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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

He uses all his strength to appear strong, all his firmness to appear firm, all his wit to appear infallible.

June 4.

When one loves, it is the heart that judges.

Sleepwalkers — who drink, who eat, who marry, who buy and sell, build, make contracts, tend their fortunes, have friends, enemies, pleasures, sorrows, business, are born, grow, live and die, but asleep.

Rhyme. A sound that has pleased gives a love of a similar sound.

Metaphysics. At least the mind finds space there. Elsewhere it finds only fullness.

June 5.

That the mind needs an imaginary world in which it can move and wander. And that it delights there not so much in the objects as in the space it finds there. — For the soul and for the body, space is a great good, a great beauty.

— and as children love sand and water and everything that [is] fluid and flexible because they can dispose of it as they please...

Seneca and Florus made more beautiful in J.-J. Rousseau and in Montesquieu; Lucan in Corneille; Tertullian in Bossuët.

June 6.

Journalists — like hired carriages. One sees excellent coachmen among them, and beautiful carriages. But one uses them by the hour. One forgets them; one scarcely has time to notice that they are very good. — These papers lined with velvet...

To work at giving oneself reason. Acquired reason is becoming. But a sensibility foreign to the heart of the one who displays it is unbecoming. It is both a ridiculous trait and a quirk. One can therefore and ought to be reasonable with another’s reason when one is not with one’s own. One can also be beneficent through maxims. All this is praiseworthy. The nature of reason and virtue is to be acquired. But the nature of goodness is to be natural. Borrowed sensibility is an odious hypocrisy. It is passing off a mask as a face. Teach children, then, to be virtuous, but not to be sensitive. One must hide sensibility.

June 7.

Mme de Pastoret was right. Intractable minds expose themselves to being flattered. One naturally seeks to disarm those one cannot defeat or does not wish to fight. — Who could care about an esteem so easily lost?

In the abbé Auger’s translations the style, through its very imperfections, seems more spoken than written. And that is a great merit when one translates an orator. By contrast, when one translates a poet, the style must seem modulated.

Because La Harpe speaks the language of criticism copiously and easily, he seems skillful; but he has little skill.

T173.The long sequence retains the opening noun, repeated relative clauses, and terminal but asleep. No waking moment or explanatory moral is added.

T338.The long description keeps the opening noun and relative sequence without supplying a new finite governing clause.

T174.Fullness renders du plein in opposition to the space the mind finds in metaphysics. It means what occupies space here, not an added claim of spiritual fulfillment. The following imaginary world gives the mind room to move and wander; both openings That and And that remain fragments.

T175.The [is] corresponds to Beaunier’s supplied [est]. Sand and water and everything retains the repeated conjunction in the facsimile. The initial comparison remains unfinished at the ellipsis.

T176.Made more beautiful renders embélis. The first two ancient names and first two modern names remain paired as groups; no respectively is supplied. The abbreviated author names distinguish J.-J. Rousseau here from J.-B. Rousseau in the later entry.

T340.Enlarged facsimiles support the printed embélis and Tertulien, both with a single l; Bossuët retains its diaeresis. The juxtaposed names remain a participial fragment.

T177.Fiacres are carriages for hire; by the hour preserves the limit of their use. These papers lined with velvet carries the carriage image into the papers without supplying a missing end to the fragment. The shifting them remains broad enough to follow the comparison among writers, drivers, and vehicles.

T341.The final papers-and-velvet image remains unfinished after the printed ellipsis.

T178.Reason may be acquired from another, and beneficence practiced through maxims. The repeated nature and natural preserve the apparent paradox that acquisition is natural to reason and virtue, while goodness must be natural. The infinitive opening remains an instruction in fragmentary form.

T179.Sensibility names the capacity for feeling; sensitive, not sensible, renders sensibles in the injunction about children. Joubert calls borrowed sensibility a mask and concludes that sensibility should be hidden. The translation does not replace this conclusion with a modern instruction to suppress emotion or with its opposite.

T180.The sentence credits Mme de Pastoret and distinguishes those one cannot defeat from those one does not wish to fight. The closing question concerns esteem so easily lost. Its continuation on the next printed page remains in the same paragraph.

T181.Modulated keeps the audible shaping of poetic style, set against the spoken quality of an orator’s translation. The defects of Auger’s style contribute to that spoken appearance; they are not described as an added virtue in every kind of translation.