Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

April 27.

Superstition. This is what the ancients called new and newly arriving religions, religious novelties.

April 28.

Art put to work by natural disposition. Art employed to beautify a real substance. For if art served only to conceal nullity... In architecture, for example, art consists in placing a window well, not in making it false. A represented window belongs not to art properly so called, but to trickery. Now true art disdains trickery. It wishes to owe illusion only to its own skill. Phryne’s breast was no part of the art of oratory.

April 29.

Passion or emotion gives man only the character of a moment.

— and thus to make exquisite sense pass into common sense. Or: to make exquisite sense common.

May 1.

Some writings whose character is to be without stain. Beauty of works of these kinds, whatever they may be.

A pearl without luster, but of a beautiful transparency. Transparency of glass, and transparency of the pearl.

May 2.

We Westerners, we have restless minds.

May 3.

Brains into which everything enters and is reflected, and in which there are consequently many pictures. The souls that have them for chambers see much, and at a single glance, without fatigue. There are other brains in which few points are mirrors that receive or reflect external objects. But the souls that inhabit them are sometimes themselves great mirrors in which the intellectual world is reflected and perceived in its entirety. Those are every bit as good as the others.

Note. Bonaparte’s head.

Women in men’s clothes that are not flowing lose grace.

May 6.

Minds like those convex or concave mirrors that represent objects as they receive them, but never receive them as they are. For their surface lengthens or widens everything pictured in their depths. Other mirrors, without altering forms, alter colors. Thus there are curved minds, colored or coloring minds. If some of these combined embellishment with accuracy in the images they present, they would be the most precious and, I dare say, the best.

May 7.

There are little words in the language that no one knows what to do with. M. de Fz uses them very skillfully.

(In Quintilianum.) The composite is no more difficult than the simple. But it is more difficult to make the composite beautiful than the simple. For simplicity has in itself a beauty attached to its quality.

T18.The opening label stays within the paragraph. Newly arriving renders survenantes; the sentence remains Joubert’s account of ancient usage without a newly supplied historical authority.

T19.Natural disposition renders le naturel as the innate element that puts art to work; naturalness is another possible emphasis. The two opening nominal phrases and the unfinished if clause remain. Nullity is not weakened to an ordinary defect. The false window, trickery, and art’s own skill retain their distinction. Phryne’s breast remains the source’s terse allusion. A related example appears in Quintilian, Institutio oratoria II.15.9, where her physical appearance is distinguished from Hyperides’s pleading; the surrounding discussion separates persuasion from the art of rhetoric. This parallel does not establish Joubert’s particular source, and no narrative is added to his text.

T202.The two opening nominal constructions and the unfinished Si construction at the ellipsis remain. A non-typographic line beneath dissimuler is not treated as printed italic emphasis or a textual correction.

T20.The infinitive fragment and its alternative retain the repeated sense and common. Exquisite is not replaced by extraordinary, and common is not narrowed to vulgar.

T203.The initial lowercase infinitive fragment and its alternative Ou formulation are retained.

T204.Both nominal formulations remain without supplied finite predicates. The er after the date numeral is visibly raised.

T21.Luster renders éclat in the pearl image. The source’s transparency remains, without changing it into translucence or a mineralogical correction. Both formulations stay nominal.

T205.The two nominal formulations remain fragments.

T22.Chambers renders cabinets as rooms inhabited by souls, not governmental bodies. The first paragraph contrasts brains full of reflected pictures with souls that themselves reflect the intellectual world. Those in the final sentence refers to the latter souls; the claim keeps their equal worth.

T206.Voyent, plural fatigues and double-p apperçu retain the printed spellings. Elles mêmes and Celles là are unhyphenated. Nota is italic; its following main-text nominal phrase is a separate physical paragraph, not an apparatus annotation. The right edges partly affect y a, voyent and the wrapped quelquefois; their surviving parts support the readings.

T23.Note translates the emphasized Nota. This remains Joubert’s separate physical paragraph, not a translator note or source-apparatus annotation.

T24.Not flowing is read as describing the masculine plural habits, not the women. The English carries the compressed clothing qualification into a relative clause. The assertion remains Joubert’s.

T207.No article is supplied before Femmes, and the comma before finite perdent remains. The phrase et non flottans is retained without a new grammatical repair.

T25.The opening comparison remains a fragment. Lengthening and widening, forms and colors, and colored and coloring stay distinct. The conditional combining of embellishment and accuracy is preserved; no claim is made that distortion alone makes the best mind.

T208.The initial Esprits construction remains without an independent main predicate. Allonge, colorans and the unhyphenated ceux ci / quelques uns retain the print. The right-edge letters of jamais are partly damaged; the surviving word and sense support this reading.

S1.Source editor’s annotationChênedollé, private journal, fragment communicated by Mlle de Lamare:“1807. (May 7). Joubert was saying to me. What characterizes you above all is breath. There is a circulation in your work that animates everything. One sees life and blood everywhere. There is harmony of thought and harmony for the ear.” (fragment quoted differently by Ste Beuve, Chateaubriand et son groupe, volume II, page 295. “Joubert says that Rousseau’s style has on the soul the effect we experience in touching a beautiful woman’s breast. There is some sper..” (fragment quoted, but inaccurately, by Ste Beuve, same work, volume II, page 282. And compare, in the 1850 edition of Joubert, volume II, thoughts nos. XLI and XLII on page 192.)

T26.M. de Fz remains abbreviated. The source-apparatus call belongs to the May 7 date heading, not to a new attribution inserted in the main sentence.

T35.The two physical apparatus paragraphs remain separate from Joubert’s main entry. The May 7 date belongs to the quoted journal material. Breath, circulation, blood, harmony, and the later breast comparison retain their physical language. The incomplete sper.. is kept untranslated with its two periods; no missing word is supplied. The first bibliographical parenthesis remains without a separately supplied closing mark. Ste Beuve and the cited title remain as printed, without silently correcting the name form.

T209.Scait is unaccented and has no cedilla. The abbreviation Fz is retained without an expansion. The apparatus call follows mai in the date heading, before the period.

T210.Two physical apparatus paragraphs are retained: attribution, then the quotation and bibliographical matter. The first opening parenthesis before fragment cité différemment is not separately closed before the second quoted passage; no closing mark is supplied. The final partial word is printed sper.. with two periods, confirmed in an enlarged facsimile, and is not expanded. Mlle and Ste are baseline abbreviations. The date and page references belong to the apparatus, not additional main entries.

T27.The Latin In Quintilianum is retained; it can introduce a remark on or against Quintilian, without identifying a book or chapter. Composite and simple refer to kinds of composition, not intellectual ability. The contrast concerns making them beautiful.