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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

April 2.

These gardens where the master can show or hide himself, as he chooses.

Through the sciences, to make life or sustenance better, and through better sustenance to make virtue easier and the soul better disposed toward all that is good.

A logic without reason is like a well crank without a rope. It is only a cumbersome machine with no usefulness at all.

Any translation whose style has number and a fixed rhythm, suspect of infidelity. Unless the work translated also has a rhythm of the same kind and the same fixity. That is why Florian reproduced Cervantes’s novel badly. The Spanish author has in his book a bourgeois and familiar good nature to which the French translator’s elegance is antipathetic.

April 6.

How a complicated garment requires and imperceptibly brings about some complication in the manners of the simplest people. Not all men can provide themselves with a garment suited to their habits, but all inevitably suit their manners to their garment.

To know how to be modest and to know how to be proud.

The sound of the drum scatters thoughts. That very fact makes this instrument eminently military.

April 8.

(In a dream.) To unite matter with forms, which are what nature has that is purest, most beautiful, and truest. (Written at night, without seeing.)

Balzac. A great craftsman of speech; he is right too magnificently.

April […]9.

I was saying that: for the conduct of life... it is not necessary to have clear ideas, but to have useful ideas. For example, there is a cartpole in front of me, I am walking, it is enough that I perceive it sufficiently to turn aside, without seeing it very distinctly. It is therefore enough that useful ideas exist. But the useless ones must be clear, distinct, etc. to yield some usefulness and some charm.

One must conform to usage; but for those who wish to write, there are two, there are a hundred: that of society and that of books, that of the day and that of the century, that of preceding centuries.

April 10.

Dry, not like wood, but like bread. That is to say dry, but nourishing, dry but not hard, not arid.

T197.The nominal relative construction stays without a governing assertion. Master renders maître without identifying an owner, gardener, or particular estate; his choice remains explicit.

T571.The nominal relative construction has no supplied main predicate; the circumflex in maître is visible in the facsimile.

T198.The paired infinitives remain a formulation of purpose without an added speaker or finite assertion. Sustenance renders subsistance as the material means of living, rather than one particular food. Better sustenance is the stated means of making virtue easier; the comparative is not replaced by luxury or wealth.

T199.The crank remains specifically a well’s device; the missing rope and the resulting cumbersome uselessness preserve the physical comparison. Logic and reason remain distinct.

T200.Number is the rhetorical harmony of arranged words, as in the earlier weight, number, and measure passage; it is distinct from a numerical count and from the separately named fixed rhythm. The opening lacks a finite main verb, and the Unless clause remains separately punctuated. Bourgeois and familiar qualify good nature; antipathetic preserves the incompatibility attributed to the translator’s elegance. The novel remains unnamed.

T574.The first nominal construction lacks a finite main verb, and the following A moins clause remains separately punctuated. Initial A is unaccented. The right-edge endings of rythme, mal and livre are partly clipped and qualified from the surviving forms and continuation.

T201.The opening How clause has no supplied governing assertion. Garment renders habit; habits renders mœurs, distinct from manners for manières. Not all men preserves the limited negation, followed by all inevitably. The final reversal matches manners to clothing, and the single source paragraph continues onto page 653.

T575.The opening Comment clause is not supplied with a governing phrase. One physical paragraph continues across pages 652–653; the reversal of habit and manières remains.

T202.The paired infinitives and repeated know how remain. Neither quality is made absolute, and no occasion for choosing between them is supplied.

T576.Both scavoir forms have c without a visible cedilla; the paired infinitives remain without a governing verb.

T203.Scatters renders dissipe with thoughts as its object. The causal link to the military character of the drum remains Joubert’s own assertion, without an added account of battle or discipline.

T204.Both circumstances remain roman text in parentheses. Without seeing does not specify blindness or absence of a light. The infinitive remains, and purest, most beautiful, and truest are three distinct superlatives. The source’s damaged day is separately qualified.

T205.Craftsman retains artisan as a judgment of verbal workmanship. Too magnificently modifies being right, preserving the peculiar criticism rather than substituting verbosity or ornamental language.

T206.The opening that and colon, followed later by the ellipsis, remain. The cartpole example begins with there is, not an inserted if. Useless ideas remain the paradoxical subjects of the requirement to be clear in order to yield usefulness and charm. The damaged date is not completed from its neighbors.

T207.Society renders monde in the contrast with books. Two and a hundred remain the source’s successive quantities, followed by its five-part list. Day, century, and preceding centuries remain distinct scales; the list is not recounted or corrected.

T208.The three repetitions of dry retain sec; nourishing, hard, and arid remain different properties. No unnamed style or author is supplied as the subject of these nominal descriptions.

T581.The nominal descriptions and unhyphenated C’est à dire remain.