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 wordRayon and rayonnement picture directed or spreading light.
- In JoubertA ray piercing cloud and light piercing fog offer models for penetration that need not alter an entire mass.
- In this editionThe English translation keeps the tentative “It seems” and the fragmentary comparisons.
- A place to beginA penetrating ray supplies one of two compared images.
- English renderings
- ray; rays; radiance
Meaning
Rayon and rayonnement picture directed or spreading light. They can express illumination, spiritual derivation, and relations between a source and what receives it.
Use in the book
A ray piercing cloud and light piercing fog offer models for penetration that need not alter an entire mass. The literary arrangement of thoughts likewise needs a ray making them visible together in one glance, not merely one after another. God’s radiance is said to be least felt and seen at earth’s dark point, imagined as a cavern. This is a qualified cosmic picture, not a measurable distribution of physical light.
Places to read
- I, p. 472, entry 4, ¶1A penetrating ray supplies one of two compared images.
- I, p. 330, entry 1, ¶1A ray helps communicate thoughts together in perspective.
- II, p. 792, entry begun p. 791, no. 6, ¶17Divine radiance is least perceptible in earth’s cavern.
Translation in this edition
The English translation keeps the tentative “It seems” and the fragmentary comparisons. Rayons can also mean shelving, as the library entry shows; those matches are excluded from the light-related evidence.
Source note
Beaunier 1938, I, pp. 330, 472; II, pp. 792.