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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

Isolated columns. Their beauty when they are beautiful. Fragments of walls are hideous, but fragments of columns, capitals, have charm.

February 22.

Fox. He was (in all the senses of our French expression) a man who knew how to show himself: he knew nothing else.

February 23.

An ass picking over lettuces with an ox’s foot, — that is the emblem of Lacretelle praising Chénier.

The lyre is in some way a winged instrument (or one that has wings).

February 25.

When it is a matter of colors, shades are important. When it is a matter of reasons, they are not.

February 26.

It is not blood that should flow in the veins of a book (if one may speak this way), but ichor.(?) That is what Homer calls the blood of the gods.

It is also divine tears that a heroic character should shed; tears less moist than luminous. (See Ovid, in the Fasti: Ceres seeking her daughter.)

Ch. Delalot’s choleric style, his shrill expressions. The green, yellow, and black of bile are the colors that distinguish his eloquence.

This dragoman of Mr. de Bonnald speaks louder than he does and interprets him only by getting angry. One sees his teeth in everything he writes, and when he tries to laugh he shows an ugly set of teeth.

Ah! if we made great works as well as small ones, and serious ones as well as playful ones!

Between the comic and the amusing there is the difference between the pretty and the beautiful in art, and the difference between an original man and a peculiar man in society... Thus, in literature, what is truly comic belongs to genius. What is amusing belongs to wit.

One can make everything amusing, but one cannot make everything comic. The comic cannot be made; one must find it made and put it to work. The comic is in the world; the amusing is only in books, in speech, in our ideas. The comic is truth; the amusing is a disguise. The first belongs to the depths of man, the other to the surface of actions and movements.

The French galoubet: Voltaire played it well.

February 27.

“Peace of mind.” Advantage of ignorance (they say). Certainly not always.

Sunday, March 1.

Those monuments whose very ruins are so beautiful! as at Palmyra.

T338.The two opening nominal fragments remain without added predicates.

T96.Show himself preserves se montrer and the source’s explicit reference to the range of a French expression. It may include appearing, displaying oneself, and making oneself conspicuous; no single English phrase exhausts that range. The parenthesis remains Joubert’s.

S1.Source editor’s annotationJoubert had first written: “Lacretelle. Emblem: an ox picking over small herbs with its pastern.”

T97.The incongruous ass with an ox’s foot remains in the main text. Picking over lettuces renders the preparation implied by épluchant des salades, without turning it into eating. The separate earlier version has an ox and its pastern; these are not substitutions for the main wording.

T98.Beaunier’s introductory words and Joubert’s earlier quotation remain separate from the main text. Pastern translates paturon, a part of the lower leg; Académie française (1798), II, 249, defines it for a horse. The source’s ox is retained, and herbs remains distinct from the main text’s lettuces.

T99.The parenthetical explanation repeats the image rather than supplying a different interpretation. Winged is not reduced to a description of the instrument’s shape alone.

T100.Shades renders nuances in the comparison between colors and reasons. The second sentence refers to those same shades; the negative is not reversed to reconcile this fragment with other remarks about subtlety.

T101.Ichor transliterates the Greek term. The source’s following .(?) is retained; the exact Greek accent and breathing are qualified in the transcription. Homer’s usage and Joubert’s metaphor are distinct from a claim about the composition of real blood.

T102.The comparison is less moist than luminous, not a statement that the tears are wholly dry. Ovid, Fasti IV.521–522, describes a lucid drop like tears, while observing that gods do not weep. The exact comparison of moisture and light is Joubert’s formulation, not a quotation of Ovid.

T103.Choleric retains the relation between anger and bile. The green, yellow, and black remain the colors named in the source. The first sentence stays a nominal description.

T342.The enlarged facsimile confirms Bonnald with double n, unlike Bonald elsewhere. The opening nominal description remains a fragment, and the two paragraphs remain in one block.

T104.Dragoman keeps the historical term for an interpreter. The spelling Bonnald remains distinct from Bonald elsewhere. Set of teeth renders râtelier here without certifying false teeth; the image continues the visible teeth in the preceding clause.

T105.Comic and amusing distinguish comique and plaisant. The source gives its comparisons in the order comic/amusing, pretty/beautiful, original/peculiar; the English preserves that order even where a strictly corresponding analogy would suggest reversing a pair. Wit renders esprit against genius.

T106.The repeated made preserves fait and the distinction between invention and finding something in the world. Depths renders fonds against surface, without reducing the image to a general claim about realism.

T107.The instrument’s name is retained. Littré’s later historical dictionary describes it as a small wind instrument with three holes, played with one hand while the other beats a tambourin. This gloss explains the metaphor without claiming that Voltaire literally played it.