Style

Use in the book

The fabric analogy distinguishes a style beautiful only in a whole piece from one whose single sample allows the entire texture to be judged. Excerptability is thus a property to investigate, not proof of superiority by itself. The Voltaire comparison reverses an ordinary relation: where ideas lend charm to style, his style lends charm to ideas. The source states this as a literary assessment, not a reason to identify charm with truth.

The distinction between awaited and sought style concerns how the writer obtains it. Both may be good when they arrive or are found, but the awaited is preferred; attendu does not mean merely predictable. Reflection complicates naturalness, and clarity can be demanded even when obscurity arising from excellence is tentatively valued elsewhere. The notebooks preserve such pressures rather than offering one final stylistic program.

Places to read

1. II, p. 807, entry 5, ¶1The fabric/swatch image distinguishes whole effects from excerptable ones.
2. I, p. 273, entry 7, ¶1Voltaire’s style is said to lend charm to ideas.
3. II, p. 896, entry 4, ¶1Awaited style and sought style have different modes of arrival.
4. II, p. 541, entry 5, ¶1Reflection changes what natural writing can mean.
5. II, p. 568, entry 6, ¶1Extreme clarity is stated as a stylistic aim.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves sample, whole piece and fabric; awaited/arrives and sought/finds also remain paired. V[oltaire] records the source editor’s expansion. A style that works in a fragment is not silently promoted into a complete-work ideal.

Usage

French: usage.

A style may sometimes depart from usage while conforming to nature and reaching art’s aim—attention and remembrance—outside art. Usage here concerns customary expression, not all uses of an instrument or social customs. Sometimes limits the claim; the fragment does not authorize every novelty merely because it is unusual.

Places to read: II, p. 864, entry 4, ¶1.

Unction

French: onction.

Onction becomes unction in the English translation: a moving warmth of expression with the material association of anointing. A language lacking pomp or harmony may need unction among its flowing qualities; the parenthesis explicitly allows that pomp and harmony are often unnecessary. Another fragment connects unction of style with fluidity and an oily lack of solidity, while the final instruction adds one’s own unction to dryness. The images can therefore disclose a texture as well as praise an effect. Unction is not automatically insincere flattery.

Places to read: I, p. 152, entry 6, ¶1; I, p. 203, entry begun p. 202, no. 8, ¶4; II, p. 624, entry 6, ¶1.