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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

An old court of good nature with all the wit of the beautiful ages.

June 12.

Those had pity only for the executioner, and these help only the vicious.

To see the world is to judge the judges.

A heart whose capacity to love has at last been filled and lost its avidity. A mind that has yielded its flowers, a soul that has produced its fruits, a being that has fulfilled its purposes, a merit that has brought out of itself and into the light everything it could contain, etc. Finally, who loves only out of habit.

Finally, I could express to myself what I felt near her only by telling myself that — I saw in her a magnet that no longer exerted any attraction.

June 13.

J.-J.- has plucked its flower. (Or it is a subject whose flower J.-J. has plucked.)

To talk nonsense methodically. How unbearable are those to whom this happens. That is because they do not talk nonsense sincerely enough, nor consequently with grace.

Voltaire in his compliments has perhaps a hundred times more hyperboles of feeling than Balzac has hyperboles of expression.

— And loving only out of habit. It is a magnet without magnetism.

For friendship is a plant that must withstand droughts.

June 15.

... because his will has too little share in his ideas and his feelings.

All beautiful words are in the language. One must know how to find them there.

Labruyère (I think) also says that “all good maxims are in the world.” Is that true? are they all there?

T46.Cour is rendered court without identifying a particular institution or household. Bonhommie suggests unpretentious good nature, and esprit is wit in this social comparison. Beautiful ages preserves the evaluative beaux siècles.

T47.The printed past n’eurent and present secourent are retained. The two groups and the executioner remain unidentified.

T48.The French shifts from a été to perdit and then accumulates noun phrases. The English does not add a new antecedent to the final who loves. Purposes renders the plural destinations as the ends to be fulfilled; merit remains a personified quality that brings its contents into the light.

T264.The enlarged facsimile confirms the tense shift a été… et perdit. The relative attachment is not repaired by adding a subject or verb.

T49.Both reflexive acts, expressing to myself and telling myself, remain. The woman is unnamed, and the magnet is a metaphor within Joubert’s account rather than a diagnosis.

T265.The enlarged facsimile confirms aiman without final t and exerçoit; voyais retains the printed modern imperfect ending.

T50.The initials are retained in their two printed forms. The parenthesis is Joubert’s alternate formulation; the translation does not replace the flower with a claim that the subject is exhausted.

T51.Extravaguer can mean thinking or speaking beyond good sense or reason, as in the Académie’s 1798 definition. Talk nonsense keeps that sense and the repeated verb. The contrast between method and sincerity remains; the passage does not concern lavish spending.

T52.The contrast between exaggeration in feelings and exaggeration in expressions remains. Perhaps and a hundred times preserve the speculative, emphatic estimate.

T53.The opening participle has no supplied person. It retains the magnet image without naming the person implied or attaching this fragment to a previous dated block.

T268.Aiman is printed without final t. The opening participial fragment has no supplied subject.

T54.His is an English choice for the unnamed possessor of volonté, idées and sentimens; her is also possible. The fragment does not identify a person or a causal conclusion.

T55.Joubert’s I think is essential to the attribution. The quoted sentence occurs in Pascal’s Pensées, as attested in the C1 and C2 manuscript copies, Pensées diverses I, no. 6. The note identifies that primary parallel without substituting Pascal for the printed Labruyère.