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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

All reflection is art.

... which mark the movements of my mind and its flashes, but not its operations.

If the word period means a return upon itself. Circulation of the meaning, sent back to the first word by the last. No style was ever more periodic. So memory does not go astray in it, and the rule may protest in vain.

March 19. (Saint Joseph.)

In books we no longer pay attention to what is beautiful, but to what is not, but to what speaks well or ill to us of our friends and our opinions.

Of the spirit of life that can be found in books.

The abbé of Grand-Champ (Arnaud). He had beautiful apprehensions in his mind. That is what I call these views etc.

— In this case, style is sufficiently embellished by the matter. It need only let it be seen. But in the other case, it can be made beautiful only by the author’s soul and skill.

Words must be born of thoughts, and sentences must be born of words.

... which serve only to unfold the sentence, and not the thought.

This abbé Arnaud, with truths, learning, and observations sometimes very subtle and very sound, gives a perfectly false idea of Greek genius and literature.

March 21.

What the pleasure the mind finds in going astray consists in.

This poetic nakedness in words.

T282.Art is left broad enough to include conscious technique or making; Joubert does not specify the fine arts. The unqualified universal assertion is retained.

T283.Period and periodic refer to rhetorical composition, with the last word sending the meaning back to the first. The opening conditional fragment is not completed. The closing expression gives the rule an ineffectual voice; no particular rule or author is named.

T471.The opening Si clause ends with a period in print. The divided renvoyé and périodique are restored from visible continuations.

T284.The repeated but preserves the two turns in Joubert’s sentence. The distinction between beauty and praise or blame of our friends and opinions is not reduced to a contrast between good and bad books. The source’s Saint Joseph observance is retained with the date.

T472.Both mais are printed and retained. The parenthesized Saint Joseph circumstance belongs to the opening date.

T285.Apprehensions is used in its intellectual sense of graspings or perceptions, not fears. The following “these views etc.” is Joubert’s incomplete explanation. Grand-Champ and Arnaud are retained as printed, without supplying a first name or expanding the title.

T286.The contrasted cases are not spelled out here. Matter renders matière, with the possible sense of subject matter; the pronouns distinguish the style that shows it from the matter that is shown.

T287.The repeated birth metaphor is retained. Phrazes and phraze are translated as sentences in these two entries, rather than as isolated phrases. The following relative fragment has no supplied antecedent.

T288.The criticism grants truths, learning, and perceptive observations while rejecting the resulting picture as a whole. Greek genius refers here to the distinctive spirit or gifts associated with Greek literature, without naming a single Greek genius. The one paragraph continues onto page 501.

T477.The single paragraph continues on 501 before the next March 21 date. Clipped quelquefois and the continuation of littérature are restored from visible letters. Scavoir retains its printed spelling.

T1.The source states an indirect inquiry without a question mark. Going astray preserves s’égarer, which can suggest both wandering and error; the fragment does not choose between them.