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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

November 23.

To be mistaken is a small misfortune, but to go astray is a great one.

November 27.

It is not given to those who have taste to taste beautiful things at every moment.

November 28.

To write well, indeed, one needs time and wit.

December 2.

Florus’s style, which is not good in Florus, is excellent in Montesquieu; — because there it is in its place.

December 3.

Keep your mind above your thoughts, and your thoughts above your expressions.

When literature is thus mingled with affairs, affairs spoil it, and it spoils affairs.

— Art is not there, but talent or power is.

Let us praise the brilliant virtues, for they lend their assistance and support to the obscure virtues; — and the obscure virtues, which do not know themselves...

Truth, light of souls. Sometimes we see nothing true […] we see truth, we see nothing beautiful and we see beauty. Man in his place, honor in order and in harmony with […] experiences the joy and rest these things give, and we see them without distinguishing anything in them.

December 7.

That is because place is beneath our feet, and extension is above our heads.

December 8.

Movement and form in works of art. Note[…] that movement always alters form a little when it is beautiful; it beautifies it when it is not.

In every unfolding there is some rest.

It is not their virtue (the Romans’), but the idea of their virtue that is useful to the world today.

December 9.

Joy is indeed the natural element of the imagination. That is why one must not carry it into sorrows, where it makes everything ugly and makes itself ugly, because it is out of place there and outside its proper sphere.

Of one who paints evil too vividly, we say that he exaggerates. And of one who paints good too vividly, we say that he embellishes. Now, whoever embellishes perfects but does not alter the nature of things. Whoever exaggerates deforms.

Of sadness without gentleness. A sentiment without beauty, bad […] to paint, consequently.

T160.The English repeats taste as noun and verb to preserve goût and goûter. The qualification at every moment remains: the sentence does not deny all enjoyment to people of taste.

T161.The same style is judged differently in Florus and Montesquieu. No particular work or copied passage is identified beyond the source’s statement.

T329.The block has four physical paragraphs, with the last three at the top of page 632 and no intervening asterisk. Au dessus is unhyphenated. The last relative clause ends in an ellipsis; no completion is supplied. Some final letters in the top-page lines of 632 are clipped; la, et and ne se are restored from their surviving portions and syntax.

T162.Affairs repeats three times, and literature both suffers and causes the spoiling. This paragraph belongs to the December 3 unit begun on page 631; the new printed page is not a new entry.

T163.Brilliant and obscure preserve both visibility and value in the contrast. The closing relative clause and its ellipsis are retained without supplying a further conclusion.

T164.Two explicit gaps preserve lost wording after true and after with. No connective, subject, or doctrinal explanation is supplied. Honor follows the independently confirmed l’honneur, even though the damaged sentence remains syntactically difficult; it is not changed to a repeated man. The qualified restorations of beauty and see are recorded in the source-collation notes.

T330.Two right-edge losses remain explicit: after vrai before on voit, and after avec before éprouve. Their words or punctuation cannot be certified. The ending beauté and its period, and the ending voit, are restored with uncertainty from their surviving beginnings and syntax. The unusual l’honneur follows the visible letters; no syntactic repair is imposed. Joye retains y.

T165.Place and extension preserve the philosophical distinction between lieu and étendue. The above/beneath relation is retained without replacing extension by sky or a modern theory of space.

T166.The gap after Note corresponds to the lost French ending of Remarqu[…], which does not certify an infinitive or an imperative. Note translates the recoverable verbal sense; the marker does not assert a missing additional English word. The next physical paragraph remains separately paired.

T332.The ending of Remarqu[…] is lost at the right edge; the witness does not securely distinguish an infinitive from an imperative. Belle and the following delimiter are partly lost; belle; is an uncertain contextual restoration. Déployement retains the printed ye.

T167.It is read as imagination, whose natural element is joy, not as an injunction never to bring joy into sorrow. Makes itself ugly retains the reflexive claim alongside making everything ugly.

T168.Evil and good remain parallel objects of too-vivid depiction. Does not alter the nature of things conveys ne dénature pas; the English does not silently equate embellishment with falsification. Deforms retains the final physical verb.

T335.The right-edge Et and qui are partly damaged and restored with uncertainty from their traces and syntax.

T169.The loss after bad remains explicit. To marks the English infinitive paint and does not certify that the missing French word was à. The feminine mauvaise in the French may look back to sadness rather than the intervening masculine sentiment; the translation does not repair that relation.

T336.The right edge after mauvaise is lost; à would complete the expected construction before peindre, but is not certified and is not inserted. The feminine mauvaise is visible and is retained despite the intervening masculine Sentiment.