Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

It seems that there are indeed colors that fatten the eyes.

November 22.

There are truths one needs to color to make them visible. Everything connected with the imagination, above all, can have an outward existence only through forms and colors.

November 23.

... young voices.

Only waters that fall from the sky can subsist in drops and shine like dews.

They have broken the paths that led to heaven and that everyone followed. One must make oneself ladders.

A dove. Bitter seeds and limpid waters.

I. Maxims, seeds of all good that nourish the will.

II. I call by this name those ideas in which the mind drinks a clarity that rests it, — and a radiance... For beauty, in this kind of fluid, is nourishment for our soul.

Feelings and thoughts, and the vessels that contain them. By presenting them in words, some of which are like pearls and others like diamonds.

Falsetto: there is falsetto in this style.

October 30.

... for another’s goodness gives me as much pleasure as my own.

October 28.

“Friend of wisdom,” the ancients used to say, which was to say: — friend of the knowledge of divine and human things.

November 23.

... today morality is firmer, religious opinions more decided.

Their crimes, — for which they constantly grant themselves amnesty: — and they get off by forgetting them.

James I of England wrote a book On the King’s Duty. Look for it.

T172.Fatten retains the unusual verb engraissent rather than silently replacing it with delight or please. The qualification it seems remains.

T173.The exclusive only and the plural waters and dews remain. Subsist retains the persistence of the water as drops; the statement is not supplemented with a scientific explanation.

T174.The paths once led to heaven and were followed by everyone; the new ladders must be made for oneself. The pronoun They leaves the agents who broke the paths unnamed. No institution or historical event is supplied.

T175.The dove, bitter seeds, and limpid waters introduce a four-paragraph block. The Roman I and II remain at the starts of the next two paragraphs and are not new entry identifiers. The metaphor is not expanded into an allegory naming an unprinted referent.

T324.The inline Roman labels I and II begin paragraphs 2 and 3; the block has four physical paragraphs. The last paragraph retains its nominal and participial fragments without a supplied finite assertion.

T176.Seeds renders germes in connection with the preceding graines. The maxims are seeds of all good and nourish the will; the English does not limit the nourishment to knowledge.

T177.The mind drinks a clarity that gives it rest, as well as a radiance. These remain distinct images, and the interruption before the account of beauty as nourishment remains. I call by this name leaves the precise naming relation as compressed as the source.

T178.The vessels contain feelings and thoughts. The second sentence begins with By presenting and has no supplied main clause. Pearls and diamonds remain different comparisons for the words.

T179.Falsetto retains the vocal metaphor and its repetition. The word is not silently reduced to falsehood, though the image can carry a suggestion of artificial tone.

T325.The damaged leading punctuation is read as an ellipsis; only two small horizontal marks remain clear in the enlarged facsimile. The November date follows the two out-of-order October entries exactly as printed.

T180.The unnamed people repeatedly grant themselves amnesty for their own crimes. Get off by forgetting retains the force of en être quittes pour, without inventing punishment imposed by someone else.

T181.On the King’s Duty translates the printed Latin De Regis officio. It is not replaced with a different conjectured title of James I’s works. The final Look for it reads the source infinitive as a reminder and does not claim the book has been found.