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 wordFlowers and fruits link beauty with production, ripeness, and what a thought may yield.
- In JoubertThought is asked to have bloom just as movement has grace and tone sincerity.
- In this edition“Bloom” is the contextual rendering of avoir de la fleur.
- A place to beginBloom is a desired quality of thought.
- English renderings
- flower; bloom; fruit
Meaning
Flowers and fruits link beauty with production, ripeness, and what a thought may yield. Fleur can also mean a bloom or delicate freshness rather than a countable blossom.
Use in the book
Thought is asked to have bloom just as movement has grace and tone sincerity. Elsewhere single flowers carry seed while double flowers give pleasure without producing: the image distinguishes immediate splendor from fertility. The small apple-tree fragment follows color from blossom into fruit. Taken together, these uses do not oppose all beauty to usefulness; they ask how beauty survives or develops in what follows.
Places to read
- I, p. 469, entry 12, ¶1Bloom is a desired quality of thought.
- I, p. 340, entry 1, ¶1Single and double flowers distinguish fertility from luxuriance.
- II, p. 504, entry 7, ¶1Blossom color passes into the fruit.
Translation in this edition
“Bloom” is the contextual rendering of avoir de la fleur. The apple-tree comparison remains an initial “As” fragment rather than a completed argument. Botanical metaphors do not warrant an invented doctrine of literary cultivation.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 340, 469; II, pp. 504.