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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

The soul sees only what happens in the brain.

Of what is spiritual in matter.

A soul in harmony both with itself and with all things, in love, in sorrow, in friendship, in business, in study and in leisure.

June 18.

Yes, the spectator is more beautiful than Racine. If the harmony of verse is in the latter, the harmony of the soul, the harmony of order, is in the other. And of these two harmonies, one is figured, the other real. The man of talent in the first, the man of goodness, very learned and very enlightened, in the second.

People wrongly disdain the style of this translation. Style here is only the robe. And this one makes the folds well. It molds nothing, but outlines everything with ease.

One must translate orators and wordy moralists expansively. One must translate poets and aphoristic writers strictly. Their nature requires it.

— [they] now love only the sciences that build bridges for ambition.

... having had only tender passions.

Happy! those who have a lyre in the heart! and in the mind a music their actions perform. Their whole life will have been a harmony in accord with the eternal nomes.

The soul is called life and life is called the soul.

History. That is because one wants to seek lessons in morality there, and there are only lessons in politics, military art, etc.

Familiar style is the enemy of number; the latter must be broken for the former to be (or seem) natural.

There are many beauties in art that become natural only through much art (with much art... they become natural.)

June 19.

Rhythm works through cadences, as harmony through sounds. It was cadences and not sounds, rhythm and not harmony, that the accents and the measure of long or short syllables produced in the languages of the Greeks and the Latins.

T351.The nominal description has no finite governing verb and repeats et with each opening complement.

T191.The lowercase spectateur is retained as spectator. The neighboring entry headed Spectateur makes a reference to a publication plausible, but no title or author is inserted into this sentence. Figured remains opposed to real, and the final first and second follow the printed order without newly named referents.

T352.The printed spectateur is lowercase; its possible reference to the publication is interpretive. The closing juxtaposition lacks a finite verb and keeps the first/second order as printed.

T192.The robe, folds, molding, and outlines remain parts of the clothing image. This one preserves celui-ci without identifying an unnamed translator or work. The following It does not force the referent into a named person.

T353.The second paragraph continues at the top of page 558. The translation and the pronoun celui-ci are not identified by an invented name.

T193.Expansively and strictly keep the opposition between largement and strictement. Aphoristic renders sentencieux in its sense of writing in condensed maxims, without imposing the modern disparaging sense of sententious. The repeated One must translate remains.

T194.The supplied [they] marks the plural subject required in English but absent from the French fragment. Now and only retain the restriction of ne… plus que. Sciences remains broad, and the bridges are not silently converted to career opportunities.

T354.The plural finite verb follows a dash without an expressed subject; plus que is retained with its restrictive context.

T195.A nome is an ancient song or melody governed by a prescribed cadence; the Greek word also means law. The Académie records these senses in 1798. Keeping nomes allows the musical and normative senses to remain together in this life performed as harmony. Will have been preserves the French future perfect. The interrupted exclamations and a music remain.

T196.That is because preserves the explanatory C’est que. The sentence distinguishes moral lessons sought from political and military lessons found; it does not supply a missing preceding claim.

T197.Number renders nombre as a term for the measured cadence of prose, not an arithmetical quantity. It remains distinct as a word from the rhythm discussed in the next entry. The latter refers to number, the former to familiar style; both to be and to seem remain in the sentence.

T198.With much art... they become natural translates multa arte... ingenuæ fiunt, with its ellipsis retained; the English they is read contextually with the preceding beauties. The Latin is not silently supplied with a missing quotation or attributed to an unverified author. It repeats the paradox of the French sentence.

T199.The four technical terms retain their separate places in the repeated contrasts. The sentence describes Joubert’s account of ancient accent and syllabic quantity; it has not been rewritten as a statement of modern linguistic theory. The source’s singular opéroit follows a coordinated subject, while English produced does not mark that number distinction.