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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

With a fifth part of her nectar [she] has imbued [them]. — It is said that the bee carries between its legs a nectary that changes into honey the dust on flowers. What has been imagined of a liquor that changes even lead into gold; the juice of herbs used in enchantments.

Other writers place their thoughts before our attention. These engrave theirs in our memory. They have a language that is supremely a friend to memory. And this is not through a mechanism, but, if I may put it so, through its spirituality. Words, things: for these writers, figures come from the former, images from the latter.

An image rises from all realities.

In their eyes, words have a figure, colors. One harmony calls forth another. This separation that [is] between their words is between their thoughts. Their ideas do not chain themselves together; they enter into relation like the stars in the sky.

January 25.

For light alone is perhaps still more beautiful than colors.

Let us posit... that the character of poetry is a supreme clarity.

“A burning word,” from Cicero. An expression too vivid, all hot and coming out of the fire, so to speak.

Never to touch a string without drawing some beautiful sound from it.

January 26.

Lines of verse must be of glass, either diaphanous or colored: diaphanous when they give only a view of the soul; colored when they show its passions, which are its alterations (and its ardors, so to speak) — (flame has colors) — or when they allow one to perceive the colors with which the mind of man is dyed.

... because they wound taste in a manner that has not yet been condemned, and because they have ridiculous traits that as yet have no name. So it is that, through gaps in legislation or the subtlety of certain vices, there are unpunished crimes, wrongs that are not avenged.

— is one of those minds that are mistaken for a long time — or — that, when they are mistaken, are mistaken for a long time to come.

Through this style — It is noise and movement that one makes for oneself.

To mold lightly. Air molds itself lightly. What holds on to form so strongly must not be spiritual enough.

He always speaks of criticism as a priesthood, pursues the dissenters.

T90.The opening Latin is Horace, Odes I.13.16; its preceding line names Venus and kisses. [She] and [them] supply those omitted grammatical elements in English, without adding their names to Joubert’s excerpt. Has imbued is a contextual reading of imbuit, whose written form also permits a present. The bee’s nectary and flower dust remain Joubert’s reported account. The last French clause prints anomalous qu’en employoit rather than qu’on; the English participial used renders the evident action without silently changing the French pronoun.

T317.The source prints qu’en employoit, not qu’on; its anomalous pronoun is retained. The first-line right-edge ending entre is partly clipped and restored contextually.

T91.The antecedents are made explicit as these writers, the former (words), and the latter (things). Language is a friend to memory through its spirituality; that pronoun is not read as the writer’s personal spirituality. Figures and images remain separate terms.

T92.[Is] mirrors Beaunier’s supplied [est]. Ideas do not chain themselves together: they come into relation like stars, preserving the difference between a chain and a constellation-like relation without adding the word constellation to the text.

T93.The Latin phrase is translated literally; the attribution to Cicero remains as Joubert gives it without an asserted exact passage. Vivid, hot, and coming out of the fire keep the developed heat metaphor.

S1.Source editor’s annotationA little farther on, same date: “It is necessary... when it is to give us only a view of the soul (and of its substance), colored when it shows us... (speak) or the shades with which the mind of man dyes itself.”

T94.Diaphanous and colored initially modify singular glass in French; the following they refers to the plural lines. The passions are the soul’s alterations and ardors. The separate source annotation shifts to singular il and preserves omissions, including the isolated parenthetical (dire), rendered (speak) as the visible remnant of so to speak. No missing words are supplied to complete that variant.

T319.The singular diaphane and colorié refer to verre in the initial construction; the subsequent subjects are plural ils. The source vuë retains a diaeresis.

S2.Source editor’s annotationFarther on, the same text, with this addition here: “The thing is laughable in itself, Fontenelle used to say, but it lacks people to laugh.”

T95.The opening because and unspecified they remain. Ridicules means ridiculous traits, followed by the analogy with unnamed or unpunished wrongs. Beaunier’s separate annotation retains Fontenelle’s contrast between a laughable thing and the lack of people to laugh.

T96.The English keeps the two formulations: a mind mistaken for a long time, and a mistake that will persist for a long time to come. The opening is has no supplied subject, and the three dashes remain.

S3.Source editor’s annotationFarther on: “Yes, these expressions make noise for us.”

S1.Source editor’s annotationFarther on: “— so strongly the outward form is probably not yet purified enough, spiritual enough.”

T97.The repeated lightly retains légèrement for molding and for air. Must not be is an inference about insufficient spirituality, not an instruction. The separate source note begins in mid-syntax and retains the interrupted reference to outward form; no missing subject is invented to make its masculine French adjectives agree with that feminine noun.

T323.The quotation starts mid-syntax and preserves masculine purifié and spirituel after the feminine noun forme; no missing governing words or agreement changes are supplied.