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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

YEAR 1806

It is natural to write differently from these writers who are so natural.

January 8.

They stand at the gates and see only through the bars.

January 9.

Perfection leaves nothing to be desired (from the very first glance). But it always leaves some beauty, some charm, some merit to look at.

and which ever more beautiful the more they are looked at... (Boileau.)

To express their thoughts well, some must dilate their mind and others contract it.

Some seem to express themselves in terms too small. Others speak too softly, so to speak (in their books); others too quickly. In the last century, mediocre writers all expressed themselves too slowly; the opposite happens today.

There is wine from pressing and there are opinions from effort (forced).

The opposite of each century’s faults pleases in that century, even when it is itself a fault. Grave and grandiloquent style prevailed under Louis XIII: Voiture’s lively tone captivated every mind. — Voiture was that century’s delight, Boileau its admiration. Today Chateaubriand likes J-no-t.

Departures made with precision have regularity, and the mind that proposes them to itself, if it achieves them, has not made a bad work. One may read Scarron, the letters of the chevalier d’Her, etc. Only what has no charm, no wisdom, deserves to be treated with disdain, as outside literature. Such is the collection of farces.

January 11.

Indeed, Plato found philosophy made of brick and made it of gold.

Nothing pleases so much in a sentence as when, through its texture, one of the words indicates the cause whose effect another has marked.

January 12.

To inquire which figures in diction suit prose even more than verse. Those, no doubt, that have force, a prompt efficacy; for prose is used more for utility than for pleasure: its use is necessary and civil. Outside ceremonies and religious or political pomp, compression therefore suits it better than amplification. More than verse, it needs everything that can give it an adorned brevity. — As an iron knife and a short coat better suit the functions of life... A sword with a blade of gold would be good only as a sword for show. “Amplification is not simple,” says Scaliger. It is natural, however. Practice and experience teach brevity. Minds know how to adorn it. Let us insist; for this is an important question. Let us repeat it: which figures (and which ornaments of diction) suit prose even more than poetry?

As a million shadows reflected by a wall would not thicken its surface by the millionth part of a line...

T237.The second physical paragraph is a centered roman verse fragment. Its lowercase et, incomplete construction and ellipsis are retained without replacing it by a standard quotation.

T14.The line corresponds to L’Art poétique, canto III, line 13. In Boileau the relative construction continues into the following line; Joubert stops here. The English retains the lowercase opening and unfinished relative clause, without borrowing the missing conclusion.

T15.The comparison pairs wine obtained by pressing with opinions produced through effort. Forced remains Joubert’s parenthetical qualification; the English does not replace his analogy with a judgment about a particular wine.

T16.Grandiloquent conveys the affected pomp of emphatique, a use documented by the Académie in 1798. The opposition of delight and admiration is retained. The abbreviated J-no-t. is left unexpanded; no identification is asserted on the strength of the abbreviation alone.

T17.The paradox of precise departures having regularity remains. Farces renders the theatrical parades, not a public procession. The abbreviated chevalier d’Her is not expanded, and the particular collection is not securely identified here.

T18.Compression renders perstriction as a rhetorical form of figured brevity, in opposition to amplification. Scaliger’s Poetices, book III, chapter XLVI, page 125 of the 1561 edition, opposes amplification to perstrictio and characterizes the latter as brevitas figurata. This supplies a technical parallel rather than a medical sense of the French word.

T19.The English preserves the distinction between simple and natural. The statement attributed to Scaliger has a close parallel in the same chapter’s statement that amplification is most opposed to simplicity. Beaunier supplies [l’] before exercice; English requires no corresponding article before practice, so that bracket cannot be reproduced naturally. The iron-knife comparison remains unfinished.

T240.An enlarged facsimile confirms perstriction; the printed word is retained. The source-supplied [l’] before exercice is printed and retained. The comparative Comme clause trails off; no missing assertion is supplied. Répétons la has no printed hyphen. Poësie has a diaeresis.

T20.Line renders ligne as a small historical unit of length. No conversion to a modern measurement is imposed. The conditional comparison remains unfinished; the million shadows and millionth part are both retained.