From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Ennui
ennui
Ennui is more than unfilled leisure: it can arise from repetitive reasoning or insufficient thoughts, while duty can counter it.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordEnnui is more than unfilled leisure: it can arise from repetitive reasoning or insufficient thoughts, while duty can counter it.
- In JoubertCeaseless reasoning can weary a lively soul into poetry, eloquence and metaphor.
- In this editionThe English translation varies boredom and tedium according to the construction.
- A place to beginTedium with ceaseless reasoning leads toward figurative expression.
- English renderings
- boredom; tedium
Meaning
Ennui is more than unfilled leisure: it can arise from repetitive reasoning or insufficient thoughts, while duty can counter it.
Use in the book
Ceaseless reasoning can weary a lively soul into poetry, eloquence and metaphor. This account makes tedium productive without making it universally desirable. Another classification describes minds with too few thoughts, wasting away unless trifles cheer them; it distinguishes them from minds unable to manage too many thoughts. The terse appeal to duty offers a practical counterforce to the boredom unnamed people discuss so much. These notes place ennui between an impoverished inner life, a strained intellectual routine and an activity that gives direction. Their differences prevent a simple equation of boredom with solitude or idleness.
Places to read
- I, p. 280, entry 8, ¶1Tedium with ceaseless reasoning leads toward figurative expression.
- II, p. 563, entry 2, ¶1Too few thoughts leave a mind vulnerable to boredom.
- II, p. 657, entry 4, ¶1Duty is named as the force that drives boredom away.
Translation in this edition
The English translation varies boredom and tedium according to the construction. The quoted scholarly pointer retains the source spelling Warbuston; the lexicon does not independently certify the historical account of the arts.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 280; II, pp. 563, 657.
From the book
René
François-René de Chateaubriand · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Ennui and Troubles
ennui; ennuis
Singular ennui is an invasive weariness or emptiness of existence, heavier than ordinary boredom.
Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordSingular ennui is an invasive weariness or emptiness of existence, heavier than ordinary boredom.
- In RenéRené first attributes increased ennui to Amélie’s unexplained avoidance on his return (p. 156).
- In this editionThe English preserves singular ennui but uses ‘troubles’ for the plural on pp. 171 and 1792.
- A place to readaugmenter mon ennui — René initially describes his sister’s distance in terms of its effect on him.
Meaning
Singular ennui is an invasive weariness or emptiness of existence, heavier than ordinary boredom. Plural ennuis can retain the less totalizing sense of troubles or griefs. The distinction is semantic rather than absolute: context matters more than number alone. In the account of modernity, the plural also gathers the ‘troubles of the heart’ excluded by ancient public activity.
Ennui is not simply the absence of feeling. At its extreme it becomes the feeling through which René knows that he exists. Nor is it safely separable from intense desire: expenditure without a lasting object can lead from superabundance to exhaustion. The narrative makes those apparent opposites successive phases of one inward economy.
Use in the book
René first attributes increased ennui to Amélie’s unexplained avoidance on his return (p. 156). This causal attribution is provisional and self-centred: he does not yet know the suffering behind her conduct. Withdrawal promises relief, but country solitude eventually leaves his heart unable to feed thought. Bodily languor, disgust with life, and the singular awareness of ennui converge just before his resolve to die (p. 164). The text presents a crisis, not an occasion for treating the character with a modern diagnosis.
Amélie’s recommendation of marriage offers relief for his ennuis (p. 171) through a wife, children, and occupied days. Her advice also names a profession or settled calling. These are concrete forms of continuity against the cycle of ecstatic projection and depletion, although her emotionally implicated letter cannot be treated as wholly disinterested counsel. The frame’s report that René later returns to his wife without happiness prevents that advice from becoming an automatically successful cure.
The most troubling transformation comes when real grief becomes an occupation (p. 183). He no longer wants to die, yet calls his heart naturally kneaded of ennui and misery. The suffering that interrupts emptiness is valuable to him partly because it fills time. This outcome avoids a simple ascent from false distress to authentic healing: the newly real cause of pain may also preserve the self’s demand for inexhaustible affect. Souël’s service to others offers a criterion that being occupied by one’s sorrow does not meet.
Places to read
- p. 156augmenter mon ennui — René initially describes his sister’s distance in terms of its effect on him.
- p. 164un profond sentiment d'ennui — Ennui becomes the remaining sign of existence after the heart no longer feeds thought.
- p. 171un soulagement à vos ennuis — Marriage is proposed as relief for troubles, a plural sense the translation distinguishes.
- p. 183pétri d'ennui et de misère — Even grief’s power to fill his days is interpreted as evidence of deep inward poverty.
Translation in this edition
The English preserves singular ennui but uses ‘troubles’ for the plural on pp. 171 and 1792. The supplied Key Terms2 relates ennui to acedia; that is an editorial comparison, not a word or diagnosis stated by René. At p. 164 the 1802 reading adds ‘mal-aise’, which 1826 removes.