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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

YEAR 1797

Who was it who said: “Do you wish to paint silence? Use noise. Do you wish to paint noise? Use silence.”

December 23.

Truth, like fire, manifests itself in three ways, through light and through heat. Its light produces what is called self-evidence. Its heat produces enthusiasm (I mean the kind that is natural, calm, gentle, and without unevenness). One may also say that, like fire, it also manifests itself through a kind of smoke, mist, and darkness. A vapor, light though thick, from which our opinions are formed, which come from truth and are not truth.

Every flame needs emptiness around it in order to give light. Without space, no light.

S2.Source editor’s annotation“Quoted in petit. affich. of Friday, December 22, concerning Miltiades at Marathon.”

T74.The scan clips the preposition after Miltiade. The transcription supplies à in the reference to Miltiades at Marathon; this is a contextual restoration, not a fully legible printed word. The abbreviated publication name petit. affich. is retained.

S3.Source editor’s annotationAt first, “two.”

S4.Source editor’s annotation“Written on Victor’s head in the evening. 5 o’clock.”

T75.The final elle refers back to truth. The English repeats truth to keep the intervening vapor from becoming a misleading antecedent. Three is retained even though the opening lists light and heat; Beaunier records an earlier two in his separate annotation.

T76.Written on Victor’s head preserves sur la tête de Victor. The phrase can indicate a surface or position, or a subject written about; the annotation does not settle which is meant.