Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

October 11.

Those who in all things have opinions that can neither grow nor diminish, and on which no one can effect any change, — how little suited they are to society.

October 13.

Then the world acted upon books (upon their style); and now books act upon it.

October 15.

Souls at rest are all in harmony with one another.

October 16.

Man loves the small; and he loves the great, through the same weakness.

October 17.

[While reading the Imitation.] Indeed, actions distract as much as passions.

One feels it through fervor and sees it through thought.

October 18.

Of the chatter of thoughts; and that: it is more unbearable than the chatter of words.

“To please God.” (Imit. Christ.)

October 19.

Bacon [On the Advancement of Learning] says that “all discourse that is studied, affected, or imitated bears the mark of servitude and cannot call itself its own master.” His own style bears the marks of all these servitudes. And there is in him more of the imitation that comes from learning and a dominated memory than of that which comes from love or the free choice of a charmed soul.

October 22.

The beautiful is the soul’s good. The beautiful is to truth what colors are to light.

The bestowal of names, joined to contemplation, completes philosophy.

October 23.

There are obligations that nothing seems to prescribe to us and that we must nevertheless impose upon ourselves.

T120.The opinions can neither grow nor diminish and cannot be changed by anyone. Society retains société’s breadth, including association with others; the translation does not specify a political system. The exclamation-like how little ends with the source’s period.

T121.The bracketed reading circumstance belongs to Beaunier’s source and remains within the paragraph. Distract renders dissipent as dispersing or drawing away attention; it does not mean that actions dissolve the passions. The shortened Imitation title remains shortened.

T298.The source-supplied reading circumstance is part of the paragraph and remains in square brackets.

T122.The French masculine le has no explicit noun antecedent within this block. English it leaves the referent unnamed rather than inserting God or another noun. Fervor and thought remain the respective means of feeling and seeing.

T123.The nominal Of opening and the compressed and that have no supplied governing clause. Repeated chatter preserves the comparison between thoughts and words.

T300.The nominal opening and et que : remain without a supplied governing clause.

T124.The infinitive To please God is retained rather than converted into a command. Imit. Christ. remains the source’s abbreviated attribution; no chapter or particular edition is supplied.

T125.The bracketed title is supplied in the French edition and remains bracketed in English. Studied renders recherché as consciously labored rather than investigated. The repeated servitude and the opposition between a dominated memory and the free choice of a charmed soul are preserved. The quotation is translated from Joubert’s French as printed, without replacing it with another English text of Bacon. A close French parallel occurs in Golefer’s 1632 translation of Bacon, book I, p. 3; this does not establish Joubert’s particular copy.

T126.The beautiful and the soul’s good retain the two abstract terms. The second sentence preserves colors in relation to light, rather than substituting a general image of illumination.

T127.Bestowal of names renders imposition des noms as the act of assigning names. Completes retains achève; the statement does not claim that naming alone constitutes philosophy, since contemplation is joined to it.