Artifice

Use in the book

The analogy with artificial memory cautiously proposes artificial aids to logic, metaphysics, painting and poetry. They may serve the genuine activity, provided they remain hidden. This instrumental use differs from identifying art with artifice, a distinction Joubert explicitly rejects. In the system metaphor, the fabrication interests him less than its natural treasure; sticks and a distaff may be necessary to production, but attention should settle on the silk. The comparison of literary obscurity to dark paint over light is more hostile: a manufactured recess becomes a counterfeit profundity. Nevertheless, the later list of in-between spaces allows a region between artificial and natural, resisting an exhaustive division of works into two pure categories.

Places to read

1. I, p. 460–461, entry 12, ¶1Artificial aids can serve genuine mental and artistic activity.
2. II, p. 525, entry 14, ¶1Art is expressly distinguished from artifice.
3. II, p. 713, entry 3, ¶1The system’s scaffolding differs from its treasure and silk.
4. II, p. 724, entry 6, ¶1Obscurity can manufacture an appearance of literary depth.
5. II, p. 895, entry 8, ¶1Artificial and natural admit an in-between region.

Translation in this edition

The English translation retains artifice and artificial. In the artificial-memory analogy, its unresolved singular pronouns remain unresolved after the plural list. In the system passage, [I], [coffer] and [way] are disclosed contextual completions of damaged French; the secure contrast of fabrication and treasure does not establish the lost letters.