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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

Each thing is composed of its essence, its body, and its appearance. Its body is the case of the essence. Its essence constitutes it, or makes it be. Its appearance multiplies it.

April 8.

The soul speaks to itself in parables.

The soul has within it and at its center what we call the heart; and outside and on the surface (if one may say so), what we call the mind.

April 9.

All grace (décor) comes from some patience. And, consequently, from some strength that acts upon itself.

April 11.

Like those dreams that pleased us. They escape us, and we vainly wish to hold them.

April 15.

One must make oneself useful, and one must make oneself agreeable...

Wednesday, April 17, the day after the Easter holidays.

The imagination: an ingenuous and smiling faculty.

God, whose hand is full of truths...

If Balzac had known how to play with his grand words... But he is not playful enough or serious enough.

Playfulness. The word play is its root.

April 18.

God seemed to have [ ] him only to build his family’s fortune, — and he died.

He used to say: “The minuet has been banished from style; only the country dance is wanted there.

T8.Étui is a fitted case or sheath. The translation keeps the bodily container metaphor, and makes it be leaves the ontological formulation unexplained. It does not explain how appearance multiplies a thing.

T9.The parenthetic décor is retained with its printed accent. Latin decor can denote grace or comeliness, but the accented form is not silently emended or translated as interior decoration. Patience may suggest endurance or self-restraint; the following reflexive strength remains explicit.

T10.Naïve carries the sense of natural or uncontrived; ingenuous is used without the modern implication of foolishness. Riante is kept as smiling.

T11.Se jouer de can suggest playful handling and assured mastery. The translation retains its relation to badin and to the next fragment’s wordplay, while leaving the conditional sentence unfinished.

T12.Joubert derives enjoûment, playfulness or gaiety, from jeu, play. Playfulness and play recreate the relation in English; this English wordplay does not replace the French derivation in the facing text.

T13.The printed brackets contain no verb. English moves the object him after them to retain an intelligible verb position without supplying the missing action. The unnamed man and the family’s fortune remain unspecified.

T14.The minuet and country dance remain metaphors for style. The source has an opening quotation mark without a closing partner; the English preserves that unfinished quotation.