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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Theory of the Political World, or On the Science of Government Considered…

March 15.

(See the Gazette de France of the said day.) The sentence that gave rise to these observations is this: “One distinguishes in the fifth (canto of La navigation) a prophetic vision that reveals to France the great destinies of the hero who was to save her, reign over her by dethroning only anarchy, and make her the arbiter of Europe.” He has dethroned only anarchy is beautiful. Who was to... reign over her by dethroning only anarchy and make her the arbiter of Europe: the same saying, thus jumbled together with several others, no longer has any effect. It is a dart that is no longer launched. The sentence in which it occurs spoils it, and it spoils the sentence too, as an entablature spoils a wall when it has no foundation there. One must never use as a fragment what is whole by its nature; one must not make a part of what is a whole. Finally, one must always place in view what is a façade and never prop up what suffices for itself. Certain words need to be set in a frame; others need to be isolated. And, on this subject, Displacement — and — On the displacement of words and thoughts.

April 4.

His subject is not malleable. There is, so to speak, less dough here than baked bread. They are given (modern historians) only baked bread and hard bread to knead. (and only knowledge that has been digested).

In human morality, one is always moved to decide by something cold, and in Catholic morality by something warm. Thus, between the two religions, there is the difference between cold and warm.

(At St. Roch.) Attention. We compare what we see and what we hear with what we have in our head.

(At Notre-Dame.) One sees that the distinction between good and evil is always before his eyes. — An imperceptible line seems perpetually to divide them between his eyebrows.

The wings of time carry great names to the most distant ages.

April 5.

— [they] think nothing outside their paper.

April 8.

“The language of the heart,” they say. That of the soul is far more beautiful. For the soul is the whole man.

That comedy must refrain from showing what is odious.

April 9.

I had neither good eyes nor light in my mind that day.

April 11.

What in the soul resembles light is more beautiful than what in it resembles only movement.

Everything that is not God is corruption, except what feeds on him alone, like the Angels and Souls after death.

Marble is concentrated air. I shall call diamond condensed light. The world is a swollen point.

T96.The printed March 14 and March 15 entries remain in their source positions after April material. The Gazette’s of the said day refers to the March 15 heading. No chronological rearrangement or substituted date is made.

T97.Saying renders mot where Joubert repeats a whole striking expression. The hero and France remain the referents supplied by the quotation, without a new identification. The dart, entablature, wall, façade, and setting of words retain the separate images. One must not prop up what suffices for itself preserves the final paradox. The alternative phrases beginning Displacement remain part of the paragraph.

T294.The printed March date is retained between April dates. The two italic rephrasings are distinct from the preceding roman quotation. De certains is retained as the historical indefinite construction, not marked as defective.

T98.The opening His remains unidentified. Modern historians are named only in Joubert’s parenthesis. Dough, baked bread, hard bread, and digested knowledge preserve the progression; the last parenthetical fragment is not made into a new assertion.

T99.The English keeps human morality, Catholic morality, and the subsequent two religions as Joubert writes them. It does not replace the first category with a named religion. The contrast remains one of temperature.

T100.St. Roch and Notre-Dame are source location cues within two paragraphs of one block. The person whose eyes and eyebrows are described remains unnamed. Them preserves the French les without conclusively deciding whether it resumes the eyes or the opposed good and evil.

T101.The wings of time remain the carrier of great names. The English does not add future or past where the most distant ages leaves the temporal direction unstated.

T102.The printed pensent is a finite plural verb with no expressed subject. The translator’s [they] makes that grammar clear in English without supplying writers, journalists, or another named group.

T103.Heart and soul remain distinct, and whole man preserves the reason given for the soul’s greater beauty. The quoted speakers are not identified beyond they.

T104.That retains the opening Que. The English does not silently turn the fragment into a complete independent maxim.

T298.The opening Que is retained without an invented governing clause.

T105.The comparison is between resemblance to light and resemblance only to movement. The restrictive only is retained with movement, rather than applied to the whole soul.

T106.Corruption retains the source’s term, which need not be limited to moral wrongdoing and can include decay. Feeding on God alone remains the stated exception. Angels and Souls preserve the source’s capitals.

T107.Concentrated, condensed, and swollen remain different terms. I shall call preserves the future tense of Joubert’s proposed description of diamond. The statements remain his speculative images, without an added scientific explanation.