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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

There seems to be something spiritual in wine.

November 13.

In the art of writing there are habits of the brain, as there are habits of the hand in the art of painting. What matters is to have good ones.

These strokes that come out of intelligence without the will or even attention taking part in them.

November 14.

The work best suited to giving the idea of a beautiful work is therefore the most beautiful of works, and the man who best gives the idea of an accomplished man is the most excellent of men. In every kind, what brings the idea of perfection closest to us is the most perfect thing on earth. — Perfection. Nothing, then, offers me its reality, but certain men and certain things can give us its idea; and that is enough for happiness.

November 15.

Much coldness of soul enters into every kind of debauchery. It is a considered and voluntary abuse of pleasure.

Habit of mind, habit of brain, and habit of soul (style). Habit of mind is artifice, habit of brain becomes nature, and habit of soul is excellence or perfection.

One must be a man with men and always a child with God. For indeed we are all only children before his eyes.

The dogma that we shall remain through all eternity as we shall be when dying forces man to be at every instant as he wishes to remain forever.

England. It is from this country that the metaphysical and political ideas that have obscured everything have come forth like fogs.

Elegance and care suit one another, are necessary to one another, and please through one another.

November 16.

And as poetry is sometimes more philosophical even than philosophy (science), metaphysics is by its nature more poetic even than poetry. (art).

Printed four-line staff with square chant notes, at the opening of the paragraph before etc. etc. In plainchant, the notes multiplied on the same syllable imitate, one the voice of the intoner, the others his voice repeated by the choir or the people, by the reverberations of the vault or the walls. True popular music. The choir thus imitates the people in it, and the cantor imitates the choir. Moreover, the chant makes the place felt. [true popular music] and made to fill domes and vast naves. Its unisons are successive. The multitude triples and increases tenfold each tone. The echo is found within the chant. And observe that the chants devoted to solemn occasions have proportionately more repetition because on that day the ceremonies were in fact performed in larger buildings or in buildings full of a greater multitude, where consequently there must have been more voices, more successions, more echoes. It is therefore a whole people singing together or in turn that our church music imitates and paints. (For to paint one must imitate.)

T172.Spirituel can evoke the spiritual, the mind or wit, and the volatile spirit associated with wine. The English keeps spiritual rather than reducing the observation to alcohol content.

T173.Traits can suggest strokes, flashes, or turns of expression. Strokes preserves its link with writing and painting in the preceding entry; the relative construction remains without a main verb.

T361.The relative clause remains without a governing main verb.

T174.The English retains the distinction between giving an idea and offering its reality. Rien donc m’en offre is read negatively despite the absent ne. The move from me to us is printed.

T362.The source prints Rien donc m’en offre without ne; its negative pronoun is preserved without a silent French insertion.

T175.Elle refers to debauchery. Réfléchi and volontaire retain Joubert’s claim that this abuse of pleasure is considered and voluntary, rather than an unthinking loss of control.

T176.The three kinds of habit remain distinct. Becomes nature is kept apart from is artifice and is excellence, rather than making all three into acquired second nature.

T177.As we shall be when dying renders en mourant; the sentence does not specify a physical appearance. Its claim about eternity is Joubert’s stated dogma and the basis of his ethical inference.

T178.The first science names an organized field of knowledge and does not restrict philosophy to modern experimental science. The second parenthesis remains after the period, with its printed lowercase art.

S1.Source editor’s annotationJoubert writes plein-chant.

T179.The musical example is the edition’s actual notation, reproduced in both languages. Plainchant translates plein-chant; the source annotation emphasizes the spelling plein rather than the usual plain. The intoner begins the chant; the cantor and choir are then distinguished in Joubert’s account. Popular here means of the people, not fashionable. The successive unisons and the repeated bracketed phrase are kept as printed.