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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

Two things are needed (to do those that are great): patience and vivacity.

March 2.

Beautiful philosophical books are those that set forth clearly what is obscure in the world and to everyone.

The Japanese and their honor. — For Dussault, the faubourg Saint Germain or Saint Honoré is Japan; I mean a distant, foreign world.

... and [they] disdain books in which floods of ink have not flowed.

... that is only pouring one’s inkwell onto one’s paper.

This is truly an ancient idea (for the ancients always spoke the truth, even solid truth, in floating words: “The gods have given you goods to acquire a good more [precious} than all the others: friendship, whose knot is goods held in common.”

March 3.

Yes. But at least lazy minds are seldom mistaken.

March 4.

Memory loves only what is excellent.

Rivarol, etc. — One wished to have merit, the other success. — Less ambitious for perfection than for glory.

— Between this mind and this mind there is all the difference that exists between the soul of birds and the soul of men. The latter is immortal.

March 5.

Rivarol. In his writings there is no great firmness of thought, but great firmness of diction. Or rather, in his diction and in the character of his mind there is as much firmness as softness.

In Céruti’s style there is more vibration than emotion. One senses the string or the nerve more than the heart or the mind properly so called, intelligence. There is also figure rather than image in what he paints.

Cérutti. In his writings there is more vibration than emotion (one senses the string or the nerve rather than the heart or the humor). In his expression there are more figures than images and more effervescence than fire, more fire than warmth. In his thoughts there is more radiance than light, and almost all his opinions come more from dazzling than from self-evidence or clarity. In the course of his mind, finally, there is more movement than progress. In all things this author has little of what communicates itself or of what one receives with pleasure. For one loves and receives with pleasure vibration only through emotion, figure only through image, fire only through warmth and clarity, and literary movement only through progress, whether of knowledge through development, or of love through the charm and pleasure it gives.

T108.Vivacity keeps vivacité beside patience. The parenthesis refers back to things and remains inside the sentence; it does not identify a particular work.

T109.The faubourg names remain French place names. Joubert’s own explanation identifies the force of the comparison as a distant, foreign world; no new description of Japanese society is supplied.

T347.Japonnais has double n and Jappon double p as printed. Saint Germain and Saint Honoré remain unhyphenated. The terminal letters of faubourg merge partly with the damaged outer margin; the surviving word and context support the restoration. The opening nominal fragment remains.

T110.They is supplied in brackets to give the English finite verb a subject; the French expresses a plural verb but names no subject. Both initial ellipses and the two paragraphs remain. The second paragraph keeps the inkwell itself as the object being poured.

T111.The unclosed opening parenthesis and the asymmetric [precious} reproduce the source’s interrupted or uncertain delimiters. Solid truth, floating words, goods, a good, and the knot of friendship retain their sequence of images. The quotation’s external source has not been established.

T349.The opening parenthesis before car remains unclosed. The supplied précieux has a clear opening square bracket; its closing delimiter has curved upper and lower portions and an outward middle bulge, provisionally represented by }. The exact delimiter remains uncertain because its narrow stroke is degraded; independent facsimile comparison supports preserving the visible asymmetry rather than certifying a regular matching square bracket. The word-order plus [précieux} que is preserved.

T112.One and the other remain unidentified beyond the source’s Rivarol, etc. The final nominal comparison does not acquire an invented subject, and the damaged dash is qualified in the French record.

T350.The dash after succès is provisionally retained: its horizontal trace merges with heavy outer-margin damage and cannot be certified independently of that damage. Moins ambitieux remains without a supplied subject or finite verb. The other person is not named.

T113.The repeated this mind is intentional: the two persons are not named. The latter refers to the soul of men, not the soul of birds. Immortal remains Joubert’s asserted distinction.

T114.Or rather preserves the author’s correction of his first formulation. As much firmness as softness does not become more firmness than softness. Diction keeps the distinction from thought.

T115.String and nerve retain the physical alternatives, and intelligence remains the gloss on mind properly so called. Figure is not silently made identical with image. The spelling Céruti is retained beside the following Cérutti.

T116.The French’s first ohaleur is translated as warmth, reading the evident intended chaleur; the diplomatic French retains its anomalous initial letter. Humor renders humeur as disposition or temperament, not exclusively comic wit. Radiance, light, dazzling, self-evidence, and clarity remain distinct. The final it gives preserves the compressed masculine reference without naming an unprinted agent. Self-evidence renders évidence as the immediately apparent truth of a proposition, rather than material offered in support of it; see Académie française (1798), Évidence, I, 542.