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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

March 23.

Like a volcano that casts from its bosom stones, earths, iron, and an infinity of materials, all red from the flames and fire of poetry.

(For Saint Denis.) That all-powerful hand that ceaselessly applies unhoped-for remedies to irreparable ills.

Mme de Ch. said very well of M.é [Molé?]: “more capable of doing good than of believing it.”

Everything composed needs some repetition in its parts to be well understood and well retained by memory, and also to appear to us as a whole. In all symmetry there is a middle. Every middle is the knot of a repetition, that is, of two similar extremities.

Mlle P. (of the publiciste) is like Mlle Bihérou: she makes wax skeletons of the human heart and mind.

That is only too true (one sees it only too clearly in the turn of our sentences and the obscure grandiloquence of all our words when we write gravely) “we inflate our conceptions.” And the man who found this expression (J.-J. R.) inflated his own more than anyone. (Above all, he inflated his feelings.)

March 25.

The style in which one speaks to God. How clear it is!

Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place and offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities occupied by some knowledge that plugs them. What torture to speak to full heads, into which nothing from outside can enter! A good mind, to enjoy itself and let others enjoy it, must always keep itself greater than its own thoughts. And for this it must give them a pliant form, easy to contract and extend, fit, finally, to maintain their natural flexibility.

All those minds with short views see clearly in their little ideas and see nothing in those of others, like those bad eyes that see at close range what is obscure and at a distance can perceive nothing of what is clear. Minds of night and darkness.

Great minds are those that disguise their limits, that mask their mediocrity.

Hardly wise is one who has only his own wisdom, and hardly learned one who is so only through his own knowledge.

There are minds of which one can say, “it is light here,” and others of which one can say only, “it is warm here.” There is much heat where there is much movement (and conversely); and there is much light where there is much serenity. Without serenity, no light.

Music and familiar airs. Or: there is no music more agreeable than variations on familiar airs.

T162.The comparison stays a fragment. Bosom personifies the volcano; earths preserves the plural terres as materials, and the substances remain red from poetry’s flames and fire.

T395.The opening Comme comparison has no supplied main clause. Poésie has an acute in this entry.

T163.The parenthetical circumstance is printed in the source and remains inside the paragraph. It is not made into an invented title or date. The irreparable ills and unhoped-for remedies remain together without resolving their tension.

T396.The parenthetical circumstance remains within the paragraph. The following nominal relative phrase has no supplied finite main assertion.

T164.Mme de Ch. and M.é remain abbreviated. [Molé?] is the source edition’s conjecture and retains its question mark. Doing good and believing it keep the compressed relation; believing is not expanded into belief in a named doctrine.

T397.The enlarged facsimile reads baseline M.é, with an acute over e; [Molé?] is the source’s bracketed conjecture, not a certified expansion. Mme is on the ordinary baseline.

T165.Middle, knot, and similar extremities retain the spatial construction of symmetry. Repetition is not replaced by redundancy; it helps both memory and the appearance of a whole in Joubert’s argument.

T166.The abbreviated Mlle P. and lowercase publiciste remain without an invented identification or expanded publication title. Bihérou retains the source transcription’s final u rather than silently substituting another name. Wax skeletons preserves the anatomical metaphor applied to the heart and mind.

T167.Inflate is repeated for conceptions and then feelings. J.-J. R. remains abbreviated, and the exact external source of the quoted expression has not been established. The source’s placement of the quotation after the parenthesis is retained without adding a colon. Grandiloquence renders the period sense of emphase as affected pomp in speech, attested in the Académie’s 1798 definition, and connects with the repeated inflation.

T168.The mind’s space, empty place, vacant point, narrow capacity, and plugging knowledge remain physical images. The good mind must remain greater than its own thoughts, whose form must be pliant. Nothing from outside being able to enter is not reduced to disagreement with one opinion.

T401.Vuide, scavoir, jouïr twice and appercevoir retain their printed forms. The two voyent spellings differ from the later voient in the same paragraph. The closing Esprits phrase remains nominal.

T169.The source’s paradoxical eyes see what is obscure nearby yet cannot see what is clear at a distance. That contrast remains. The closing Minds of night and darkness stays a nominal fragment.

T170.The definition retains disguising limits and masking mediocrity. It is not softened into overcoming them or reclassified as a claim only about apparently great minds.

T171.The opening inversion and repeated wisdom and learning preserve the contrast between relying on one’s own resources and possessing broader understanding. No named teacher or source of borrowed wisdom is added. Hardly retains the strongly limiting bien peu without declaring an absolute absence of wisdom or learning.

T172.The quoted here makes the mind a place in which it is light or warm. Heat, movement, and their converse remain distinct from serenity and light. The final sentence retains its compressed absence of a verb.

T173.Airs are familiar tunes. The opening fragment and the alternative introduced by Or remain together without making the second a replacement for the first.