From the book
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joseph Joubert · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordFluidity can be a property of a material, the ease with which a sound flows, or the imagined medium in which beauty nourishes the soul.
- In JoubertInk’s appropriate color and fluidity make writing possible, but do not mean that a book already exists in an inkwell.
- In this editionThe English translation keeps “fluidity” in the material and stylistic passages and “fluid” in the drinking image.
- A place to beginInk is suited to making a book without already containing it.
- English renderings
- fluid; fluidity
Meaning
Fluidity can be a property of a material, the ease with which a sound flows, or the imagined medium in which beauty nourishes the soul.
Use in the book
Ink’s appropriate color and fluidity make writing possible, but do not mean that a book already exists in an inkwell. The material property is necessary to making, not identical with the finished work. Style’s unction is described through an oily lack of solidity, and a later account imagines the mind drinking clarity: beauty becomes nourishment in this kind of fluid. The sensuous vocabulary helps distinguish receptivity and transmission from already fixed shape.
Places to read
- I, p. 302–303, entry 11, ¶1Ink is suited to making a book without already containing it.
- I, p. 203, entry begun p. 202, no. 8, ¶4Unction receives an oily, fluid comparison.
- II, p. 579, entry 2, ¶3Clarity is drunk and beauty becomes nourishment.
Translation in this edition
The English translation keeps “fluidity” in the material and stylistic passages and “fluid” in the drinking image. It does not explain away the oily comparison as merely smooth writing.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 203, 302, 303; II, pp. 579.