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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

December 13.

Of the Soul, and the part it must take in works of the mind for them to be beautiful.

December 14.

The Emperor’s remark: “they must be demolished.”

December 15.

Children are common folk.

The foremost are not those who constantly command and obey themselves, but those who, in a way forgetting themselves, have commanded themselves to obey all that is better than themselves.

December 20.

A cabbage need not be beautiful in a garden, for it is there for the table. But a flower must be beautiful. One does not feed on it. The only use one can draw from it is pleasure for the eyes or the sense of smell. It must have colors or fragrance.

Such souls (he said) are very rare in cities.

December 21.

“Tragedy (they said) takes the best for its characters, and comedy the worst.” The common and purely real true […] can be the object of the arts. Except in portraiture; and even in portraiture, the like and the more beautiful must be brought together.

In the comic, even the clothes must be comic, and tragic in the tragic.

December 22.

There is no metaphysics without rapture of the mind, just as there is no poetry without enthusiasm.

December 23.

If the apathy they speak of is egoism at rest, the activity they boast of might well be egoism in motion. Let this be said without approving, in using it, the word egoism, which I do not like because it is not clear and is constantly abused.

It is therefore egoism in action that complains of egoism at rest.

To attribute to an honorable man a merit he does not have is to fail to recognize the one he has.

“Reasonable people (he says) believe themselves incapable.”

December 24.

The joy that beautiful thoughts cause and that truth causes makes itself felt in the words with which they are expressed.

T214.The entry does not identify the people or things meant by les. The English preserves the plural they without inventing a target for demolition.

T215.Peuple is used as a predicate without an article. Common folk preserves its collective and social sense; the statement is not merely the English assertion that children are people. The brief entry does not specify which qualities of the people Joubert has in mind.

T216.The foremost reads premiers as rank or excellence, not chronology. Reflexive command and obedience remain distinct from obedience to what is better than oneself.

T388.The clipped right-edge readings car, s’en and des are contextually restored; their full letters are not all visible. A small solid irregular centered mark precedes the second paragraph; it is not securely identifiable as an asterisk, so the two paragraphs remain one source block after independent comparison of enlarged facsimiles.

T217.After réel, the facsimile’s damaged right margin leaves possible text unreadable. The gap is retained in both languages. A lost ne would make the statement negative, which the following exception seems to favor, but its presence cannot be certified; the translation therefore does not silently insert not. The polarity remains unresolved and requires a clearer source. Le vrai, le semblable, and le plus beau retain their substantive forms: the true, the like, and the more beautiful.

T389.The damaged right edge clips the beginnings/endings of meilleurs, portrait and ensemble, which are restored from the visible fragments and context. After réel, the line ending is lost: […] marks unresolved possible text. A negative ne before peut is contextually plausible but cannot be certified from the surviving glyphs and is not supplied.

T218.Ravissement is a transporting or enraptured state, not simply pleasure or interest. The English keeps it distinct from the enthusiasm required of poetry.

T219.Egoism retains the word under criticism rather than replacing it with selfishness throughout. The opening is conditional, and might well preserves pourroit bien. The second paragraph deliberately contrasts action with rest.

T220.Galant homme has the sense of an honorable or worthy man here, not a seducer. The two merits remain distinct, the one attributed and the one actually possessed.