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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1808

July 8.

Voltaire. His books, even the most serious, are good only for enlivening the mind or for distracting it. One can say of his own that it is the evil spirit par excellence.

Priests and philosophers. The former are the better for practicing their morality, and the latter for not practicing theirs.

July 10.

“There is (as Mme G..dy said so well) there is cleanliness and elegance in temperance.”

July 14.

Truth and happiness. We were born to seek them always, but to find them only in God. Pleasures and appearances of truth take their place for us here below. I speak this way of the pleasures and appearances of truth that give spirit to our senses, to our mind, and to our hearts.

July 16.

Did Virgil know human and divine things better than Claudian, for example? No; but his mind, by its habitual disposition, was more in harmony with divine things and with what is divine in human things.

August […].

And hearts out of practice. (Virgil.) — A disillusioned heart.

August 3.

Love — is a delicious thirst and hunger.

August 14.

... by inspiring frenzied emulation in the young.

August 15.

— and order perceived in movement: dance, gait, military maneuvers.

August 16.

Of those whom movement makes beautiful and those whom it does not. Arrangement, disarrangement. Or: of the human face at rest and the human face in motion.

August 17.

Our judgment must not be as exacting as our taste. Our taste decides what we love and judges a fact. But our judgment must decide what is lovable in itself. It works upon a principle, upon a law, and upon an abstraction. Our taste can be our rule, but it is not the rule for others.

Our taste judges what we love and our judgment decides what is fitting. These are their respective functions, and they must keep within them. There must be the same difference between them as between inclination and reason.

August 20.

R-μ-r. His face is the color of a chameleon.

T358.The first uses of esprit are mind; evil spirit brings out the conventional spiritual resonance of esprit malin in the final phrase. French uses the same noun across both senses. Malin can also suggest sly or mischievous intelligence, so the phrase is not reduced to an identification of Voltaire with a literal supernatural being. Par excellence remains the familiar English loan expression.

T359.The opposed groups and the negative in the second comparison are retained. Morality denotes what each group teaches or professes here; the translation does not reconcile their different evaluations.

T360.The repeated There is and the attribution remain within the quotation. Mme G..dy is not expanded to an identified name. Temperance reads sobriété as moderation, especially in eating and drinking, rather than requiring complete abstinence from alcohol. Cleanliness renders propreté without changing it to propriety.

T361.The paragraph continues across pages 664–665. Appearances of truth renders vraisemblances without equating them with truth itself. Give spirit preserves the unexpected donnent l’esprit rather than substituting pleasure, rest, or certainty. The succeeding mind also translates esprit; senses, mind, and hearts retain their separate places.

T692.One paragraph continues across pages 664–665. Ici bas is unhyphenated; the next-page clause retains donnent l’esprit exactly, without replacing it from an expected expression.

T362.The question concerns knowledge, whereas the reply concerns habitual disposition and harmony. Human and divine recur without replacing the comparison with a general judgment of poetic skill.

T363.And translates the Latin enclitic -que, and hearts preserves plural corda, distinct from the subsequent singular French heart. Out of practice retains desueta as unaccustomed or no longer accustomed; the object of that accustomedness is not supplied. Disillusioned renders désabusé without making the French a literal gloss of every Latin word. The words occur in Virgil’s Aeneid I.722, where Cupid renews love in Dido’s long-inactive heart; Joubert’s following singular French phrase remains distinct from that context. No August day is restored.

T693.The August day is entirely lost at the left edge; no digit is reconstructed from the surrounding dates. The Latin formulation is italic, while the attribution and following French are roman.

T364.Love translates the Greek common noun ἔρως, without identifying the god Eros as an added speaker or subject. Delicious applies to both thirst and hunger. The dash before is remains; the source’s Greek accent and breathing qualification remains separately recorded.

T694.The Greek base letters are visible in an enlarged facsimile. The initial breathing and accent are compressed against the epsilon; ἔρως retains a qualification for the precise forms of those marks. No French noun or translation is supplied in the source text.

T365.Emulation retains the striving to rival or equal others, with frenzied for forcenée. The opening ellipsis and dependent by phrase remain without an invented agent or result.

T695.The opening ellipsis and participial formulation remain without a governing clause.

T366.The nominal construction and lowercase opening conjunction remain. Gait renders démarche as bodily movement here; maneuvers renders the military évolutions and follows American spelling.

T696.Apperçu retains double p. The lowercase et follows the opening dash, and the nominal formulation remains.

T367.The alternatives remain fragments. Arrangement and disarrangement retain the repeated root and contrast without turning dérangement into a psychiatric diagnosis. The human face recurs in both states.

T697.The repeated alternative formulations remain without a supplied finite governing clause.

T368.Exacting renders difficile as hard to satisfy. Lovable in itself translates aimable en soi without reducing it to amiable manners. Fact, principle, law, and abstraction remain distinct; one’s taste may be one’s own rule but is not a rule for other people.

T369.The second paragraph repeats the comparison rather than being removed as redundant. They refers to taste and judgment. Inclination and reason remain the analogous pair, without identifying either faculty as dispensable.

T370.The abbreviated name and its qualified middle sign remain unexpanded. The chameleon image keeps its unspecified color; no particular hue or psychological diagnosis is added.

T699.The opaque abbreviated name is not expanded. Its middle printed glyph has an open top and a descending stem and is provisionally transcribed as Greek μ; the identity of that degraded sign remains qualified, without deriving it from an expected personal name.