Words · Meanings · Passages
A Reader’s Companion to the Notebooks · Volumes I–II
459 entries · 110 subsidiary terms1–13 of 13
Génération can mean begetting or the succession of people born into an inherited world.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Génie can be a creative or intellectual power, or the distinctive spirit attributed to a literature or people.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Douceur connects an affective quality with sweetness perceived through taste or style.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Glass and crystal give perceptible form to transparency, apparent depth, and the doubling of an object through resemblance.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Gloire concerns recognition or the distinction attached to an achievement, and is repeatedly separated from moral improvement and intrinsic merit.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Dieu appears as the object of prayer and love, a principle of being, a judge, an image-bearing presence and a limit to human knowledge.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Bien and mal cover moral value but also ordinary benefit and suffering; bien is often an adverb meaning well.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Bon sens and sens commun are explicitly distinguished in a sustained comparison and therefore require different English terms.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Bonté is the goodness of a person or soul, not merely correct behavior observed from outside.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Gouvernement concerns the arrangement and exercise of political authority.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Grammar orders relations among words, but Joubert also extends its analogy to ideas, individual authors and moral association.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Reconnoissance is acknowledgment of what is received, with a scope that can exceed visible success.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Growth connects bodily development with the expansion of feelings, capacities, or opinions.
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II
Joubert Lexicon
coche
The two brief travel records do not establish whether coche means a road coach or a passenger boat. The English translation uses coach provisionally in both places. The second occurrence should therefore be read alongside the first, rather than treated as independent confirmation of a journey by road. The Lexicon does not resolve the transport reference.
Joubert Lexicon
palais
The fragment moves from sneezes of the mind to le palais des éternûmens. Palace preserves one possible image, but palate is also open in the manuscript's existing translation note. Neither the brevity of the fragment nor the preceding bodily metaphor decides the issue. A lexical account of Joubert's imagery should retain this uncertainty instead of building an argument on an assured palace metaphor.
Joubert Lexicon
anormal
The discussion of embryonic parts prints l’anormal where the surrounding account might lead a reader to expect l’animal. The translation retains the abnormal because that is the reviewed printed reading. This occurrence cannot securely establish a special biological category of abnormality, and the expected animal cannot be substituted without an explicit editorial decision.
Joubert Lexicon
nations
An account distinguishing metaphysics from morality, politics, and legislation prints nations as the object of metaphysics. The translation note identifies notions as an expected but unverified alternative. The present edition keeps nations. Consequently, this anomalous occurrence supplies neither a secure definition of metaphysics nor straightforward evidence for a political theory of the nation.
Joubert Lexicon
succrément
The paired fragments read breath or animation, then the nail or succrément. The reviewed witness preserves this unusual printed form, and the English translation retains it untranslated. Its sense remains undetermined. Secretion, excrement, and growth are possible associations a reader might supply, but none is an established replacement in this passage.
Joubert Lexicon
surfaix
Surfaix occurs amid images of intellectual birth, false offspring, and the anger of a mind deprived of its opinions. The existing note records the ordinary surcingle sense but explains that it does not settle the metaphor here. The English translation therefore retains surfaix. An interpretation such as afterbirth must not be promoted into a definition merely because it fits the surrounding imagery.
Joubert Lexicon
angre
The passage compares talent with a tempered tool made from inferior iron. Angre is followed by the alternatives soft and brittle, but the sequence does not explain the first term. The English translation retains angre and the source's sic. The article on substance or education can discuss the secure distinction between the material and its temper while leaving this particular quality of iron unidentified.
Joubert Lexicon
barrage
Manufactured scholars are compared with eaux de barrage made at Tivoli. Joubert himself calls the comparison unsatisfactory. The translation retains barrage because its intended reference is unresolved; neither a damming gloss nor a substitution of Barèges has been established. The secure contrast is between artificial qualities and a natural aptitude sustained by pleasure. That contrast does not identify the waters.
Joubert Lexicon
borgnon
Three unexpanded names or initials are associated with borgnon, twilight, and black night. The sequence clearly develops an image of inadequate intellectual illumination, but it does not determine the first noun. The existing translation note's related phrase about going blindly does not certify eye or lantern as a substitute. The English translation keeps borgnon untranslated.
Joubert Lexicon
orge moulé
A writer's collection becomes a storehouse of grains, seeds, and fruit pips. Ground barley is the English translation's contextual interpretation of orge moulé. The existing note does not certify that grain sense or authorize changing the French to moulu. The broader seed image is secure; the precise treatment of this grain is not.
Joubert Lexicon
élaterium
The paragraph explains moral tendency through an imagined elastic spring connected with a bodily center. This comparison is fully available for interpretation, while the historical sense of élaterium remains unsettled in the translation's note. A medicinal definition would introduce a meaning not established here. The secure spring image and the unresolved history of the term must remain distinct.
Joubert Lexicon
nomes; cursif
Joubert argues that laws should possess an appearance of antiquity and rejects an ordinary, cursive style for nomes. The English translation preserves both unusual choices. Its note allows a possible relation between law and ordered song but does not establish a unique intended sense; nomes is not silently corrected to normes. Likewise, an attested handwriting sense of cursive does not by itself settle the figurative judgment of style.
