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

Describe a painting by Raphael: to convey its effect, you will have to stiffen what is supple in it. Speak of a painting by Michelangelo: you will have to show as great what is only strong.

January 23.

In beautiful translations one needs, as in the impressions of a seal when they are faithful, relief in hollow, hollow in relief.

Hence our words have too much strength and our thoughts not enough.

This moderation that makes robust...

Like those men who say cold things with fire and weak things strongly, they have teeth and lungs, but no good reasons.

In Villeneuve, people feared the powerful, and they fear the wicked.

So great is their love of flowers, and the glory of producing honey. (Virgil.) So great is their love of flowers! so greatly do they aspire to the glory of making honey!

The mind’s evil joys. “The guilty joys of the heart.” Well said, Slnb:rt.

As one sees, or thinks one has seen, the moon rising through clouds at the month’s beginning. Nota. The moon, a melancholy heavenly body. The moon in the first days of the months, a pale and still uncertain heavenly body. This is what Mr. Strubʳᵉ very aptly calls “one of the most melancholy occurrences of the night). Vid. Merc. 19 jᵉʳ 1805.)

That is because the turns of phrase suited to confidence are familiar to me, but not those suited to familiarity.

V[oltaire] has skates. He excels at gliding over surfaces. — He sees the depths, but without penetrating them.

January 24.

If I am mistaken, it is at least for good reasons.

Poetry properly so called, that is, poetry that is everything through itself. By working only upon imaginary matter and upon its own creations.

“He departs, he flies...” No. Such a line is not swift, it is merely restless. Those are not wings; they are paws and feet, joints in which one sees the jolt.

Light thoughts, clear, distinct, finished; and words that resemble their thoughts.

Words that often retain meaning even when detached from the others, and that please in isolation like sounds.

T79.The verbs describe changes needed in a verbal account to convey a painting’s effect. Stiffen preserves roidir, while great and strong remain separate terms in the Michelangelo comparison.

T80.The source asks for the raised and hollow parts to reverse, as they do in a faithful seal impression. Relief in hollow, hollow in relief preserves this reversal and the absence of an explicit following infinitive after il faut.

T81.The cold/hot and weak/strong oppositions remain explicit. The unspecified they is not assigned a name. Teeth and lungs retain the bodily contrast with good reasons.

T82.The first verb is past imperfect, the second present. Their difference is retained without inserting a date for the change.

T83.The Latin is Georgics IV.205, where the checked text has generandi. Beaunier prints gererandi, independently confirmed in the facsimile. The English interprets that form as producing, while the anomalous French-side Latin remains unchanged. The following French exclamations are translated separately, including their added aspiration to glory.

T84.The Latin phrase occurs in Aeneid VI.278–279. Evil joys of the mind and the quoted French guilty joys of the heart are deliberately distinct. Well said reads Bien as approval. The abbreviated Slnb:rt. is not confidently expanded into a name.

T85.The Latin is from Aeneid VI.453–454, where the uncertain sight of the young moon compares with recognizing Dido’s shade. Joubert’s excerpt supplies neither Dido nor a completed comparison; the English keeps it detached. Astre means a heavenly body, here the moon, not a star. Nota, Vid. Merc., Strubʳᵉ, and 19 jᵉʳ 1805 remain visibly abbreviated; the last is a reference within the entry, not its assigned date. The unmatched quotation mark and closing parentheses follow the edition.

T86.Confidence is the act of confiding, not self-assurance. Familiar and familiarity retain the shared root of familières and familiarité, while the latter suggests an easy or overfamiliar manner rather than intimate disclosure.

T87.The source editor expands the name within brackets. Skates makes the recurring gliding-on-surfaces image literal. Seeing the depths without entering them remains distinct from failing to see them.

T88.Phantastique is read as belonging to the imagination. The separate By working sentence preserves the source’s detached En n’opérant construction. Everything through itself does not identify an outside purpose for poetry.

T89.The source distinguishes rapidité from mere movement. Paws and feet preserve pattes et pieds as two nouns, followed by visible joints and their jolt. No source for the short quotation is asserted.