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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1805

December 31.

Love of elegance (in words). Childhood has it and even carries it too far. For it wants elegance where it would be better for there to be none. To love elegance to that degree is therefore a puerile feeling, proper to minds that have not grown as strong as they should have.

The La Rochefoucault passage: “It is usually only in small interests where we take the hazard of not believing appearances.” (Maxim 302.) This sentence is obscure. It is difficult to understand. Once one has understood it, its meaning remains, but the words escape because they are not clear-cut enough. Yet if one has once managed to retain them, one becomes convinced that there were no other words and no other turn of phrase as apt as those to instill this thought perfectly and force attention to dwell on it. One soon sees that the obscurity comes only from the place occupied in the sentence by the particle où, which is nevertheless exact and indispensable after the preceding que. (It is a misfortune of construction) — and from the difficulty initially caused to the mind by the words take the hazard, an unusual expression. Perhaps this inconvenience could be avoided by explaining it thus: “We take upon ourselves the hazard.” Upon ourselves clarifies everything, though little clear itself; because the expression take upon oneself is very common. If one made the maxim thus: “It is usually in small interests only that we take upon ourselves the hazard of not believing appearances,” everything would seem smoothed out; but the maxim, in giving the mind no pains, would perhaps give attention no profit. In such a case, it would be better for the public to adopt expressions that have once been necessary and that, once adopted, would become clear forever. And what has once been necessary may be so more than once. Take the hazard, for example; for my part, I would willingly say I took the hazard of not finding you for the happiness of seeing you sooner, (in paying a visit at hours when the person one is going to see is rarely at home). Introduced into the language through the familiar, (sic) this expression would be very clear and would soon become useful. They took the hazard of arriving without being expected. Etc. This great man took the hazard of trusting his star. Certainly this manner of expression, used thus aptly and with nobility, would soon seem felicitous to us. And the upon oneself that we would need today to make it tolerable, and that takes all energy from it (for there is no energy in what is sustained by some support), would become as useless as it is dragging.

October–November.

— Journal des Débats of October 30, 1805.

I. “Divine temperament” is unjustly censured. In languages, it is good to go back often to the sources and restore to words their physical and original sense. It is to burnish them, clean them, restore their first clarity; it is to recast this coinage and send it back into circulation with a brighter shine. It is to melt them down again and renew, through the die, impressions too worn away. It is to teach the reader what he had not known or what he had forgotten.

II. “The smile that no longer fades” was very good. One can never blame expressions that express a truth, an unrecognized normal fact, without a kind of malpractice in criticism. Every expression that fits what it expresses is sound, is good, is even beautiful if the subject it suits is itself beautiful. Here the expression is graceful like the thing it says.

III. This is right: “Although style is only the expression and outward form of our thoughts, it is much easier to change ideas and reform one’s opinions than to change and rectify one’s style. For style is a habit of the mind, and our habits generally have more force than our principles” That is true and well said, and the author adds needlessly: “It is less our lights and reflections that guide us than our habits and affections.” All that is right; but after the bad opinions of a bad century, what is worst, to have its style, or to have its spirit and temper? Now the censure is written in that spirit, as Dussault’s censures are written in that temper.

I will propose another question. Is it better, in a spectator’s eyes, to have an obvious fault than a disguised fault? On the solution will depend the decision of another problem, namely whether it is not better to abandon oneself to the manner one has adopted than to resist it — resist it by halves. When one tries to erase with other folds a fold that has become indelible, one shows twenty folds instead of one. Now let us show the remedy for bad folds and bad influences. Express only what will raise you above your century and yourself. Your talent will free itself from every dependence but its own.

IV. “One sees (says the critic) many people who speak well of style and write badly.” That is true only in this sense: bad and mediocre writers know how to speak well enough only of rules and models, but by rote. Besides, they understand nothing of the reason for the rules or the genius of the models.

Addition. — Observe (on affectation) that studied expressions which, when applied to common thoughts, truly have affectation will no longer have it if applied to better matter. Beautiful things must be said with extreme care, and mediocre things with a little negligence. It is fitting, and one shows that one has exercised discernment.

Perhaps some minds must be allowed to express themselves like their century, provided they speak better than it does.

