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 1808

January 1.

The true character of literary epistolary style is playfulness, urbanity.

Continuity in strokes of wit. One must detach them from one another. Otherwise they have neither form nor force. For their force lies in their form; and their point contributes more to it than their solidity.

Today we claim to be sensitive; formerly we prided ourselves on being obliging. — A certain character — reigned, if not in conduct, at least in minds.

One must, like Socrates, apply oneself to poetry before dying; I mean immaterial and celestial poetry, Plato’s and not Homer’s, the poetry that transports the soul and keeps the senses drowsing.

January 2.

The bed can learn nothing more from them, and one is no longer inclined [to] wish for them there.

— that instruction which, by putting precepts, and examples, in the place of taste, teaches one to love what is not beautiful.

Of those who would have no wit if there were no books.

January 3.

All these portraits of people and places that establish an existence rather than a beauty, if they establish it well, always have some merit and even some charm; one finds in them at least a beautiful and happy fidelity to praise and to love.

Misuse and danger of applying judgment where taste should be applied, and taste where judgment should be applied.

Disguised oppositions may [be] more pleasing to taste, and the others to judgment. And again, oppositions and symmetries must be extremely marked, even for taste, because they are then better suited to their use in all solid things, as in architecture, and in all very decided thoughts, as in maxims, in vehement satire. But in everything that is outpouring, softness, etc., it is better that they be merely indicated than perfect. (One must also mingle the indicated with the marked.)

Cuerpo a los vientos y a las piedras Alma. “He gives a body to the winds, a soul to stones.” (Louïs de Gongora.) This is what the poet must do.

January 4.

One must distinguish sacred architecture from theatrical architecture. The one must carry everything from below upward, and the other direct everything from right to left.

T1.Playfulness renders enjouement as lightness and gaiety of manner; urbanity retains the social refinement of urbanité. The statement concerns literary letter writing.

T429.The date’s er is raised. This is the first block under the printed ANNÉE 1808 heading.

T2.Strokes of wit renders traits d’esprit while retaining the connection to form and point. Point keeps both the sharp end and the pointed saying; the repeated form and force are not replaced by generic effectiveness.

T3.Sensitive renders sensible as responsive in feeling, not reasonable. Obliging conveys the willingness to serve or please others. The former age is not assigned a date, and the intervening dashes remain.

T4.The repeated distinctions between immaterial poetry, Plato and Homer, the transported soul and the drowsing senses remain. The reference to Socrates is Joubert’s; no external passage has yet been established in this review.

T5.The bed preserves le lit as the grammatical subject. The English selects the learning sense of apprendre, personifying the bed. The period verb also means teach; the bed as a means of learning about them remains an alternative. The feminine plural has no expressed antecedent in this entry. The source editor’s [à] corresponds to English [to].

T432.The initial nominal-relative fragment and the commas around et des exemples are retained.

T433.The initial De phrase remains without a main governing clause; the conditional n’auroient is retained.

T6.The pronoun it is read as existence in the contrast with beauty. Establish retains constater as making something evident. Happy fidelity keeps heureuse as a favorable quality of successful representation; no particular portrait is identified.

T7.May [be] corresponds to the source’s peut [être], including its editorial brackets, while rendering the qualification as a modal construction. The passage moves from disguised oppositions to strongly marked ones in solid things and decided thoughts, then to merely indicated ones in outpouring and softness. Perfect retains parfaites; the concluding parenthesis belongs to Joubert.

T435.The source supplies [être] as a separate word without a hyphen after peut. Symmétries retains double m and satyre retains y. The comparative seulement que parfaites is not recast in French.

T8.The Spanish is retained beside Joubert’s own French gloss, translated into English; only the Spanish carries the source emphasis. Alma keeps its initial capital. The name remains Louïs de Gongora as printed, without identifying a particular poem or silently correcting the quotation.

T436.The Spanish sentence is italic and remains beside the separately quoted French rendering. Alma begins with a capital. Louïs retains the diaeresis, confirmed in the facsimile; Gongora is unaccented. Poëte retains its printed diaeresis.

T9.Theatrical refers to architecture for theater in the spatial comparison. Sacred architecture carries upward; theatrical architecture directs from right to left. Neither direction is silently changed to fit a modern convention.