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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

In the sentence and in each word, a poetic brevity and clarity. Poetic, and not philosophical. In the latter, meaning, as it bursts forth, falls back into itself like a bad sound. But in the other, on the contrary, it resounds; it always leaves a great many undulations behind it. The first comes from a soul drawn taut like a string, the other from a soul in harmony like a well-strung lyre.

To make each word an optical lens — or — a concentrated clarity.

Nothing is molded there, but everything is tinged with the color of some flame.

Cardinal Richelieu, a triple brain.

There is an admiration that is the daughter of knowledge. — The critic is charged with observing the stars (literary ones). — Beauty, a sweet tyranny (or) the sweetest of tyrannies.

Homer’s poems are not poems, but a poetry.

June 20.

Spectator. No book is so suited to ordering the soul. — And the Bible to ordering life.

When the misuse of wit is play, it pleases. When it is serious, it displeases. In the first case, one misuses it for others; in the second, one misuses it only for oneself.

One must have one’s own soul in harmony to savor such music. — Souls in harmony: different instruments, but in unison, that make one another resound.

June 22.

— because the most lasting good and the briefest evil are best. — Passing faults and lasting amends.

What you call weakness is strength of friendship.

June 23.

To express no fixed and fundamental idea in words that can be disputed. — Words obscure and uncertain in themselves: all those that have been used differently at different times and whose meaning the public has not determined. *

If one wants to judge things well, one must not look at low things from too high, or high things from too low.

T200.The latter follows the feminine celle-ci and naturally points to philosophical clarity; the other returns to poetic clarity. The later masculine first is left as printed rather than silently replaced with a newly named subject. Bursts forth, falls back, resounds, undulations, the taut string, and the strung lyre retain the connected image of sound.

T201.The optical lens and concentrated clarity remain alternative formulations joined by or. The infinitive To make is retained; the translator does not combine the alternatives into a single new image.

T202.The short nominal description gives no enumeration of the brain’s three parts or powers. The English leaves the image unexplained in Joubert’s text.

T203.Daughter of knowledge preserves the personification, and literary ones remains a parenthesis after stars. Sweet tyranny and sweetest of tyrannies remain alternatives separated by the parenthetical or.

T204.The unusual a poetry preserves une poésie against the plural poems. The translation does not supply a more specific category such as epic, collection, or body of work.

T205.Spectator translates the printed Spectateur without adding a subtitle, an author, or an edition. Ordering repeats régler in the contrast between soul and life. The Bible clause remains without a new finite verb.

T359.The second sentence leaves its governing verb unstated.

T206.Wit fits the contrast between play and seriousness in esprit here. The repeated misuse is retained, together with the distinction between doing so for others and only for oneself; it is not recast as a defense of every kind of joking.

T207.The instruments are different but in unison, and make one another resound. The translation keeps both harmony and unison instead of replacing the image by simple agreement among people.

T208.Most lasting and briefest render the contrasting durations of le plus long and le plus court. The following passing faults and lasting amends continues that contrast; best applies to both the good and the evil under these qualifications.

T209.The final asterisk here corresponds to the opening asterisk of the later By giving them paragraph. One separate source block intervenes. Both marks and the intervening block remain in place; the marks have not been converted into a new numbered footnote.

T211.Low and high remain repeated positions both of the things judged and of the viewer. No moral ranking or named subject is substituted for the spatial comparison.