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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…

April 24.

Good taste and good manners. Neither is fixed in literature or in society.

Expressions (literary ones) are like colors. Often time must have muted them for them to please everyone.

The answer Chateaubriand gave me. A. Do you think this can please readers who have no imagination? C. Yes, because it will give them some.

April 27.

Uneven states of health call for an uneven regimen.

— For success of the moment, it is not enough that a work be written with the attractions suited to its subject. It also needs the attractions suited to its readers.

Voltaire! you have deceived men by undeceiving them.

Metaphysical style is unbearable when it is filled with figures one has not made oneself and with borrowed colors. Then everything in it is cold. It is not natural.

Mr. H[ochet] says that there is in Mme de Sévigné’s letters “a naturalness she had made for herself.” Certainly. Beautiful verse, natural verse, is also a naturalness one has made for oneself. But one makes a beautiful naturalness for oneself only when one has it.

T126.Good manners renders bon-ton in the broad historical sense of cultivated language and social conduct, recorded by the Académie in 1798. The contrast is not limited to etiquette, nor does ton mean the pitch of a voice here. Literature and society remain the two settings in which neither standard is fixed.

T127.Time acts on both verbal expressions and colors through the comparison. Muted conveys amorties as a reduction in their force; the English does not make them disappear.

T128.The A and C labels remain within one paragraph. The answer promises that the writing will give imagination to readers who lack it; the English does not substitute entertainment or information.

T129.Uneven is repeated for inégal. Regimen retains a broad way of ordering bodily life, without reducing it to a named diet or treatment. The short statement is Joubert’s observation, not medical advice supplied by the translator.

T130.The two attractions must suit different things: the subject and the readers. The restriction concerns success of the moment; it does not assert a rule for lasting worth.

T131.Undeceiving preserves détrompant and the paradox of the same action being both a removal and a source of deception. The direct address and exclamation remain.

T132.Figures are literary figures in this context; the neighboring colors preserve their visual association. The absence of one’s own invention leads to the charge of coldness and unnaturalness.

T133.Naturalness is repeated for the noun naturel, alongside natural as an adjective. The seeming paradox is preserved: one can make it for oneself only if one has it. H[ochet] retains the source editor’s bracketed expansion.