Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

According to Plato

August […]4.

One necessarily needs, to hold such positions well and fulfill all [their] duties well, — one needs, I say, the capacity for that, [and] the incapacity for everything else.

August […]7.

That words, works, poetry in which there is more repose (but a repose that moves us) are more beautiful than [those] in which there is more movement. That movement imparted [by] what is motionless is the most perfect and the most delightful; and that, [moreover], it resembles the movement God imparts to the world. So that [whoever] works in this way performs an action that has something divine about it. [That] to move us is more divine than to set us in motion, emotion being the soul and [spirit] of movement.

August 18.

Yes, “one must do one’s job”; but one must do one’s duty. Our [job] is to satisfy the Emperor; our duty is to satisfy families, through a good education.

Of the immutability of human nature. A question that must be joined to that of perfectibility, because that question is needed to give the latter its proper limits; and that is linked to the question of another immutability: that of all natures.

To illuminate a question. — gilds and colors truth.

“A garden that smells shut up.”

The only good in innovations is what is development, growth, completion.

(Omitted from the 16th.)

Of the extension of the senses, through illness and somnambulistic sleep. (Mr. de Jussieu.) There is also an extension of intelligence brought about by illness and sometimes by sleep.

August 22.

“The body of women” and “the mind of young people,” says Plato.

It must follow that the figures of speech we use naturally and necessarily to understand one another, when speaking of certain matters, must have some truth in the literal sense. They are true either in themselves or for us, since they are general and inevitably produced by our mind. But I do not mean by this that they are exact. There are many things it would be impossible and useless for us to know exactly here below.

Doctrines, opinions, notions suited to our strength and our weakness. If not to our weakness, we cannot bear them, retain them, keep them, preserve them. If not to our strength, we cannot admit them and be content with them. — Indeed, our nature consists of its weakness and its strengths, its extent and its limits.

He is admirably mistaken. He is mistaken, but nobly, but learnedly, but with grace, with wit, with wisdom and with much beauty.

T172.The repeated impersonal necessity and I say preserve the self-interruption. The positions remain unnamed, and the absolute everything else is not softened. [Their] renders the complete English possessive relation of contextual en from […]n before bien remplir; the positions provide its antecedent. [And] renders et from […]t. Only the terminal 4 is retained in the damaged day; no earlier digit is inferred.

T565.Only the terminal 4 is retained, qualified for its abraded contour; no preceding day digit is inferred. The two line openings preserve n and t respectively without their lost preceding components.

T173.The dependent That openings, So that and final [That] remain. English beautiful carries both printed grammatical genders; [those] contextually represents the combined damaged ceux and intact celles without separate gendered forms. The opening parenthesis before but is supplied contextually to match the surviving closing one; its position is not recovered French print and no word is guessed in that punctuation loss. [By], [moreover] and [spirit] render par, d’ailleurs and esprit from […]ar, d’ail[…]eurs and es[…]rit. [Whoever] represents the whole celui qui construction with damaged […]elui and intact qui. Final [That] renders contextual Qu’ from […]u’ before intact émouvoir. Repose, movement, emotion, soul and spirit remain distinct; the final contrast keeps emotional and physical movement in play. Only terminal 7 survives in the date.

T174.The quotation is limited to the first maxim. Both must formulations and both satisfy formulations remain; no modern institutional role is substituted. Only the second [job] contextually renders métier from […]étier; the first quoted job is intact.

T567.Both day digits are identifiable; irregular marks to their left do not establish another date component. The first m of the later métier is materially incomplete and remains a gap. The l of les and the words themselves remain identifiable, distinct from detached left-margin noise.

T175.The latter refers to perfectibility. The opening stays nominal, and another immutability retains the extension from human nature to all natures. That question explicitly resumes the immutability question as the contextual antecedent of elle.

T176.The first verb is infinitive. The following dore and colore can be read as finite verbs without an expressed subject; the English preserves that break. An imperative interpretation remains possible; no subject or governing verb is supplied to the French.

T177.Shut up preserves the smell of confinement in renfermé. The Académie dictionary of 1835 records the bad smell acquired by things kept shut up too long. The garden is described through that stale indoor-air image, without asserting mold or dampness. The quoted fragment has no identified speaker.

T178.The restriction and three distinct nouns remain; no general endorsement or rejection of innovation is added.

T179.The initial Of fragment, also and sometimes remain. Somnambulistic retains the historical technical vocabulary without supplying a modern diagnosis. Mr. renders the printed M., not Mme. The separate parenthetic Omitted from the 16th is only a backward reference, not a certified full date.

T570.The parenthetic backward date reference is literal; it does not establish a full day/month date for this entry. The right-edge l of sommeil and wrapped i of intelligence are worn but identifiable in the native image.

T180.Both quoted nominal fragments retain their singular body and mind with plural possessors. The attribution remains Joubert’s; an exact Platonic location has not been established.

T181.Both must formulations, either alternative, and the distinction between true and exact remain. Impossible and useless are conjunctive. Figures of speech renders figures de mots without restricting the claim to a named rhetorical figure. In n[…] veux pas, intact pas supplies the negative; the damaged final e of contextual ne has no separate English word or empty bracket.

T182.The two If not fragments keep their omitted predicate; all four near-synonymous verbs remain. The final strengths is plural, unlike the earlier strength, and its refers to our nature.

T572.The nominal opening, repeated Sinon and changes between singular force and plural forces remain. The worn final letters at the right edge remain identifiable, unlike the local loss in the preceding entry.

T183.The first finite sentence freshly translates Egregie fallitur and retains its italic scope through the first period. Admirably keeps the favorable adverb beside error. The following repeated but and with remain; no speaker or target is identified.