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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1809

May 24.

— When we have lost our mortality...

May 28.

— This kind of imagination that is fitted to retain and reproduce spiritual impressions within itself. Garment of the intellect; A kind of peplum on which are embroidered...

May 27.

To cultivate their memory, so that prayer may germinate there. Sacred history, etc.

The errors that cannot displease God.

May […].

The pursuit of feeling has succeeded the pursuit of wit.

June […].

To speak ill of an illustrious man, one must always wait […] he has done ill.

Alas! Everyone would like to make others like themself. But […]lui who is good wishes to make like themself only those who are […]oins good than they are.

June […].

Without the madness of verse, without the madness of periods, without the madness etc., […] there would be neither great poets nor great orators, etc.

June […].

Prayers. That the best are those that have nothing distinct […] that thus partake of simple adoration.

June […]1.

A high philosophy teaches us not to be too much philosophers.

June […]1.

That indulgence (Marcus Aurelius said patience) is a part of […] justice.

June […]7.

For one must refuse knowledge to those who have no virtue.

T59.The future-completed relation of aurons perdu becomes have lost in the English when clause. The initial dash and trailing ellipsis preserve the unfinished formulation; mortality is not replaced by life.

T244.The initial dash and unfinished Quand clause remain.

T60.Imagination remains the subject of retaining and reproducing spiritual impressions. Within itself takes en soi with that faculty, without replacing spiritual by a purely sensory term. Peplum retains the ancient garment name in the image, not the later dressmaking sense. The final passive is left unfinished after are embroidered. The semicolon reading remains qualified; the following capital and May 28 before May 27 are retained.

T245.The three nominal formulations remain. The final relative clause trails off after brodés; no completion is supplied. Peplum has no visible accent. The punctuation after intelligence is degraded at the right margin: two separated marks support a provisional semicolon, whose exact form remains uncertain. The May 28 date is retained before May 27.

T61.The initial infinitive remains. Their does not identify the people whose memory is to be cultivated. Germinate preserves the growth image; there refers to memory. Sacred history remains a nominal example followed by etc., without being made into a titled book.

T246.May 27 follows May 28 in the printed sequence; no reordering is imposed. The infinitive and final nominal phrase remain. The wrapped histoire is slightly abraded at the right edge and joined from its surviving portions.

T63.The nominal formulation and cannot remain; the kind of error is not specified.

T247.The capital L is heavily clipped, but its lower trace survives before es; Les is a qualified reading. The nominal relative construction remains.

T64.Wit renders esprit in the contrast with sentiment, feeling. Pursuit recurs, and the English order makes explicit that feeling follows wit, not the reverse.

T248.The date’s numeral is too damaged to identify. The opening A is partly clipped and retained without a certified accent.

T65.Ill repeats the source’s mal and its resumption by en. The missing opening before ’il remains a gap; he translates the surviving pronoun without supplying until or the likely qu’ in French. The sentence’s advice to wait remains incomplete at that junction.

T66.The damaged […]lui and […]oins remain French residues in English. Celui, the one, and moins, less, are likely completions, not recovered print. The unspecified general referent takes singular they in English; no gendered identity is supplied. The contrast does not become an indiscriminate wish to reduce everyone to one’s own level.

T250.Chaqu’un retains the printed qu and apostrophe. The damaged line openings preserve lui and oins; celui and moins are likely completions, not fully recovered.

T67.Madness recurs three times without being treated as a diagnosis. Periods retains its rhetorical sense of extended sentences. The marker before there would be records the lost French opening; the English existential construction is supported by surviving n’y auroit and does not certify a missing il. Both etc. endings remain.

T251.The June day is lost. The left edge before n’y is cut off; il is a possible missing subject but is not certified. Poëtes retains its diaeresis, and the comma follows the first etc.

T68.The opening That remains dependent. Nothing distinct does not assign a particular absent petition or image. The missing connective before the second relative remains a gap, and partake of simple adoration preserves the relation without turning it into identity.

T252.The June day is lost. The second line’s left edge is cut off before qui; et is a possible lost connective but is not supplied. The opening Que remains without a separate governing clause.

T69.High philosophy retains the rank or elevation in haute. Philosophers remains a noun, preserving the repeated root rather than replacing the contrast with a generic warning against thinking.

T70.Initial That, the attributed parenthesis, and the gap before justice remain. Indulgence and patience are deliberately distinct terms; Marcus Aurelius is the conventional English form of Marc Aurèle. Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations IV.3 provides a parallel: bearing with others is a part of justice. The Greek supports the association of patience with justice, but Joubert’s particular translation has not been established.

T71.Knowledge gives science its broad sense here rather than restricting the sentence to modern natural science. For preserves the backward-looking connection; the obligation to refuse remains.