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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume II

Reading language

Mr. Hochet and Mme de Sévigné.

Perhaps you are right to think so. But you are not right to maintain your opinion against an old man.

August […]6.

One always adds a little of one’s soul to everything one thinks.

All gardeners live in beautiful places because they make them so.

August […]8.

Uniformity of weights and measures (moral ones). How important.

August […]9.

Gardens. That symmetry carries its reason with it. But disorder can be caused only by necessity.

August 11.

As one gives a pedestal to a statue, one must give one to a building, and above all to temples, which must, so to speak, be placed on an altar (sic).

Grace is like beauty’s natural garment. Strength without grace in the arts is like a flayed figure.

August 14.

Of contemplative music, painting, sculpture, and even architecture. And that the most beautiful expressions, in all the arts, are those that seem born of a high contemplation.

Of those who want beautiful rules to be given only by beautiful works.

It is not for nothing, nor without some moral reason, that man can foresee his death and have a presentiment of his immortality. And if animals are incapable of this fear and this hope...

August […]3 (At Issy).

The orator who is a good man may legitimately have no motive but to say well, to say better than all the others and as well as possible, what is useful, what is good, what is beautiful, or finally what is merely pleasant to know. (Against Mr. de Fénelon, dialogues on eloquence.)

By the word virtue we ordinarily mean probity. But the word is then too grandiloquent.

T261.The date’s damaged left edge preserves a terminal 6, with unclassified ink before it; the complete day is not certified.

T55.Moral ones remains a parenthesis qualifying weights and measures. How important preserves the short fragment and its period. No particular system of weights or ethical rules is supplied.

T262.The date’s damaged left edge does not certify the complete day before the surviving 8. The masculine moraux and feminine importante are preserved as printed.

T56.That retains the unfinished Que construction. Caused follows causé: the source does not say that disorder is merely excused by necessity. Symmetry carries its own reason.

T263.Only terminal 9 is secure in the damaged day label. The nominal Jardins and following Que clause remain as printed.

T57.The pedestal, statue, building, temple, and altar remain successive objects in the comparison. The parenthetical (sic) belongs to Beaunier’s printed source. The French also has singular placé applied to plural temples; English placed does not express that agreement difference.

T264.Placé remains singular as printed after temples; (sic) is the source’s parenthetical qualification, not a translator insertion. Pied-estal preserves its printed hyphen.

T58.Flayed figure renders écorché in the comparison with strength deprived of grace. In art the term can name a figure displaying the body without skin. Garment and flaying remain connected images; the English does not simply substitute ugliness for the anatomical figure.

T59.Of and And that preserve the two dependent openings. The feminine plural contemplatives applies across the listed arts; no separate finite assertion is inserted. High contemplation retains the vertical image.

T60.Foresee and have a presentiment distinguish prévoir and présentir, with death and immortality as their respective objects. The concluding conditional about animals remains unfinished after fear and hope.

T265.The concluding Et si clause is left unfinished.

T61.No motive but preserves the permitted restriction. The repeated say and better than all the others retain the claim about expression and rivalry. The final parenthetical disagreement with Fénelon is Joubert’s, and remains part of the paragraph continuing on the next page.

T266.The day is clipped before its surviving terminal 3; neither 13 nor 23 is assigned. The printed date and Issy circumstance remain in source order after August 14. The paragraph and its parenthetical reference continue on page 568. Sçavoir retains the cedilla.

T62.Probity is kept as the narrower sense attributed to virtue here. Grandiloquent renders emphatique as excessively elevated or pompous in this context, consistently with the earlier descriptive use; it is not merely emphatic in the sense of forceful emphasis.