power.

T80.The consoling idea flows from the ill itself, like balm from a wound. The image is retained rather than replaced by balm applied to a wound.

T81.Celui-ci refers to the wicked man, whose wickedness is limited by the perfection of our nature; celui là refers to the good man, limited by its imperfection. The two noun fragments do not acquire supplied verbs.

T82.Being is repeated for être as a noun, while is renders the verb. The source editor’s supplied [est] remains [is] in English.

T83.Possible is nominal: his possibility. Act retains the metaphysical term acte, not a particular deed. The familiar arithmetic instruction preserves the printed numbers 3 and 2 and the distinction between writing a digit and carrying another.

T84.The printed Latin is retained. Obambulando means in walking about; the initial It is not expanded, and its precise function in this brief formula remains uncertain. Flights renders élans in the contrast with a trade that narrows character.

T340.The enlarged facsimile confirms It obambulando.; it is retained without substituting a more usual Latin phrase. The initial fragment remains without a supplied antecedent.