Physiognomy

Use in the book

The word can be rendered countenance when Joubert contrasts an open expression with one shut in, extending the image to a buttoned-up air. Another fragment restricts its view of bodies to physiognomies, supports for heads, and finally dwellings for souls; its unexplained “that age” prevents an invented biographical setting. The question about masters asks how ways and hidden moods manifested in the face influence children. It remains a question about visible expression and influence, not proof of a reliable diagnostic method.

Places to read

1. I, p. 448, entry 7, ¶1Countenance takes spatial and clothing metaphors.
2. II, p. 626, entry 4, ¶1Faces are viewed as expressions within a restrictive account of bodies.
3. II, p. 757, entry 9, ¶1A question links visible demeanor to influence on children.

Translation in this edition

The English translation varies countenance and physiognomy with context. It preserves the question, the unnamed age, and form/deform. Masters is not narrowed to a modern school occupation, and the Lexicon supplies no diagnosis or fixed physiognomic doctrine.

Use in the book

The woods' first signs of spring give them a new physiognomy before leaves have appeared. A region can likewise wear a dark winter countenance. The word gathers subtle changes of life and mood that do not reduce to one altered outline or color; it makes a scene readable as an expression.

The recollection of childhood deepens the relation between appearance and observer. To recover the first physiognomy of things is to see them as they appeared to the earliest gaze, not merely to restore an inventory of remembered objects. The face of the landscape holds a history of perception.

The October trees make the metaphor's status particularly visible. Guérin moves from physiognomies to characters and almost to faces, then imagines mute passions beneath bark. The hesitations matter. The prose approaches personhood through analogy without claiming straightforward knowledge of the trees' inner states.

In December 1834 imaginative illumination seems to animate every form's countenance and disclose unseen beauties; its failure leaves those forms dead. Physiognomy therefore lies between object and attention. It is the expressive face an encounter gives the world, vulnerable to season, memory, and the condition of the perceiving soul.

Places to read

1. 3 March 1833 · ¶3Spring changes the woods' expressive appearance even before foliage returns.
2. 5 April 1833 · ¶1Childhood returns as a renewed first physiognomy of things.
3. 1 October 1833 · ¶1Tree forms approach faces and mute passions through deliberately tentative personification.
4. 10 December 1834 · ¶3Imaginative light animates the countenance of form; its absence withdraws that animation.

Translation in this edition

The supplied English repeatedly uses “countenance” for “physionomie”; in April 5 “first appearance” translates the nearby “premier aspect.” In October its “I would almost say faces” preserves the distinction between the recurring metaphor and a literal claim about trees.