From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordCorrectness is an achieved quality of writing or thought; correction is the activity that may secure it.
- In JoubertThe early maxim makes correcting the condition of being correct.
- In this editionThe English translation reads correction as correctness in the journal instruction, but as corrections for Auger’s revisions.
- A place to beginCorrectness requires correcting.
- English renderings
- correct; correctness; correcting; corrections
Meaning
Correctness is an achieved quality of writing or thought; correction is the activity that may secure it. Joubert also describes revisions that injure a work and an excess of finish that excludes grace.
Use in the book
The early maxim makes correcting the condition of being correct. For journals, he demands correctness of thought as well as style, while abruptly warning against harmony there. But correction does not guarantee improvement: the revised Auger translation seems constrained and lifeless beside its earlier version, as if written with a chained pen. The later complaint about works to which nothing can be added includes correctness among their overcompleted qualities. Grace, by contrast, retains a softness that seems kneadable. The opposition of the “too correct” to the “I know not what” makes the limit explicit. These witnesses distinguish correction as necessary work from revisions constrained by another hand or finish carried so far that grace is lost.
Places to read
- I, p. 86, entry 3, ¶1Correctness requires correcting.
- I, p. 410, entry 5, ¶1Correctness of thought and style is demanded of journals.
- II, p. 614, entry 9, ¶1Revisions are compared with a chained pen.
- II, p. 690, entry 4, ¶1Overfinished correctness can exclude the softness of grace.
- II, p. 878, entry 5, ¶2The too correct is opposed to indefinable charm.
Translation in this edition
The English translation reads correction as correctness in the journal instruction, but as corrections for Auger’s revisions. The chained pen does not identify a censor or establish actual imprisonment. The sentence about kneading interprets the printed paitrir contextually without silently normalizing its French spelling.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 86, 410; II, pp. 614, 690, 878.