Addition. — The language of that century suited what it said, the spirit it had... There is pedantry (that is, a servile subjection to what one knows) in being so startled by what he himself calls the exterior of thought. What is called overelaboration in the expression of a movement or a thought that were wholly frank might give it more brilliance, more piquancy, and would not be a fault there. To make good use of what is a fault is a merit that must be approved. False brilliants please only because their brilliance is true. Paste has some value, but it must be presented for what it is and for what it is worth. The grimaces of conversation (Rivarolle sometimes has them) may suit the people one speaks to, the subjects one treats, the tone one takes... Those who truly love the beauty of light let themselves be caught more easily by false brilliants because a true brilliance is found in them.

Of narrow style and broad style, etc. M. Dussault finds Quintilian laborious and stilted. Very well.

T227.The reference agrees with maxim 302, whose standard printed wording begins Ce n’est d’ordinaire. Joubert’s pour l’ordinaire and printed name La Rochefoucault remain. Small interests can mean matters of little consequence and is not restricted to monetary investments.

T228.Take the hazard deliberately retains an unusual expression for assuming a risk because Joubert argues for adopting the unusual French locution prendre le hazard. The familiar English take the risk would conceal the difficulty he is discussing. The repeated upon oneself renders the proposed explanatory addition sur soi.

T229.The words où and que remain French in the English commentary because the argument concerns their placement in the French sentence. Where in the opening maxim approximates où; the restrictive ne…que construction is conveyed by only. Their exact syntactic relationship cannot be reproduced in English.

T230.Sooner reads printed plutôt in the temporal sense suggested by the visit, rather than as rather. Through the familiar retains the incomplete feminine expression par la familière and the source’s sic; no missing noun is supplied. Trusting reads printed ce fier as the reflexive se fier.

S1.Source editor’s annotationWhat follows for the year 1805 comes not from the notebooks but from an exercise book that Joubert began from both ends. On one side, extracts with commentary from the Journal des Débats; on the other, notes on Plato. Strictly speaking, the exercise book is undated. But it concerns the Journal des Débats of October 30, 1805, then an article by Bonald in the Mercure of November 2, 1805. The notes on Plato are doubtless from the same period; and all the more certainly because in the notebooks from the end of 1805 there are traces of reading Plato. — On Bonald, almost nothing. Only an extract, and in particular the sentence: “Literature is the expression of society,” which Joubert discusses in the notebooks.

T404.The ten physical paragraphs, with inline Roman I–IV and two Addition cues, constitute one source block across 530–531. Baucoup, netoyer, renouveller, monnoye, scavoir and the changing brillans/brillants spellings are printed. Réémettre has two acute accents, confirmed in the enlarged facsimile. No full stop is printed between principes and the closing guillemet in paragraph 4. The left edge of 531 clips several initial letters; the immediately surviving fragments and syntax permit their restoration. The source annotation dates the undated cahier by inference, and its scope includes the following Plato section. The printed date has its note call before the terminal period.

T405.The source apparatus describes an undated cahier begun from both ends. Its dating is an editorial inference, not a transcribed authorial diary date. The scope extends to the following Plato section.

T231.The coinage image continues through burnishing, melting, circulation, and renewed impressions. Die reads type as the model or stamp that renews the impression; it does not introduce a different image of printed type.

T232.Malversation is culpable misconduct rather than a simple error of taste. The progression sound, good, beautiful is retained, including its final condition that the subject itself be beautiful.

T233.Lights and reflections retain two terms distinct from habits and affections. Spirit and temper remain distinct as well. The source omits a full stop at the end of the first quotation, before That is true.

T234.Folds keeps the material image of ingrained habits: attempting to remove one by adding others produces twenty. Its own preserves de la sienne, whose antecedent is compressed; the sentence does not explicitly explain on what the talent is ultimately to depend.

T235.Fonds is the underlying matter or substance of the thoughts. The judgment of affectation depends on that matter; the English does not turn the passage into a general rejection of studied expression.

T236.The initial it refers to the century; he himself in the later clause reads the critic as the speaker who calls style the exterior of thought. The repeated French il leaves this shift compressed. Frank retains the sense of free or unforced expression without reducing it to moral honesty.

T237.Brilliants are cut gemstones. Paste renders stras, glass used to imitate precious stones. Their material may be false while the light they give is real; the repeated brilliants and brilliance preserve this distinction. The name Rivarolle keeps its printed spelling.

T238.Very well renders A la bonne heure as assent or concession to Dussault’s judgment, not as a statement about time. Laborious and stilted retain the two adverse terms applied to Quintilian.