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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

For then one must set aside all one’s habits, forget all memories of the day before and of every day.

Thus, the first thing the fencing master should do would be to discredit dueling in his pupils’ eyes, while nevertheless teaching them to fight well.

I would reply to M. de Bonnald that actions interest us only in the world and when they are real, whereas feelings need only be well painted. Reality belongs to the essence of action: it makes its truth, its merit, and its beauty all at once. Plausibility suffices for feelings. One must therefore place actions in the world, feelings on the stage. Actions therefore belong to history, and feelings to poetry.

It is not from Germain’s silver dishes, though he was the king’s goldsmith, nor from Louis XIV’s gold tableware that one should take models of design, but from the Etruscans’ vases, which are of clay.

Likewise, the excellence of literatures consists not in the perfection of their doctrines but in that of their forms of expression. One must not confuse morality and rhetoric.

Thus it would be neither terror nor pity that tragedy should arouse (according to M. de Bonnald), but admiration for noblemen.

November 5.

Frivolous style has long since reached its perfection among us.

Of delicate and sublime style. It is Plato’s.

Why philosophical style among us was born declamatory and violent. Since then, it has remained emphatic or swollen. Even when it confines itself to expounding, it shares in these faults. Only, its swelling is then drier and its emphasis colder. In all these disquisitions there is the accent of a quarrel and a disguised ill-tempered tone.

In all things, it seems to me that intermediate ideas are lacking to him or bore him too much. — It is of myself that I speak.

Alas! O you whom Love and life have caused to die... (Near the tomb.)

Mme de Cˡⁿ. It is a noble jargon.

Indeed, grace is always in clothing, movements, or manners; beauty always in the nude, in forms, in solid bodies in relation.

This is true when bodies are at issue; but in feelings, beauty lies in their elevation, in their spirituality; grace lies in their moderation.

T145.Bonnald retains the spelling of the edition. Vraisemblance is plausibility or the appearance of truth, distinguished from the reality Joubert requires of action. The claims are presented as his reply rather than as an established rule for drama.

T146.Élocution concerns verbal expression or diction, not only delivery aloud. The closing ne without pas is read negatively; the French remains as printed.

T147.Gentils-hommes refers to men of noble birth or rank, rather than simply courteous men. The parenthesis attributes this position to M. de Bonnald.

T148.The opening Why clause ends with a period in the source. Emphatic, swollen, swelling and emphasis preserve the recurring terms, including the odd image of dry swelling.

T149.The two third-person pronouns are italicized in the French, before the explicit turn to myself. Both remain third person in English; intermediate ideas are not replaced with a claim about the writer’s general attention span.

T339.The italic l’ is the object pronoun in l’ennuyent. The shift from lui to moi remains explicit.

T150.The Latin parenthesis Prope tumulum is translated in its original place. The capital Love and the paradox that life has caused death are preserved. No deceased person is identified.

S1.Source editor’s annotationOn this subject, a separate leaf bears this title: “Paris, journey of 1805, from July through September. Things heard.” And as for things heard, there is only this: “Mme de Cˡⁿ said that A king must be handsome. — The proper word applied to a great thing is a great word, said the same woman.” There follow mentions, without any commentary, of three antiquities, the bas-reliefs of the Muses and the Nereids, the Hermaphrodite and the Julian, “blissful philosopher.” (Cf. June 3, 1804.)

T151.Cˡⁿ is kept unexpanded in both the entry and the source annotation. Noble can suggest elevated language and need not identify social rank. In the annotation Audita means things heard. Its journey dates and comparison with June 3, 1804, do not date this undated entry. The capital A after that preserves the source’s transition from reported speech into a quoted maxim; blissful renders béat without deciding whether the description of Julian is admiring or ironic.

T341.The 1805 July–September range belongs to the title of a separate leaf, not the notebook entry’s date. The comparison 3 juin 1804 remains bibliographical. The capital Il follows que in the reported quotation. The original Audita is Latin.