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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1807

The evening of life brings with it its lights “that the other ages do not have.”

December 22.

An obscure point in his mind is as unbearable to him as a grain of sand in his eye.

December 23.

If — they have no sort of beauty or charm in their minds, they should refrain from writing, except in cases of necessity or important usefulness.

December 26.

Our wit must amuse us ourselves; and there is as much pleasure in having it as in using it and showing it.

December 28.

To displace force — or rather — to place power where force is not, and give it to force as a counterweight. That is the secret of the world. From which it follows that the more power or moral force there is in a state in opposition to real or physical force, the more skillfully that state is constituted.

There is no art, no equilibrium and political beauty among a people where force and power are in the same hands, that is to say, in the many, as in democracies — whose history has brilliance and interest only when force is really displaced, I was saying through the ascendancy of some virtuous man over all the movements of the multitude, which alone is strong in itself and without fiction. Fiction! it is needed everywhere; and politics itself is a kind of poetry.

December 30.

One must not confuse fancy and imagination. Children, weak heads, the fearful have much fancy. People of wit, and of much wit, alone have much imagination.

Imagination is properly what the Latins called ingenium, and fancy what our old authors long called phantasie.

December 31.

... who show themselves adorned with nature’s gifts alone, like young female slaves, and not with those of industry, like young female citizens, or those of fortune, like young ladies.

Diderot had false ideas about the aim and the beauties of art, but he expressed them well.

Each author has his dictionary and his manner, — that is to say: becomes attached to words of a certain sound, a certain color, a certain shape, and to certain turns of style, to certain cuts of sentence in which one recognizes his hand and of which he has made a habit.

Boileau, in his imitations of Balzac and Voiture, copied those authors’ tic and grimace well.

T177.Lights retains lumières and its connection to evening; it is not replaced solely by abstract wisdom. Only the relative clause is quoted in the source. No exact external source for that clause is asserted here.

T347.In the French source, the quoted words cover only the relative clause and the period follows the closing guillemet.

T178.Wit renders esprit in the connected acts of having, using, and showing it. Us ourselves keeps the self-directed emphasis; English does not reproduce the French’s singular même after nous.

T179.Force and power remain separate terms throughout both paragraphs. Give it to force makes the referents of la lui explicit: power is to serve as force’s counterweight. Moral force is opposed to real or physical force, as printed; no named political institutions are supplied.

T180.The many renders le grand nombre without adding a specific electoral arrangement. I was saying preserves the unexpected je disois rather than silently changing it to I mean. The multitude is the subject said to be strong in itself, and fiction leads to politics as poetry. These judgments remain Joubert’s.

T181.Fancy distinguishes imaginative from imagination in this passage; it does not imply that the two French terms always bear this contrast. The repetition of wit and much wit and the restriction alone are retained. Ingenium and phantasie remain the historical terms named by Joubert, with his emphasis; no claim is made that all Latin or older French authors used them identically.

T351.The two physical paragraphs and the distinction imaginative/imagination are retained. The source repeats d’esprit and limits the following claim with seuls. Appelloient and appellé have double l. Ingenium and phantasie alone are italic in paragraph 2.

T182.The feminine plural and the comparison with citoyennes establish female figures, made explicit in the first two English comparisons. Industry means human skill and work here, not only manufacturing. Fortune retains the possible association of wealth with circumstance. The missing antecedent is not supplied.

T183.Them refers to the false ideas, not to the beauties of art. The unfavorable judgment and the praise of expression remain distinct.

T353.The colon after c’est à dire is retained, followed by finite s’affectionne without a repeated subject. De certaines is the ordinary indefinite construction; no grammatical anomaly is asserted. Phraze retains z.

T184.The omitted repeated subject after that is to say is retained. Cuts of sentence preserves coupes de phraze as an image of articulation and division rather than substituting generic writing style. Hand remains the author’s recognizable mark.

T185.The physical tic and grimace are retained as critical metaphors rather than flattened into mannerisms. No specific imitation is identified beyond the two authors named by Joubert.