Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

Rivarol: urbanity. (Even his faults are connected with it.)

Imagine bodies that are luminous and seeing. Such are the minds called ingenious. Rays come from them which, falling upon the objects they examine, make them see those objects more clearly.

To make what is diaphanous colored or shaped, and always to give some transparency to what is opaque. — Transparent surfaces.

There are minds born capable of great and beautiful works and made incapable of them only by accident. These alone have had the power to produce those thoughts and sentences we spoke of on page 3. These sentences and thoughts are so beautiful only because the author’s natural excellence is clearly manifested in them: from the claw, the lion...

— His mind is beauty, penetration, breadth, etc. — Beauty!... great praise!

February 5.

Noise splits the air, and sound sustains itself in it. Noise distracts, sound gathers. Sound enchants the air, noise disturbs it. Sound calms us, and noise agitates us. That is because noise deranges our situation, but sound gives us another. We are all instruments that sound brings into tune but noise disorganizes. Noise is a crushed sound; it is formless.

Thoughts still in germ: one must let them form. If one touches them, one spoils them.

Rivarol. Yes, more urbanity than Voltaire himself, who thought of the public, whereas Rivarol thought only of the most delicate. One can say that in literature he was more voluptuous than ambitious.

February 7.

Why a cheerful work can be the work of several, and a grave work cannot. (Note. that I say a grave work and not a serious book.) That is because gravity... But cheerfulness, on the contrary, is composed of discordances; it has leaps, etc.

Indecency (at least in public) can amuse only the shameless. Advice to composers of ballets.

Singing is to speaking what sound is to noise.

There is a world within us. It is the Soul. What happens in this world is what one most loves to see and know. That is what must be depicted.

T63.The bodies both emit light and see. Their rays make the examining minds see the objects more clearly; the objects are not made into independent observers.

T304.The two infinitives and final nominal phrase remain without a finite governing clause.

T64.The Latin ex ungue leonem is rendered as an elliptical from the claw, the lion, without supplying the proverb’s missing verb. The printed page 3 remains an unlocated internal reference, not an invented link to page 3 of Beaunier’s edition. The paired thoughts and sentences reverse their order in the second sentence as printed.

T65.Noise and sound remain separate terms throughout. Gathers renders recueille in opposition to distracts, preserving the inward collecting effect without substituting a medical claim. The instruments are brought into tune by sound and disorganized by noise. Crushed and formless retain the closing physical image.

T66.Urbanity is refinement of social manner. The most delicate remains an unnamed group of discriminating people. Voluptuous preserves the pleasure-seeking force of voluptueux in literature, rather than adding a claim about Rivarol’s bodily appearance.

T67.Grave work and serious book keep the distinction explicitly stated by Joubert. The opening Why ends with a period. The italic Note. retains its internal period and following lowercase that; the account of gravity remains unfinished before cheerfulness’s discordances and leaps.

T68.Composers of ballets preserves the historical scope of compositeurs de balets without restricting the advice to writers of musical scores. The source’s judgment about the shameless remains qualified by at least in public.

T69.Soul retains the source capital. The world and what happens within it remain what is to be depicted; the English does not rename the passage as a new section or work title.