Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

February […]9.

Of beautiful letters and ugly letters. Where charm and some serenity are absent, there are no longer beautiful letters. Some amenity must be found even in criticism. If it lacks it altogether, it is no longer literary. One sees nothing in our journals now but a hideous controversy.

February 10.

Of true imagination. That it is an unaffected faculty, useful or at least innocent. And of factitious imagination, or imagination made by combination. How apt it is to deceive, how harmful, etc. Artifice and false goods.

The first lies and does not deceive; the second deceives even more than it lies.

February 11.

— Not even Mr. de Montesquieu? — Not even Mr. de Montesquieu. He seems to teach the art of making empires. When one has read him, one is always tempted to make one.

And Buffon? — He has a hidden bombast, a pair of compasses always opened too wide.

— How much care to polish a glass? — But one sees clearly and one sees far. Image of these choice words! — One places them in memory, one keeps them there dearly. They take up little space before our eyes, but a great deal in the mind. The mind makes them its delight. And this glory is great enough. This lot is beautiful enough.

It takes only a moment to blow a jar, a bottle, a utensil of brown glass, etc.

Pleasure in pleasing, legitimate. Desire to dominate, shocking. Pride is vice. One must be above pride through some elevation: not be beneath it. Well and good. Innocent vanity that feeds on light vapors; may be a delicate fault suited to our nature, to the poet... Pride is the enemy of goodness.

Buffon’s compasses opened too wide: this expression is very just.

Perhaps it is permissible to use as a weapon what it is not possible to use as a reason. I love their enemies, but I do not share their prejudices; I will not speak as they do.

February 12.

Art has nothing in common with such books. They must be left to commerce.

Where there is no delicacy, there is no literature. Delicacy announces talent. Naturalness, the strength given to words by their placement announces art. “Taught the power of a word put in its place...” That is the whole art. A piece of writing in which there is only strength and a certain fire without brilliance announces only character. One produces such things if one has nerves, bile, blood, and pride. Making a book and making a work are two things. One makes a work with art and a book with ink and paper. One can make a work in two pages and make only a book in ten folio volumes. The style of most writers of the day is good for business and even for controversy, but it goes no further; it is civil, and not literary.

Everything spiritual is delicate, because it comes from the soul, that is, from delicacy itself.

February 14.

A mind capable of completing all its thoughts and accustomed to doing so writes this way naturally and naturally has this style: in which the meaning carries the thought as the soul carries the body.

T163.Beautiful letters renders the literal sense of belles-lettres so that its opposition to ugly letters remains visible. Both refer to literature in this wordplay. Journaux are public periodicals, not personal notebooks. The printed date certifies only a final 9 before février; the possible lost leading digit is not guessed.

T164.Naïve describes an unaffected or natural faculty, not gullibility. Factitious retains the contrast with imagination made by combination. False goods keeps biens as purported things of value. The contrast between lying and deceiving is preserved in the second paragraph.

S1.Source editor’s annotationConversation with Chênedollé, on March 3, 1806, reported by Chateaubriand in his private journal: “Joubert maintains that there are only false beauties in Buffon. He maintains that his style is contagious because it hides bombast beneath an air of wisdom. This is unjust in every respect. Buffon is not the foremost of writers. Certainly Pascal and Bossuet are above him. But he is a very great writer. He has a pure and limpid style, and above all a great nobility. He gave the French language that calm and majestic education which Plato had given the Greek language.” (Text supplied by Mlle L. de Lamare. Cf Ste Beuve, Chateaubriand and His Circle, volume II, page 281.)

T165.Emphase here is inflated or pompous expression, not ordinary emphasis. Compas is the drawing instrument whose legs can be opened too wide; the same image returns later on this page.

T186.This source-editor annotation reports a conversation dated March 3, 1806, although it is attached here among the 1805 entries. The explicit 1806 is retained and is not assigned as the notebook entry’s date. The judgment opposing Joubert’s view is part of the quotation reported by Beaunier, not a new translator’s comment. The French source title Chateaubriand et son groupe is rendered Chateaubriand and His Circle; the abbreviated author reference is left as printed.

T377.The annotation explicitly dates the reported conversation March 3, 1806 despite its position in the 1805 section; the date is not silently changed. An enlarged facsimile confirms Lamare and page 281. The source prints Cf without a following period and Ste Beuve without a hyphen.

T166.The polished glass suggests an optical lens, but glass is retained without specifying an instrument. The opening question mark and the later exclamation remain as printed. The mind is repeated to identify the masculine Il after esprit, rather than suggesting a male person. Choice words remain precious things held in memory.

T167.Pride and vanity remain distinct. The injunction places one above pride through elevation rather than below it. Fumées retains the image of slight vapors on which vanity feeds. The printed peut être, without a hyphen, is read as may be; perhaps a delicate fault is another possible reading. The abrupt Well and good renders A la bonne heure without supplying an interlocutor.

T379.The source prints peut être without a hyphen and leaves its verb/adverb reading unmarked. The sequence of nominal fragments and the ellipsis remain.

T168.Reason retains the contrast between a weapon and a rational ground or argument. The identities behind their enemies, their prejudices, and they are not supplied; the possessives need not designate a single group. Préventions means prejudgments or prejudices here, not preventive measures.

T169.The quoted line comes from Boileau’s Art poétique I. Malherbe is its subject in the preceding lines, but Joubert quotes only the past-tense fragment, which remains without an added subject. Making a work and making a book are repeatedly distinguished. Civil means suited to ordinary social affairs here, rather than merely polite; nerves, bile, and blood retain the bodily terms.

T170.Sens is meaning in relation to thought. The unusual direction of the comparison is retained: meaning carries thought as the soul carries the body. Both occurrences of naturally remain.