Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

These words that have wandered so long in their thought seem also to be mobile and as though wandering on the paper. They detach themselves from it, in a sense, as soon as one fixes them with lively attention; and accustomed as they were to walking about in the author’s memory, they spring forth, so to speak, to stick to that [of the reader] through a sort of attraction impressed upon them by habit and by their origin, whose mark they seem to bear, etc. (sic.)

— One could at least have replied to him that the sciences are a thing without which one does not know that the sciences are useless.

... something slender and not very fleshy.

One is sweet sleep and the other is hope. (Voltaire.)

Why there is a fault in this line. Why the juxtaposition is forced. It is not serious enough. Why.

February 22.

Such lines, which one believes rapid, are really suited only to depicting effort or a kind of rubbing like that of rats.

[They] put their noses into the air, show their heads a little... (Etc. see what follows.)

Depart, run, fly...

There is more stirring here than movement, than progress. Serious verse must advance with great strides, not by stamping its feet. When it wishes to depict rapidity, it must give it the gait of Homer’s gods: “he takes a step and arrives...” Lines with so many sections resemble insects with a thousand feet or legs with multiplied joints. There is something small here, something that proceeds by leaps and in fits. There is no rapidity.

For — art always has as its object “what is best always and at all times.” But, because of the prudence within it, in particular subjects it contents itself with what is best for them and for itself and for the time.

Plato. Oh! the fine comedian.

Yes: but here is a thing that cannot be shown and that, to be well taught, requires as much intelligence in the learner as in the teacher.

Of recollection. An old and very exact word. The mind then does what the hunting dog does in retracing all its tracks to find the trail again.

Thought must therefore indeed be something and leave some trace or droppings of itself, since we have the power, by taking up the hunt again, by returning along its broken branches, to catch it again when it has fled.

Everything very spiritual in which the soul truly has a part leads back to God, to piety. The soul cannot stir, open its eyes, awaken, without feeling God. True truth! sufficient truth! all the others are useless to happiness, since without them and with this one we can be fully, perfectly, entirely happy.

Air, place, light, life, health, knowledge, beauty, food and delights of the soul.

God loves the soul. And just as there is an attraction that carries the soul toward God, there is one, if I dare speak this way, that carries God toward the soul. God makes the soul his delight.

And indeed, when one remembers a beautiful line, a beautiful word, a beautiful phrase, one always reads them in the air; one sees them before oneself, the eyes seem to read them in space. One does not imagine them on the sheet to which they are stuck. An ordinary passage, on the contrary, is not distinct from the book in which one read it; and that is where memory first sees it when one quotes it. I appeal to experience.

T181.The words keep their movement from thought to paper and from the author’s memory to the reader’s. Stick preserves se coller. [Of the reader] mirrors the supplied [du lecteur]. The source’s singular verb imprima precedes both habit and origin; English past tense does not show that agreement. The closing sic belongs to the printed source, not to a new correction by this translator. Whose mark they seem to bear renders se sentir de as retaining an effect or trace of their origin, rather than being conscious of it.

T182.Sciences can include organized branches of learning, not only modern experimental science. The paradox remains: one needs them to know that they are useless. No identity for him is added.

T183.The line is from Voltaire’s La Henriade, VII.6; in its context the two are beneficent beings placed among us by God. The English renders Joubert’s lowercase sommeil and espérance. The ensuing Why prompts keep periods, and It may refer to the line or to the juxtaposition; that choice is not settled in the body.

T184.Frottement is rubbing or friction, retained even though the following rats might invite scurrying. Remuement, mouvement, and progrès remain distinct as stirring, movement, and progress. The contrast is between repeated small motions and great advancing strides. No precise Homeric passage is claimed for the quoted paraphrase.

T185.The quoted line is from La Fontaine’s Le Chat et un vieux Rat, Fables III.18. The preceding verse calls the animals mice; Joubert’s preceding comment calls them rats. The French finite plural verb has its subject in the preceding verse; [They] prevents the English from reading as a command. Singular nez and tête are distributive, rendered with plural noses and heads. The source’s parenthetical instruction remains in the same paragraph after a line break.

T187.Comique can designate a comic writer or a comical person. Fine comedian retains the praise without supplying a particular dialogue or reducing the line to a modern profession.

T188.The old word praised is French remémoration. Recollection is rendered through the extended image of the hunting dog following a trail. In the next paragraph, fumées has the hunting sense of animal droppings, attested in the contemporary dictionary, rather than its ordinary meaning of vapors. Brisées are broken branches used to mark a hunting route; returning along them also means resuming an abandoned pursuit.

T189.True truth preserves the emphatic repetition vérité véritable. The final fully, perfectly, entirely happy also keeps all three terms. The soul’s stirring, opening its eyes, and awakening remain bodily images.

T190.The attraction moves first from the soul toward God, then from God toward the soul. Joubert’s reservation if I dare speak this way remains attached to the second direction.

T191.The beautiful remembered words are seen in the air rather than on their printed sheet; ordinary writing remains tied to the physical book. Stuck retains collés and the image of attachment. The final appeal is to experience, without an added claim of proof.