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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

* By giving them an unvarying one, one adds a difficulty for the reader to the previous ones.

To fix uncertain words successfully, one must attach to them a conciliatory meaning that, so to speak, declares peace and not war on all their senses taken together.

June 24.

And finally, in the arts one must

clean the shadow of a carriage with the shadow of a brush.

One must seem to shed images of tears and not real tears. That is for the serious arts. As for the comic, it requires affectation and, so to speak, redoublings of realities; redoublings of cries, tears, laughter, grimaces.

June 25.

There is no one who does not have enough wit to make someone look ridiculous.

— to consider objects from the points that concern neither us nor anyone else: this is a misuse of attention.

“Asia awaits a man.” (Bonaparte.)

Racine is the Virgil of the ignorant.

Give them much soul, instead of giving them much wit.

Between esteem and contempt there are in literature an interval and a path lined all along with successes without glory, which one also obtains without merit. Let Mr. L-v-re walk there.

June 26.

Even hatred of evil can make men wicked if it is too strong, too dominant, too alone (so to speak) among our other feelings. And this is how our books inspired it, offering our attention only the misfortunes attached to certain abuses. From this came the monstrosity of events we have witnessed. Violent lessons in humanity were followed, as a result, by appalling cruelties. Pity was turned to rage. Louis XVI, his sister, and all that was most virtuous in France were massacred out of a ferocious love for the Black people of America and a ferocious horror of the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre. Pictures of suffering humanity, too forceful and too often repeated, made hearts inhuman. Overwrought pathos is for men a disastrous source of hardenings.

“These pictures of suffering humanity that had so much success (G. says) at the very time when people were on the eve of the greatest inhumanities ever to have stained the history of men.”

Every accused person was deemed innocent; soon every accuser was deemed virtuous.

Voltaire. Sound judgment, an adorned and rich imagination, an agile mind, a lively taste, the moral sense destroyed.

One excess brought the other. And this opinion, “every accused person is innocent,” was soon followed by this one: “Every accuser is virtuous.”

To discredit and banish from men’s language, like debased coinage, the words they misuse and that deceive them.

T210.An unvarying one preserves the unstated noun in un invariable, which refers back to a meaning. The linked passages concern words whose usage has varied. The next paragraph asks for a conciliatory meaning and retains the unusual image of declaring peace on all the senses together.

T213.Beaunier’s annotation begins with an explicitly undated separate leaf and then quotes a second formulation of the verse and Joubert’s praise of Perrault’s memoirs. The quotation extends across its three paragraphs and ends only after the final prose paragraph. The leaf has not been assigned the main entry’s June 24 date. Tydanus remains as printed.

T362.The centered two-line verse forms the second physical paragraph and completes the unfinished prose opening. The source apparatus gives a different order and wording for the same shadow-and-brush image; neither passage is harmonized with the other.

S1.Source editor’s annotationSeparate leaf, undated. This: “One saw there (the translation said) the coachman Tydanuswho, holding the shadow of a brush, cleaned the shadow of a carriage.In the parody of the sixth book of the Aeneid by Mr. Perrault and his brothers. See his memoirs, a work excellent for the wit, candor, simplicity, and reason that reign in it from beginning to end. He had written them for his children, but they deserve to have all men of taste as readers. It is the most perfect work I know in this genre. It is the model for narratives of its kind.”

T212.The infinitive verse completes the preceding prose introduction. Its two lines remain within one verse paragraph. The English follows the main text’s carriage then brush order; it does not adopt the reversed brush then carriage order given in the source annotation.

T363.The separate leaf is explicitly undated; its quotation is not assigned the main June 24 date. The note comprises introductory prose, a centered two-line verse paragraph, and a final prose paragraph. The quotation closes only at the end of the third paragraph.

T214.Images of tears remain distinct from real tears. Redoublings is repeated for redoublemens in the comic arts, preserving intensification and repetition without limiting the demand to a literal numerical doubling. Affectation is retained rather than silently redefined as insincerity.

T215.Donner à quelqu’un un ridicule means making someone an object of ridicule or attaching a ridiculous trait to them, not giving them a sense of humor. Enough wit does not imply exceptional intelligence.

T216.Bonaparte is the attribution printed after the quotation. The entry does not identify a date, speech, conversation, or particular man; the English supplies none.

T217.Much soul and much wit preserve the opposition of âme and esprit and the repeated quantity. The recipients are unnamed, so the instruction is not silently assigned to children or to literary characters.

T218.The interval and path retain the double spatial description between esteem and contempt. L-v-re remains an unexpanded name. The distinction between success, glory, and merit is not reduced to a single contrast between popularity and quality.

T219.Too strong, too dominant, and too alone retain all three qualifications. The apparent paradox of being alone among other feelings remains explicitly qualified by so to speak. The repeated our books, our attention, and we have witnessed are Joubert’s own perspective.

T220.The causal account of the massacres and the descriptions of their victims and motives are Joubert’s assertions. Black people renders the historical racial designation nègres, consistent with this translation’s earlier entries; the French wording remains visible. America has not been narrowed to the United States or expanded to a particular colony. St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre gives the conventional English form of the event named by la Saint-Barthélemi.

T221.Humanity and inhuman retain the repeated verbal contrast. Pictures renders tableaux, and pathos renders the rhetorical noun pathétique rather than the modern disparaging adjective pathetic. Hardenings preserves the source’s plural endurcissemens and continues the preceding image of hearts made inhuman.

T365.The source’s historical and racial language is retained as Joubert’s assertion. The right margin damages parts of avons, massacra, féroce, et, inhumains, succès and censé; these readings combine surviving print with sentence context and are not independently complete glyphs. The quotation in paragraph 2 retains the unidentified G. and its relative construction without a main verb.

T222.G. remains unidentified. The opening These pictures with its following relative clause remains without a main predicate, as in the quotation printed by Beaunier. No governing sentence is added to complete it.

T223.Deemed in this paragraph renders censé and does not assert actual innocence or virtue. The later, separately printed repetition presents the same two claims as opinions and retains its different initial capitalization.

T224.The sequence remains a nominal portrait without an added governing verb. Adorned and rich remain two qualities of the imagination; the moral sense is destroyed, not merely absent.

T225.Debased coinage renders monnoye altérée in the comparison with misused words. The words are both used abusively by people and deceptive to them. The two initial infinitives remain together without a supplied finite governing sentence.

T367.The enlarged facsimile supports monnoye with double n; its final letter is partly merged with damage. The opening infinitives remain without a finite governing clause.