Joubert Lexicon
cohobition
Cohobition remains the printed form in the list of possible natural means of discharge and absorption. The translation note considers cohibition (restraint) and cohobation (repeated distillation) as neighboring terms; neither is established as Joubert’s intended word. The conditional account of unknown natural processes does not settle the choice. No conjectural substitution or confident technical definition is made here.
Joubert Lexicon
exformation
Exformation is retained as an unusual printed term in the English translation. The paragraph associates it with separation from divinity and with experiencing human errors and passions; it then describes stains and imprints that can no longer be erased, without defining the process more precisely. It is not silently equated with emanation, incarnation, or any other named doctrine.
Joubert Lexicon
immatériabilité
The French retains irregular immatériabilité. The English translation interprets it as immateriality in the comparison of thought and vision through inward mirrors. The word’s normalization is an interpretation, not a recovery of a differently spelled manuscript term. The preceding Perhaps also qualifies the claim that thought requires no purer immateriality than vision.
Joubert Lexicon
[ontogénie] / orltologie
[Ontogénie] is Beaunier’s explicitly supplied correction, not a securely transcribed authorial word. The English translation renders it [ontogeny] and retains the separate source apparatus, where orltologie is a provisional reading of an opaque form in a damaged reproduction. Neither the editor’s assertion about Joubert’s manuscript nor that form is freshly certified here. The surrounding anatomical catalogue also has damaged myo[…]gie, contextually rendered [myology]. Familiar technical vocabulary must not conceal those different kinds of intervention.
October 2026
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volumes I–II · Joseph Joubert
459 contextual articles and 110 shorter treatments from the complete French and English notebooks, preserving source qualifications.
This Lexicon contains 459 articles for readers of the complete French and English notebooks of Joseph Joubert in the Diotimos edition. It follows the words through questions of thought and writing, religious and moral life, friendship and conduct, art, nature, and the body. Each article brings a French headword or related family of words together with English renderings, an explanation of particular uses, and passages in which those uses can be examined.
Joubert often tries a comparison, records another writer’s thought, leaves a question unfinished, or revises an earlier formulation. A word can change force between these settings. The explanations therefore concern the cited passages; they do not turn the notebooks into a finished system or treat every quotation and report as Joubert’s own settled conviction.
Being printed among the notebooks does not by itself establish autograph authorship. Beaunier identifies the passage on paternal authority at I, p. 128, entry 2 as being in another hand. Such qualifications are retained in the relevant articles. The Lexicon covers the edition’s running notebook text; it does not certify that every word was written personally by Joubert.
The articles combine explanations of Joubert’s vocabulary with annotated references, translation discussions, and indexes. Terms are selected for their attested use and value to readers across the complete French notebooks.
The word introduces the meanings relevant to the selected passages. In Joubert develops the distinctions, comparisons, or tensions visible there. The places gives an annotated reading list. In this edition explains choices in the English translation. Separate source notes identify the printed pages and any further qualification. See also connects related articles.
French headwords provide lookup forms. The running text may contain a plural, an inflected verb, a related adjective, or a historical spelling. Grouped forms are identified as a family; their presence under one heading does not make their senses interchangeable. French words and brief French quotations remain distinct from the English editorial explanation.
The French index leads from a headword to its article. The English and French index includes the shorter treatments placed within broader articles. The thematic index offers another route through the same articles. Grouping an article under one subject is a navigation choice, not a restriction on its other uses.
The appendix on unsettled vocabulary records cases in which the existing translation remains provisional or retains an unexplained French form. These are deliberate limits on interpretation. An attractive association or a convenient dictionary gloss is not a resolution of damaged or anomalous evidence.
The base edition is Joseph Joubert, Les Carnets de Joseph Joubert, texts collected from the autograph manuscripts by André Beaunier, two volumes, Paris, Librairie Gallimard, Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française, 1938. The accompanying Diotimos translation covers volume I, printed pages 32–475; volume II, pages 475 bis–916; and the seventy undated pieces on pages 917–937. The source edition’s prefatory essays, biography, title and production pages, and closing index are outside the notebook text covered here.
The bilingual edition contains 8,310 notebook entries and 10,611 paired main paragraphs. The source editor’s separate introduction to the undated pieces is outside those counts and the lexical index. Source-editor annotations and translator’s notes help qualify interpretation but are not counted as Joubert’s running vocabulary. The Lexicon follows the bilingual edition; it does not offer a new transcription or an independent complete collation of the facsimile. Existing textual uncertainties remain identified.
A reference such as I, p. 214, entry 2, ¶1 identifies the first paragraph of the second entry beginning on printed page 214 of volume I. References give the cited paragraph’s printed pages; when its entry begins on an earlier page, that starting page is also identified. These are the French edition’s printed pages, not the Lexicon’s pages or a reader’s EPUB page count. The reference links lead to the first cited facsimile page; the passage register preserves every source-page link and the stable identifiers used by the bilingual book.
Entry and paragraph numbers are the bilingual edition’s navigation aids. They do not assert that Joubert or Beaunier supplied those numbers as titles or divisions.
Printed dates, incomplete dates, and undated status belong to the source records. No year or day has been inferred for this Lexicon from a neighboring entry. The discussions use chronology only where their evidence supports it.
The English follows the independent Diotimos translation. Paul Auster’s translation was not consulted. A difference between two English renderings may reflect a difference of sense; conversely, the same English word may represent distinct French words. The articles explain consequential choices without imposing a fixed one-word substitution throughout the notebooks.
