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Joseph Joubert

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Name: The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I
Author: Joseph Joubert

Complete Notebooks · French with an independent English translation.

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The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume IANNÉES 1777-1778 · Entry 13

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ANNÉES 1777-1778 · Entry 13

Translator notesBook Mode

French

p. 25

Il y a trois choses dans mon païs que le temps seul y blanchit : le lin, le chanvre et les cheveux.

C’est à son vêtement de toile blanche que le jeune solitaire reconnoissoit depuis cinq ans chaque matin une jeune fille sur le sommet éloigné de l’Arzéem.

Les yeux accoutumés aux grands intervâles aperçoivent au loin : et le regard de l’homme est plus perçant quand il considère une femme.

Il y a trois milles de distance entre l’Arzéem et le monastère. le monastère étoit debout sur la pointe d’une colline. On y monte encore par trente chemins, monumens de cent mille orage[s]. tous ont été creusés par des ravins c’est le lit des torrens ou l’homme pose le pié aussitôt que les torrens ont passé, en coulant du haut du ciel sur la colline, de la colline dans la plaine et de la plaine dans l’Avezer et de l’Avezer dans l’océan.

O vous que je vais célébrer et dont je ne scais pas même les noms, je ne vous en donerai pas, jeunes amans ! qui pourroit souffrir le changement du nom de son amant et qui pourroit souffrir le changement du nom de son amante ?

Aïons pour les morts cette pitié de ne rien faire de ce qui eût pu les affliger s’ils eussent pu le prévoir.

Mille fois on m’a raconté cette histoire dans mon enfance ; mais jamais ni les épousées ni leurs mères ou leurs vénérables aïeules (car ces récits étoient les récits des femmes, jamais les jeunes filles ne firent de récits dans ma patrie et les hommes n’en firent jamais de semblables) jamais dis-je aucune d’elles ne donnèrent de nom aux deux amans.

S3.Source editor’s annotationJoubert en 1776 a quitté les Doctrinaires et est à Montignac. Il n’existe aucun feuillet de lui qui porte la date de ces années. J’attribue à cette époque l’esquisse d’un court récit, dont nous avons seulement les premières lignes. Les arguments décisifs manquent pour prouver que ces feuillets sont bien de cette date. Mais il me semble trouver là des signes de jeunesse. Puis le paysage est celui de Montignac, de l’Arzème et de la Vézère. Le ton des phrases me paraît aussi correspondre à l’espèce d’attendrissement qu’éprouve une âme sensible à rentrer chez soi, dans l’horizon natal, qu’il découvre, à la faveur de l’absence et du retour. Enfin, la nonchalance de la plume et son habileté lente sont bien celles de qui, après une période de travail, a depuis quelque temps cessé d’écrire. D’ailleurs, j’avoue qu’aucune de mes raisons n’est une preuve.

S1.Source editor’s annotationLe même feuillet sur lequel est écrite la première partie de ce récit contient une série de notes prises par Joubert en lisant le Traité de la nature humaine de Hobbes. Mais ce ne sont que de courts extraits, auxquels il n’a pas joint de réflexions personnelles.

The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I: ANNÉES 1777-1778

p. 26

No individual date printed

There are three things in my country that time alone makes white: flax, hemp, and hair.

For five years, every morning, the young solitary had recognized a young girl on the distant summit of the Arzéem by her garment of white linen.

Eyes accustomed to great distances see far: and a man’s gaze is keener when he looks at a woman.

There are three miles between the Arzéem and the monastery. The monastery stood on the tip of a hill. One still climbs to it by thirty paths, monuments to a hundred thousand storms. All have been hollowed out by ravines; it is the bed of the torrents where man sets his foot as soon as the torrents have passed, flowing from the heights of heaven onto the hill, from the hill into the plain, and from the plain into the Avezer and from the Avezer into the ocean.

O you whom I am about to celebrate, whose very names I do not know, I shall give you none, young lovers! Who could bear to have her beloved’s name changed, and who could bear to have his beloved’s name changed?

Let us have this pity for the dead: to do nothing that might have grieved them had they been able to foresee it.

A thousand times I was told this story in my childhood; but never did the married women or their mothers or their venerable grandmothers (for these tales were the tales of women; young girls never told tales in my native country, and men never told any like them), never, I say, did any of them give the two lovers names.

S3.Source editor’s annotationIn 1776 Joubert has left the Doctrinaires and is in Montignac. No leaf of his exists bearing a date from these years. I assign to this period the sketch of a short tale of which we have only the opening lines. Decisive arguments are lacking to prove that these leaves really are of this date. But I seem to find signs of youth here. Then the landscape is that of Montignac, the Arzème, and the Vézère. The tone of the sentences also seems to me to correspond to the kind of tenderness a sensitive soul feels on returning home, within its native horizon, which it discovers through absence and return. Finally, the pen’s nonchalance and slow dexterity are indeed those of someone who, after a period of work, has for some time ceased writing. Besides, I admit that none of my reasons is proof.

S1.Source editor’s annotationThe same leaf on which the first part of this tale is written contains a series of notes Joubert took while reading Hobbes’s Treatise of Human Nature. But these are only short extracts, to which he added no personal reflections.

T6.The story’s placement in 1777–1778 is expressly conjectural in Beaunier’s note. The two questions name a male beloved (amant), then a female beloved (amante); her and his follow the two lovers in the narrative context, while French son alone does not identify the possessor’s gender. Arzéem and Avezer retain Joubert’s printed forms; the source editor uses Arzème and Vézère in his own note. English sentence capitalization is normalized, while French retains its lowercase sentence openings.

About This Reading Edition

Joubert’s notebooks return to the work of thinking and writing, the demands of friendship, and questions of faith, beauty and conduct. This edition pairs the French with a new English translation, preserving the order of the chosen source and the unfinished character of its fragments. Dates and source references allow readers to follow a thought through time or return to its printed context.

Historical Text and Translation

The French text follows André Beaunier’s 1938 edition of Les Carnets de Joseph Joubert, published by Gallimard from Joubert’s autograph manuscripts. Volume I presents the entries on printed pages 32–475. French and English are aligned paragraph by paragraph, retaining the source order, printed dates and page references so readers can return to the facsimile.

About Diotimos Editions

Diotimos Editions prepared this new English translation directly from the French, preserving Joubert’s distinctions, recurring images, ambiguities and unfinished thoughts. Translator’s notes clarify wording, references and uncertain readings: Essential keeps notes that help explain a passage, while All includes technical detail. Annotations from the 1938 source edition remain distinct from the new translator’s notes.

Rights

The linked facsimile records identify the French source as public domain in the United States. The new English translation and editorial notes are © 2026 Diotimos, with source annotations and new editorial contributions credited separately. This edition pairs the complete French notebooks with an independent English translation, preserving the distinction between Joubert’s text and its accompanying notes.