Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1804

This wisdom. It is constant, but mobile.

January 9.

To see facts through words has so great a charm, then? That is because one then sees them through a thought.

Those useless phrases that come into one’s head. The mind grinds its pigments with them.

Severe taste and prodigal imagination.

Smoke. Everything living has it.

January […].

To know whether what there is of ... is to give oneself a manner all one’s own, and whether... to give oneself an easy style.

Is there an advantage or a disadvantage in seeking to please oneself while writing?

Yes, to give oneself an easy style. Much naturalness and much craft.

That is beautiful enough to be seen, but not to be dreamed.

The natural? Art must put it to work, must spin and weave this silk.

Each of these divisions would need to contain a word that deserved to be said apart... or would itself need to make a smooth link; a phrase between phrases that binds them well; finally, one should in fact set apart only what deserved to be noticed or what would leave empty space around it.

January […].

God. There are many things that must be left in life and must not be put into books.

January […]2.

Delicate taste, which in excess is sickly.

T141.Mobile retains the ability to move without converting it into fickleness, which would predetermine how the apparent contrast with constant is resolved.

T142.Couleurs is read in the painter’s material sense. The phrases become a means of grinding the mind’s pigments; the metaphor is not replaced by an account of discarding useless words.

T143.Air is read as manner or bearing in the context of giving oneself a style. A musical air is also possible within these reflections on prose. The omissions and broken whether clause are preserved, without supplying the missing quality.

T144.Métier refers to practiced craft. The fragment keeps both much naturalness and much craft, without presenting them as mutually exclusive.

T145.Entrephrase names a connecting phrase placed between others; the English unfolds the compound while preserving its position and binding function. The smooth link retains the chain image, and the final empty space remains an alternative to conspicuous merit.

T382.The day is obscured by fold damage. A possible terminal 1 is not secure in the enlarged facsimile and is not certified. The beginning of qu’il is contextually restored.