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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1809

February 24.

Preceptive grammar and reasoned grammar. The tedium of abstractions.

Conjunctive particles, more necessary in ancient languages because of their inversions.

Ellipsis, conducive to brevity and saving time and space.

The ancients, more patient than we are and accustomed to this patience; by the very suspension of meaning in their writers’ periods.

All beauties (in our language and perhaps in all the modern languages of the West) are Greek or Latin.

February 26.

There is in the soul a taste that loves the good, as there is in the body an appetite that loves pleasure.

On the first part of the book by Molé. There is truth there, pure and well shown; an enlightened intelligence, which is worth more than talent.

And this other one, in whom there is a bad intellectual nature. Their moral nature is beautiful because it is subject to duty; and their intellectual nature is not beautiful because it is not subject to authority.

March 4.

Casimir has made a mandolin of the harp.

March 10.

Small women who seem tall.

March 12.

Of those who lie to deceive, and Of those who lie to persuade others of the truth.

Religion is not only truth, it is also utility.

Wednesday, March 15.

M. Azaïs. It is intelligence and learning extravasated. He is a man with philosophical eloquence, a kind of eloquence rare until now.

T15.Preceptive and reasoned retain the historical distinction between stating rules and explaining their rationale, without identifying a textbook. The two nominal phrases remain; tedium renders ennui in the study of abstractions.

T209.The two nominal statements remain. The opening of the second-line continuation of abstractions is clipped; the combined word is a qualified reading.

T16.The nominal comparison remains without a supplied finite verb. Inversions concerns word order here, not an optical reversal. No individual ancient language or particular construction is named.

T210.The nominal construction is retained without adding a finite verb.

T17.Ellipsis remains a grammatical term for omitted expression. English uses a participial phrase for the source’s relative clause; the whole formulation remains nominal. Brevity, time, and space remain separate benefits.

T211.The opening nominal construction and relative clause remain as printed.

T18.The opening remains nominal. Periods is the rhetorical term for extended, organized sentences; it does not mean punctuation marks. Suspension of meaning retains the delay that accustomed the ancients to patience. The semicolon reading after patience remains qualified in the source record.

T19.All and the parenthetical perhaps retain their distinct scopes. The first-person our is not replaced by a named language, and the West takes the conventional English capital. This is the second paragraph of the same entry.

T20.Taste and appetite, soul and body, the good and pleasure remain distinct. Loves recurs in both clauses, keeping the personification.

T21.The reference names only Molé and the first part of his book. Pure and well shown both qualify truth; enlightened intelligence is distinguished from talent. No title, edition, or biographical identity is supplied.

T22.This other one remains unidentified. Singular their keeps the possessive reference without supplying an identity. English repeats beautiful in the second contrast to make clear that French ne l’est pas resumes belle; it does not mean that the intellectual nature is not subject to duty. The same subject-to construction remains for duty and authority. The paragraph continues onto page 672.

T23.The instruments remain distinct, and the transformation stays an image rather than an explanation of a playing technique. Casimir is left without an added surname.

T24.The English takes petites and grandes as a contrast of stature. The isolated fragment does not identify the women or settle a possible figurative force in seeming great; it remains nominal.

T215.The nominal fragment remains without an added governing verb.

T25.The second Of retains the unusual source capital. Others supplies the implicit recipient of persuasion; the paradox of lying in order to persuade someone of truth remains, without turning truth into a falsehood.

T26.Truth and utility remain abstract nouns rather than being recast as merely true and useful. The sentence attributes both to religion.

T27.Extravasated preserves the bodily image: the Académie’s 1798 entry for extravaser describes blood, humors, or sap escaping their vessels into places where they do not belong. Joubert applies this image to esprit and scavoir; no disease is inferred. The printed z remains in French. Eloquence renders faconde, an old term that the same dictionary still admits in playful verse; the dictionary does not itself define it as empty chatter.

T217.The enlarged facsimile confirms the z in extravazés. Scavoir and faconde remain as printed; the weekday is retained in the date.