Atoms

Use in the book

Joubert’s reflection on atoms stresses the intellectual need they satisfy: declaring particles uncuttable stops imagination and gives thought a fixed starting point. The entry does not offer an experimental account of atomic structure. Much later, atoms and monads describe what the facts, words, and sentences of a book should possess: something clear-cut and indivisible “in a way,” whether round, square, or hooked. The qualifications and physical shapes matter because the comparison concerns the force and contour of literary units.

Places to read

1. I, p. 150, entry 3, ¶1Indivisible particles illustrate the need for a fixed intellectual starting point.
2. II, p. 896, entry 11, ¶1Atoms and monads become a qualified image of clear-cut literary components.
3. I, p. 123–124, entry 10, ¶1Geneva is called an atom of a republic.

Translation in this edition

“Atoms” preserves the shared image across these uses. The English translation retains the attribution to Cervantes in II.896 without identifying an external passage, and retains “in a way”; the lexicon does not authenticate that attribution.

Portiuncules

French: portiuncule.

Portiuncules is retained beside particles in the late comparison of apparently vast matter with hollow grains and a blown bubble. Its marked smallness reinforces the relation between the whole and its tiny parts. The English translation does not claim an independently authenticated etymology. The Lexicon therefore explains its local juxtaposition rather than presenting a recovered Latin derivation.

Places to read: II, p. 906, entry 4, ¶1.