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

August 12.

The kitten and the piece of paper from which it makes itself a mouse. It touches it lightly, for fear of taking away its own illusion.

August 21.

Number, harmony (in style). “Harmony is for the soul,” Fontanes said very well; and number is for the ear. Harmony is the end, number the means; and sometimes one can reach the end without it.

I observed that the writers of the age of Louis XIII aspired to number more than those of the age of Louis XIV.

August 26.

And you will have only a lazy mind and a voluptuous soul to return to God.

August 27.

It is said that they tend and cure in men that sickness called love, but never give it to them.

August […]8.

Indeed, it is not necessary that there be statues, but when there are, it is necessary that they be beautiful.

“Our opinions (someone has said very well) do not regulate our conduct, but they regulate our judgments.”

A proposition, to be true, needs to be true as a principle. It is of no use for it to be true only as a consequence.

“The pathetic (says Sciller), is arranged misfortune.” Indeed, the tragic poet prepares misfortune, crime, etc. so as to make the one pitied and the other hated.

September 2.

All ways of expressing ourselves are good when they make us well understood. Thus, if the clarity of our thoughts shines out better through some play on words, the play on words is good in that case.

There are lesser virtues that appear more like virtues than the greatest, as the moon appears a larger heavenly body than the stars.

September 8.

(As for that woman) her exaltation is in her character, that is, where it must not be. As long as reason holds it by a few threads, the imagination can rise with impunity. Its nature is to be mobile, and movement suits it well. Reason must be immobile, and the heart must be regulated.

At the museum. — Ideal red, ideal blue, etc.

When the ideal is in the expression, the exact must be in the accessories. On the contrary, if the expression is only exact (or common), the ideal must be placed in the colors. Arrange things as one will, in every work of art the ideal must be somewhere, below, above, at the center or in a corner. In art, the ideal is the natural. For the nature art sees is the ideal one.

T80.The first it in the second sentence is the kitten; the second is its paper mouse. The fear is of taking the illusion away from itself, not frightening a real mouse.

T81.Number is the historical rhetorical term for measured cadence or rhythm. It remains distinct from harmony, which Joubert locates in the soul rather than merely the ear. Both source paragraphs and their repeated term are preserved.

T82.Voluptuous retains the soul’s inclination toward pleasure without restricting it to sexual desire. Return preserves rendre and the force of what the addressee will have to give back.

T83.The French elles is feminine plural, but no antecedent is named in the fragment. The translation does not supply women or assign the claim to a particular group. Love remains the sickness being treated and cured.

T84.The logical terms and the repeated claim of being true remain. The translation does not turn consequence into a practical outcome or add an argument in support of the assertion.

S1.Source editor’s annotationSchiller?

T85.The pathetic means the quality that arouses pity or strong feeling, not something contemptibly inadequate. Arranged misfortune preserves the compositional metaphor. The printed Sciller remains; Beaunier’s separate Schiller? is a questioned identification, not a certainty adopted in the main text.

T86.The opening cue is read as introducing an unnamed woman’s case. Exaltation retains the heightened or elevated state, not praise or social promotion. In reason holds it, it refers to the imagination named in the main clause; the threads and the opposition of mobile and immobile remain.

T87.The ideal, the exact and the natural retain the substantivized terms. Accessories are subordinate elements of the artwork; the translation does not identify particular objects. The final ideal one resumes nature.