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

YEAR 1805

That serious game called affairs.

This refined pride readily bends to esteeming good conduct, because that is only esteem for the rule. But to esteem goodness alone is harder for it, because that is esteem for the person, esteem for a merit one could not give oneself.

Sunday, July 21 (St. Victor.)

At the Opera. Voices in the air...

... to make better use of his throat.

— in the dances, what are they shaking?...

Our actors, and especially our dancers, ennoble what is coarse, but they also degrade what is heroic.

The Village Soothsayer. Choice of the subject of the scene. How happy... Through it, the eternity of French music, whose own character is to be at once singing and dancing, and dancing with that dance which unites the minuet and leaps.

July 23.

... as it is said that women love only their own beauty.

July 24.

Pascal has the language proper to Christian misanthropy, a misanthropy strong and gentle. As few have this feeling, few too have had this style.

Pascal conceived forcefully, but he invented nothing, that is, discovered nothing new in metaphysics.

July 28.

Women. [They] are women only to become mothers. [They] go to virtue through pleasure.

The one is more philosophical, for it is more clearly conceived and satisfies reason more. The other is more religious and better satisfies our feelings. Through the first, we are perhaps more within truth, and through the second more within order. Now, which is better for the soul and for life, order or truth?

Fénelon. In those days one first had the religion of others, and in addition one had one’s own.

“You have sown chaos (Mr. Dubut used to say to a deputy of the National Assembly), and by God your seed has sprouted well.”

August 6.

Prudence concerns itself with us; justice concerns itself with others.

August 9.

A courtier’s remark (Mr. de Bezenval): “A tragedy performed by actors of comedy.” On the Notables. (vol. 3, in 8°, p. 221.)

T72.The personified pride bends to esteem; the repeated esteem and the contrast between rule, person and merit remain. The hypothetical could not give oneself is not changed to a claim that goodness can never be cultivated.

T73.Airs can mean the air or musical airs; in the air retains the spatial reading while leaving the musical association available. Throat preserves the physical gozier. His is chosen for the unspecified possessor in son; her or one’s is also possible. The third paragraph does not identify what the dancers are shaking.

T74.The French title prints de village, differing from the familiar du village; the facing text retains that form. The main English translates the title without adding an author. How happy and Through it, the eternity remain fragments, and the latter pronoun could resume the subject or choice just named rather than the whole work.

T75.The apparently contradictory qualities remain joined. The following assertion concerns new discoveries in metaphysics; it is not expanded into a denial of Pascal’s work in every field.

T76.The English supplies [They] twice after the label to preserve the finite assertions and avoid turning the second into an instruction. The brackets disclose the added subjects, not a qualification of Joubert’s claim.

T77.The one and the other are not identified. Se conçoit is read passively, is conceived, without specifying an author or treating the object as conceiving itself. Perhaps qualifies the comparison with truth and order.

T78.The seed and sprouting continue the agricultural metaphor. By God renders the oath pardieu; it is not omitted or strengthened.

T79.The source supplies the parenthetic name and abbreviated volume, format and page reference. Actors of comedy preserves the contrast with tragedy without turning the actors into clowns. The French printed Bezenval remains unchanged.