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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1786.

April 6, 1786.

By God, those are indeed the features of a wicked woman’s daughter! And I would wager that the other is the mother of a good man! (In Greuze’s The Stepmother.)

Note. They will call her their belle-mère. Yet it cannot have been her beauty that seduced you when, for her, you forgot your children and your first wife.

March 26, 1786.

O my friends! I have drunk love...

Note. Socrates had observed that, to savor wines properly, one had to drink by sucking. A lesson in sensual pleasure and temperance!...

March 26, 1786.

[Women] who love to dance because they feel light...

May 27, 1786.

For a group to take shape and appear real to the eye, the movement of each figure must connect with that of the one that follows; the figures’ poses must link one to another; their coloring, features, or expressions must show a carefully arranged gradation and shades that blend; the mind, as well as the eye, must embrace them in a single glance; they must form one clearly distinct unit (or several, if the same painting contains more than one group), easy to remember. In Belisarius, the woman, the child, and the old man group perfectly; the soldier does not group at all, either with the first figures, with those painted in the distance, with the setting, or, so to speak, with himself.

For a figure to group with itself, it must possess truth in expression as well as in form—a truth that folds it back upon its own individuality and gives it absolute and independent merit. This figure has none of that; its posture and expression are false, untrue to nature even more than to the subject. Perhaps for the same reason it does not group with the setting. I intend to examine it elsewhere.

July 10, 1786.

If curiosity did not lead us to examine the nature of plants, how they germinate, how they grow, how they die, how they reproduce... we would enjoy fruit only as animals do, and perhaps with less delight...

No individual date printed

Our sensitivity to the losses we suffer, when proportionate to the value of what we mourn, is evidence of our judgment, just as moderation in our sorrow, when the loss is irreparable, is evidence of our reason.

July 26, 1786.

When a painter wishes to depict an event, no number of figures is too great; but when he wishes to depict only a single passion, no number is too small.

August 1, 1786.

A person first imitates the objects they see or that others have imitated. They then represent their own conceptions. This is the height of art.

The finest vantage point for a painting is the one from which the painted objects stand out in relief; the finest vantage point for a building is the one from which all its projecting parts appear flat. This apparent flatness, born of the harmony among its irregularities, deceives the eye and gives the imagination a pleasure that the sight of an actually smooth, flat body cannot give it. The merit of such a body lies in appearing uneven and divided by projections. In a word, without illusion there is no pleasure in the arts.

No individual date printed

These two monarchs were bound to be rivals in all things. Charles V himself eagerly picked up Titian’s brush, and Leonardo da Vinci breathed his last in the arms of Francis I.

No individual date printed

In our world, where all masterpieces are destined only to be displayed before a few wealthy men and to be imprisoned and hidden away in the houses of the great...

No individual date printed

Apelles and Raphael, who were the greatest of painters, were perfect men.

No individual date printed

Truth, far from disdaining adornments, loves them. She loves them and appears beautiful and adorned whenever...

T17.Belle-mère means stepmother here, while belle also means beautiful: retaining the French word lets Joubert’s next reference to beauty carry his pun. The Stepmother translates the painting title supplied in this passage; it is not offered as a verified modern catalog title.

T18.The French prints avoit observer (sic), using the infinitive after avoit. Beaunier’s sic marks that grammatical form. English uses had observed and moves this explanation out of the running sentence so that sic does not appear to question the reported observation about Socrates.

S1.Source editor’s annotationBefore this, under the date February 17, a few extracts from Jean-Baptiste Tavernier’s Voyage to Persia.

S2.Source editor’s annotationThe Belisarius, David? See Diderot, vol. XII.

T1.Joubert repeatedly uses grouper, printed here as groupper, for pictorial composition. The unusual idea of a figure grouping with itself is retained, as is the image of a truth that folds the figure back upon its own individuality (qui la replie sur son propre individu). Beaunier’s source note tentatively identifies the Bélisaire as David’s painting; its question mark leaves the identification uncertain.

S3.Source editor’s annotationJoubert adds: “hist. des pass. L., July 10, 1786.”

T2.Beaunier’s note 3 on page 58 reports an additional inscription by Joubert: « hist. des pass. L., 10 juillet 1786 ». It is recorded here separately because the edition places it in the apparatus. The abbreviation is left unexpanded.

S1.Source editor’s annotationA leaf from June 1786 contains the list of Joubert’s reading: Essay on the Revolution Brought about in Music by Mr. the Chevalier Gluck; Dictionary of Music; Eulogy of Edme Bouchardon; Letter on the Fountain in the Rue de Grenelle; Letter on Mr. Bouchardon’s Statue of Love; Reflections on and by Mr. the Abbé Dubos; Life of Michelangelo; Memoirs of Charles Perrault; Lives of the Most Famous Architects; Idea of the Perfect Painter; On Pliny the Younger’s Country House, by Félibien; Conversation on the Lives and Works of Painters and The Dream of Asilomathie, by the same author: the book by the Abbé Vincenzo Requeno: the Engraved Gems of the King’s Cabinet and The Engraved Gems of Mr. the Duke of Orléans; Voyage to Italy by Maximilien Nisson; Observation on the Antiquities of Herculaneum, by Messrs. Cochin and Bellicard.

S2.Source editor’s annotationDuring this July of 1786, Joubert reads Félibien’s Conversations on the Lives and Works of Painters; he notes passages concerning Poussin and Leonardo da Vinci, and he notes this: “One day Aristotle’s daughter, named Pithias, was asked which color pleased her most; she answered that it was the one born of modesty on the faces of simple men without malice.” Joubert adds: “P. 47, volume II, fifth conversation.” And Paul de Raynal is wrong to give these lines as Joubert’s (section XVII, § 8).

T3.Beaunier supplies [employer] in the French. The clarified English construction, no number of figures is too great ... no number is too small, cannot reproduce that bracket naturally because it no longer uses the corresponding verb. The contrast permits abundance for an event and the fewest figures for a single passion.

T4.The two paragraphs appear together beneath 1 August 1786, without the asterisk that separates the next block. They remain one entry with two paragraph pairs. Relief, planes and planitude describe the contrast between apparent depth and apparent flatness. The printed historical forms vuë (twice) and jouë are retained. Jouë à l’œil becomes deceives the eye, preserving the optical illusion. Such a body refers to the actually smooth, flat body, whose merit is paradoxically to appear uneven.