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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

March 3.

— these divine mathematics. — As the others guide us in physical mechanics. There is always rectitude in order; and consequently some transcendent geometry needs to be applied to it. We need to be guided in it by some axiom or theorem that takes the place of instinct and inner sense, which are not always in play. Twenty guides are needed in place of one.

March 2.

“Old age (says Chateaubriand) brings good and evil.”

Type. The works of the ancients, even the mediocre ones, are all stamped with so beautiful a type!

March 3.

The nectar and ambrosia with which one must perfume the verses that are the language of the gods. The phosphorus with which one must illuminate them. The philter with which they must be soaked. The pure essence with which one must season them.

March 5.

One scarcely remembers their life and their persons. It was nothing serious, nothing fixed. Even in their virtues there was a mobility and a lack of solidity that makes them apt to flow out of memory. Will-o’-the-wisps in their thought, vapor in their feelings, in short, in their character a confused configuration that the winds made their plaything.

March 6.

And happy perhaps those of whom one could say that they have taste and have no distastes.

March 7.

To choose the essential, inevitable idea, and then to conclude from the idea.

March 8.

One feels there a mind that is a friend to other minds.

A piece of furniture can have a pretty form and be in bad taste, as they say. It has a pretty form when the design pleases the eye. It is in bad taste when it does not immediately announce, or does not promise on reflection, the kind of convenience for which it ought to be made. They do not flatter expectation. Such are those great mahogany beds that look so heavy and so massive that they inevitably exclude all idea of softness and ease and consequently of rest. They invite neither lying down nor sleeping.

Profiles must be clear and contours... I have no idea. — And contours not very definite perhaps, and undulating though marked.

The dry profile is less clear than cutting. And it is because it is cutting that it is not clear, for then it wounds the sight. It is too clear in itself to be so in us.

A circle is not a contour. A contour is an indefinite and slightly undulating circle. Poetic mathematics!

Therefore: through the clarity of profiles and the indefiniteness of contours.

March 9.

— and one sees there at least a mind that digests well what it thinks.

March 10.

The very excellence or extreme aptness of these expressions proves that one has occupied oneself much with what should have occupied one little, that one has keenly felt what one should have felt only very lightly.

T129.The two opening fragments remain, including the dependent As. Rectitude keeps the relation of rightness to order and the geometry image. Axiom and theorem remain alternatives, and instinct and inner sense are the two faculties they replace when those are not in play. The twenty guides are not reduced to a general many.

T130.The source places this March 2 entry after a March 3 entry and before another March 3 entry. Its date and position remain unchanged. The quotation remains attributed to Chateaubriand without an independently assigned external passage.

T131.Type retains the image of a model or form impressed on a work, including mediocre works. It does not classify the works into modern genres or fonts. The initial word is repeated and the exclamation remains.

T132.All four nominal and relative formulations remain without independent main predicates. Philter is the American spelling for the enchanting potion; the word is not changed to filter. Perfuming, illuminating, soaking, and seasoning retain distinct sensory actions. Phosphorus translates phosphore in its broader period sense of naturally or artificially luminous substances, without specifying a modern chemical preparation.

T526.The four nominal relative formulations remain without supplied main predicates. The date returns to March 3 as printed.

T133.The people remain unnamed. The source moves from past there was to present makes in the account of memory. Will-o’-the-wisps, vapor, flowing, and the winds’ plaything preserve the unstable physical images. The final list remains without an independent main predicate. Solidity preserves the physical and character-related senses of consistance in this movement toward flowing and vapor.

T527.Folets retains one l and jouët its diaeresis. The final nominal list is not supplied with a main verb, and the unnamed plural referents remain unidentified.

T134.Taste and distastes preserve the shared root of goût and dégoûts. Perhaps and the conditional could both remain; no copula is supplied to the opening exclamation.

T528.Peut être is unhyphenated; the opening nominal exclamation has no expressed copula.

T135.The two infinitives remain without a finite governing clause. Essential and inevitable are separate qualities; the repetition of idea is retained.

T529.Both infinitives remain without a finite governing clause.

T136.Mind is repeated for esprit and esprits. There retains y without supplying a particular work; friendship remains the relation between minds.

T137.Pretty retains jolie rather than substituting beautiful. Convenience renders commodité as the use or ease a piece of furniture should promise. The source changes from singular it to plural they before the beds are named; that transition remains. Softness, ease, rest, lying down, and sleeping retain their different terms.

T138.The interrupted specification of contours and I have no idea retain Joubert’s uncertainty. The following And clause remains without an added finite verb. Definite and marked are not collapsed into one quality. All four paragraphs remain in the same source block.

T531.Four physical paragraphs remain in this block. The interrupted contours clause and the nominal Et/Donc formulations are not completed. Peut être is unhyphenated and scais has no cedilla. Vuë and poëtiques have diaereses, confirmed in enlarged facsimiles. The small line marks around printed words are not added as punctuation.

T139.Clear renders net and cutting renders tranchant, preserving the distinction and the subsequent wound. The profile remains too clear in itself to be clear in us; the paradox is not replaced by a technical explanation.

T140.The circle and contour remain different, with indefiniteness and slight undulation distinguishing the latter. The following Therefore formulation remains a prepositional conclusion rather than a completed new proposition.

T141.Digests retains the bodily action applied to thinking. The initial and and the unassigned there remain.

T142.Aptness renders propriété as the fitting quality of expression rather than ownership. Excellence and aptness are alternatives; much and little, keenly and lightly keep the two comparisons and their judgments of proportion.