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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

May 20.

Conversation. — Because they have many ideas of that kind which, to be manifested, need eyes, gesture, voice, in short, a multitude of signs that cannot accompany the written word.

One sees the soul in operation.

A wick extinguished and still smoking. — Do not extinguish a wick that is still smoking: bring the flame near it instead.

Wednesday, May 22.

And old ocean, gentler to sailors, Beneath your smiling star has unwrinkled its waves. (Fontanes.)

May 23.

Those times when the soul exhales its incense.

Character. “Principles (Mme de T. said very well) take its place in those who have none.” She was speaking of the great jg., of whom it was said that he had no character. “Religion will give him some (Mme de T. then said). Principles...”

May 24.

I go where I am wanted at least as willingly as where I am pleased to be.

May 27.

... [they] always fear being mistaken and do not fear doing wrong.

June 5.

The spacious and the luminous, two of the characteristics of the beautiful. (Of the beautiful in general.) Through the spaciousness of the space, of the place. Through the light of movement and life. Through the serenity of rest and constancy.

June 9 (Trinity Sunday).

(At Sanois.) A round valley.

If the imagination leads reason astray, often reason...

That there are truths and sciences within the province of the imagination in its purity. If it is not to guide there, it must at least walk there alone, or in command.

— Those women whose breast it seems that love (or motherhood have) has devoured.

June 11.

Virtuous by choice and vicious by force.

... is for me a magnet that has lost its attractions.

Its magnetism: a cloud that one might have dephlogisticated.

T36.The antecedent of they is unnamed. Eyes, gesture and voice are the means by which the ideas appear; the English retains the contrast with written expression. The following soul in operation remains a separate paragraph.

T37.The apparent contradiction between an extinguished wick and the instruction not to extinguish it remains. The following instruction brings a flame near it, without adding a statement that it has been rekindled.

T38.Déridé literally removes wrinkles and can also suggest cheering or brightening. Unwrinkled preserves the facial image in the waves; smiling retains riante, and your retains the confirmed ta. The two printed verse lines remain paired as one paragraph.

T259.The two verse lines form one source paragraph in roman type. An isolated enlarged facsimile confirms ta in the second line, rather than la. The attribution stays on that line.

T39.Character here can mean firmness of character. The pronouns refer back to it without an expanded definition in the main text. Mme de T. and the lower-case jg. remain unexpanded, and the repeated Principles trails off.

T40.The plural verbs have no expressed subject after the opening ellipsis. The English supplies [they] to preserve a finite plural assertion and avoid an unintended imperative. The contrast between being mistaken and doing wrong remains.

T41.The final three phrases are rendered literally as genitive constructions. Their de forms could instead be partitives in a compressed account of what spaciousness, light and serenity supply: room or place, movement and life, rest and constancy. The French has no explicit verb and is not repunctuated to settle that question.

T262.The three paragraphs form one source block. The opening Si clause trails off. The parenthetic aient and subsequent ait are both printed and retained.

T42.Ressort denotes jurisdiction or province. Guide, walk alone and in command preserve distinct degrees of the imagination’s authority; the unfinished preceding conditional is not completed from this paragraph.

T43.The source prints plural aient inside the parenthesis and singular ait after it. Have and has make that uneven construction visible in English. Breast remains singular, and no physiological explanation is supplied.

T44.Par force can suggest compulsion or necessity. By force preserves the compact antithesis without identifying the coercion or changing vicious into cruel.

T45.Dephlogisticated retains the obsolete chemical term for something deprived of phlogiston. One might have preserves the hypothetical force of auroit. Joubert applies it to a cloud; the translation does not modernize it into oxygenated or give the metaphor a scientific mechanism. Its may refer to the magnet or to an unnamed bearer of magnetism; his or her would specify more than the French does.