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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

March 29.

Rough minds endowed with robust organs have suddenly entered literature; and it is they who weigh its flowers! —

She has a great deal of wit and no head, so that this wit has no lodging. Thus it is always wandering and does not know where to rest.

A few words worthy of memory may suffice to bring renown to a great mind.

March 31.

Whatever people may say, it is in the face that one must look at men, but one must not mistake their mask for their face.

Yes, virtue seeks to spread and those who possess it love to give it.

Haine has a soft sound, though its meaning is dreadful. Likewise, haïr: “je ne puis le haïr.” Affreux is dreadful. In affreux there is a perfect accord of meaning and sound.

Moi j’en étais haïe et ne puis lui survivre. Put: “J’en étois détestée et ne puis...” there will be dissonance. The softness of the sound in the word haïe tempers its meaning and softens what is harsh in it. This mixture of rigor in the meaning and softness in the sound yields only a sad word; and sad words are beautiful.

The best of all expedients for sparing oneself many troubles is to think very little of oneself, I mean of one’s own interest.

Balzac does not know how to laugh, but he is beautiful when he is serious.

That oratorical authority of which the ancients spoke is found in Bossuet more than in all the others; and after him, in Pascal, in Labruyère. Even in J.-J. Rousseau; but never in Voltaire.

— this road of truth; and I have made a long detour there: thus this country where you lose your way is well known to me.

“In literature (said the A. C., preface to the works of Balzac), ignorance excuses nothing,” and on the contrary. Ignorance, which in morals mitigates the fault, is itself in literature a first and capital fault.

For pronunciations — ilia, lilla, flanc, flancs, etc. No word is soft in sound except through the meeting or mingling of vowels that we make it a rule to avoid in our language. A word may not be soft in sound and become so through the pronunciation that its meaning forces us to give it.

T184.Rough minds and robust organs keep the contrast between coarseness and bodily strength. Weigh retains the physical action applied to flowers, without replacing it by a general judgment of literary value. The final exclamation and dash remain.

T185.Wit renders the repeated esprit here and remains the wandering subject, while head stays the absent lodging’s bodily counterpart. No name or occasion is supplied for She.

T186.Bring renown renders illustrer as making illustrious; the words are not examples illustrating a theory. A few, may, and suffice preserve the sentence’s scale and possibility. The Académie’s 1798 Illustrer entry records the sense of making illustrious through such things as writings or actions.

T187.Face is repeated, with a singular mask between its two appearances. The first formulation retains the direction of looking rather than replacing it with an assertion about judging character.

T188.The source supplies only the infinitive ending re in répand[re]. English spread cannot naturally reproduce that letter-level supplement; the intervention remains visible in the French. The initial Yes and the pronouns referring to virtue are retained.

T189.The words under discussion remain French because the judgments concern their sounds: haine means hatred, haïr means to hate, and affreux means dreadful. The short example je ne puis le haïr means I cannot hate him. In Affreux is dreadful, the first term names the French word and the second translates its asserted quality. Only the occurrences emphasized in the source are italicized.

T190.The French examples remain in the English paragraph to preserve the sound comparison. The verse means: For my part, I was hated by him and cannot outlive him. The proposed substitution means: I was detested by him and cannot... Both participles mark a feminine speaker. Haïe is the feminine form meaning hated; détestée means detested. The source’s étais in the verse differs from étois in the substitution and is retained. The centered verse and following prose form one paired paragraph; no words are supplied after the ellipsis. The verse occurs in Pradon’s Statira V.4, spoken by Roxane to Statira about Léonatus (line 1442 in the Théâtre classique transcription). That witness has the same words with different punctuation; Joubert’s isolated form is retained.

T191.The following I mean limits the advice to one’s own interest, rather than to all self-knowledge or attention. Troubles renders peines in the practical counsel without specifying physical pain alone.

T192.Beautiful retains beau as a judgment of Balzac in seriousness. The statement does not turn the first clause into a claim that he never laughs.

T193.The comparison is with all the others, and after him remains an order of precedence without an invented chronological claim. The final prepositional clauses remain without repeated finite verbs. Labruyère keeps the source’s one-word form.

T194.The initial dash and lowercase nominal fragment remain. Road, detour, country, and losing one’s way preserve the sustained geographical image, without supplying the missing opening or a particular interlocutor.

T568.The opening nominal fragment follows a dash and begins lowercase.

T195.The A. C. abbreviation remains unexpanded in the English. The source’s period followed by closing quotation and comma is adapted to an English closing comma; and on the contrary remains an unfinished addition. First and capital preserve the double description of the fault, and morals remains the contrasting field.

T569.The abbreviated l’A. C. reference remains in the main paragraph, unexpanded. The quotation ends with a period before its closing guillemet and a following comma; et au contraire remains a separate fragment. Atténuë retains a diaeresis.

T196.Ilia, lilla, flanc, and flancs remain the source’s distinct italic letter sequences, without a conjectural correction or assigned language for the first two. The French flanc and flancs mean flank and flanks, but their sounds are the point here. Meeting and mingling remain alternative ways vowels interact; the final pronunciation is imposed by meaning.