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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1810

March 9.

That proud characters love those they serve; and That: they would be inclined to cease serving them if they ceased loving them.

March 11.

The best laws are born of usages.

(To Mʳ p.) It is not heresy that is to be feared today, it is irreligion. The church’s enemies and dangers have changed. You must change your cares and struggles. (At T[onne]rre and at Aux[er]re, etc.)

March 17.

R. S. — He climbs (and to climb is to rise by crawling).

Ages in which there reigns a temperature favorable to minds and which makes them produce more beautiful fruits.

March 26.

“The true seek the true,” says Bossuet. Which means: the truthful person draws truth to themself; hearts open in the presence of an open heart.

Works and style to which one can add nothing: neither strength, nor polish, nor sweetness, nor correctness. They are unbearable. Grace has something soft that one seems able to knead. — O inflexibility! O insipidity! O marble! O honey, O oil! etc.

Like flesh. One can soften it, one can dry it out, make it pale, color it more than it is in true plumpness.

April 1.

Testament.

April 10.

There is something of a signature flourish in this style. I mean that all the words in it are intertwined as the ligaments are in a signature flourish. Everything in it turns inward and is chained together to excess. A drawback caused by a bad habit of the mind or hand and a misguided ambition.

What I have called the ligaments in the signature flourish are only the folds of the same continued line. Now continuity and separation have their laws in handwriting and in style.

April 17.

Unanimity is the most beautiful, the most delicious of all unisons.

(Uniformity and unanimity.)

April 18.

We see our duties clearly only in God. This is the sole ground on which they are always legible to the mind.

April 19.

The capacity to esteem, the power to believe, of which men without imagination and characters without flexibility are deprived.

T45.Both That openings remain dependent, including the second capital and colon. The repeated serving and loving preserve the conditional relation. Proud characters is not reduced to vanity, and those served are not assigned a particular rank.

T137.Both dependent Que formulations remain, including the second capital Q and its following colon. No governing clause is supplied.

T46.Are born preserves naissent. Usages keeps the customary practices from which laws arise; no particular legal system or present-day prescription is supplied. The source spelling loix remains in French.

T47.The unnamed addressee remains Mʳ p., including the raised r and lowercase initial. Heresy and irreligion remain distinct; church follows the source lowercase. Cares and struggles render sollicitudes and combats without inventing a specific campaign. The church’s changed enemies and dangers are followed by the addressee’s obligation to change cares and struggles. The bracketed portions of T[onne]rre and Aux[er]re are supplied in the source and retained; they are body place references, not new dates or translator expansions.

T139.The initial after Mʳ is a lowercase p with a clear descender in the enlarged facsimile, not a supplied capital D; it remains unexpanded. The r in Mʳ is raised. Both opening capital A forms have no certified accent; the later à is accented. The bracketed portions of the place names are source insertions and remain literal. L’église retains lowercase é after the capital article.

T48.The initials R. S. remain unexpanded. Climbs, rise, and crawling preserve the parenthetic distinction between grimper, monter, and rampant, including its physical and potentially disparaging force. No person or career is identified.

T49.Ages remains a nominal opening. The temperature, minds, and more beautiful fruits retain the growing image; which makes refers to the favorable temperature. No particular century or intellectual climate is named.

T141.The nominal relative formulation remains without a supplied main clause.

T50.The true repeats the substantivized véritables, with persons suggested by the following truthful person and hearts. The quotation ends before says Bossuet. Which means introduces Joubert’s explanation; truthful and truth retain their shared root, and open recurs for the hearts. No external Bossuet work or exact locus is supplied.

T142.The citation is followed by its explanatory formulation in the same paragraph; no external work is identified in the printed attribution.

T51.Strength, polish, sweetness, and correctness remain distinct, followed by the abrupt They are unbearable. Soft renders moëlleux through its tactile sense; the 1798 Académie also records softness of handling and blended contours in painting. Knead interprets the printed paitrir in its context, without changing that anomalous French spelling to pétrir. The exclamations retain marble, honey, and oil; French’s first plain O and later accented ô forms remain distinct in the source.

T143.Two physical paragraphs remain. The glyphs in the enlarged facsimile support moëlleux with a diaeresis and the literal paitrir rather than an imposed pétrir. The initial O is unaccented, unlike the following ô forms; no circumflex is certified over the a of palir. The nominal comparison and comparative ne remain.

T52.The opening Like flesh remains a fragment. The repeated one can and the subsequent shared constructions retain the sequence of softening, drying, paling, and coloring. True plumpness keeps véritable embonpoint rather than naming an artistic school or a medical condition. The comparative ne does not negate the condition of the flesh; palir remains unchanged in French.

T53.The single word remains unexpanded. It can suggest a will or a testament; the entry identifies neither a document nor its contents, and no new title is inferred.

T144.The date’s er is raised. The one-word nominal entry remains unexpanded.

T54.Signature flourish renders paraphe: the 1798 Académie describes a mark of one or more pen strokes ordinarily added after a signed name. Ligaments preserves the linking image in ligamens. Turns inward and chained together retain the two predicates; mind and hand remain alternatives. The final drawback formulation stays nominal, and misguided ambition renders mal entendue as defective conception or direction rather than another person’s misunderstanding.

T145.Two physical paragraphs remain. Appellé retains double l, and ligamens and loix their printed endings. The first paragraph’s final nominal relative formulation and the second paragraph’s singular Ce que with plural ne sont remain.

T55.What I have called ... are retains the source’s singular introductory formulation and plural predicate. Only preserves the restriction, and folds remains distinct from ligaments. Handwriting is the contextual sense of écriture in the pen-stroke comparison, kept distinct from style. Continuity and separation retain their respective laws without a named calligraphic system.

T56.Most beautiful and most delicious retain both superlatives, and unisons preserves the musical image without reducing it to mere agreement.

T146.The parenthetic nominal pair occupies a separate physical paragraph in the same dated block.

T57.The parenthetic nominal pair remains its own physical paragraph within the same dated entry, without an invented equivalence or opposition.

T58.Clearly renders bien with see, while only retains the restriction. Ground keeps the visual field implied by fonds, on which duties are legible; it is not turned into a financial fund. Sole and always retain their force.

T147.Fonds retains its final s. The restrictive ne...que and nominal lisibility image remain.

T59.Capacity and power remain distinct, with esteem and believe left without supplied objects. The shared relative clause applies to the two capacities. Men without imagination and characters without flexibility remain the two descriptions, without an added psychological diagnosis.

T148.The two nominal capacities and their shared relative clause remain without a supplied main predicate.