🙂 Greetings to the regular readers and guests of the site “Ladies-Gentlemen”! Joseph Joubert is a French moralist writer born in 1754 in Montignac. At 18 he graduated from the College of the Congregation of the Fathers of Christian Doctrine in Toulouse.
Six years later, full of ambitious plans, the young man went to Paris. There he met the philosophers and writers Retif de la Breton, Diderot, Mercier, Fontand. For some time he was Diderot’s literary secretary.
During this period, Joubert puts reason above all else and is skeptical of religion. In literature he prefers Englishmen Shakespeare and Richardson. This testifies to pre-romantic tastes, but later his views became more classic.
Rotating in the literary environment, Joseph tried to engage in journalism, art criticism. The death of his father in 1790 forced him to return to his homeland, where he was elected magistrate. But after two years he resigns and returns to Paris.
On June 8, 1793, he was married to Mademoiselle Victoire Moreau de Bussy. In her estate, Villeneuve-le-Roy, he subsequently created most of the “thoughts” and aphorisms that made up his diaries.
In 1808, Fountain, having become the rector of the Imperial University, promoted the appointment of his friend to the post of inspector of the university. Joubert remained in this post until 1815.
Legacy and recognition
With the exception of a few youthful articles, the writer left no printed works. He himself believed that he had not mastered the word enough to make his notes worthy of publication. However, he thought about the possible publication of them by descendants.
The first edition of Joubert’s “thoughts” was carried out in 1838 by Chateaubriand (the two writers had a close friendship). In 1842, Joubert’s nephew Paul de Reynal, arranging Joubert’s notes by topic, published a two-volume edition of Joubert’s Thoughts, Experiments and Maxims.
20 years later, it was reissued in a more complete form. This edition has been reproduced several times. However, it can in no way be considered either complete or scientific. The only complete reproduction of Joubert’s Diaries, prepared by A. Bonnet, was published only in 1938.
The fame of Joubert cannot be compared with the fame of his colleagues and friends Chateaubriand, Ballanche, Constant. This is due to the fact that he, unlike the three named, did not play a significant role in the social and political life of France in the first third of the XNUMXth century.
However, in the originality of his thinking, Joseph Joubert is not inferior to any of his contemporaries, sometimes surpassing them.
A characteristic feature of Joubert’s thinking is fragmentation. Constantly feeling the impossibility of embodying the truth in its entirety in the word, he often leaves the thought he had begun. Then, after a few pages, he returns to her, trying to illuminate her in a new way.
Joubert never tires of praising “commonplaces” – aphorisms, maxims that express the final judgment about the world. However, he himself often happens to express opinions about the same subject, dissimilar, contradicting each other.
In different passages, he approaches the same topic in different ways. So, in one place the author argues that not fully thought out books cannot be perfect. In another, when the idea is too well thought out, the book does not give pleasure to the author, because writing it is boring.
Creation
Joubert’s attitude to the problem of the relationship between creativity and life, which is very important for romantic culture, is also ambiguous. On the one hand, he longs for complete sincerity, wants to see in the work the soul of the author, and not just his skill.
On the other hand, he constantly doubts that such sincerity is possible. He does not trust authors whose main principle is self-expression, he calls them “actors playing themselves.”
In the writer’s reflections on art, two main circles of problems can be distinguished. The first is related to the question of what imitation is and how it relates to the essence of art. The second – with the question of the relationship between the writer and the public.
As for the first question, here Joubert’s position is extremely characteristic of the late XNUMXth – early XNUMXth centuries. During this period, the transition from the classical doctrine of imitation to the romantic doctrine of creativity is completed.
Creativity begins to be understood not as an imitation of nature, but as the creation of new objects. The intensity of expression of the author’s creative individuality is put forward as the main criterion for the perfection of a work.
Writer’s reasoning
Joubert was undoubtedly very worried about the issue of imitation. The desire to approach the solution of this issue in his own way gives rise to the most bizarre turns of his thought.
There are constant attempts to compare different arts, to express the properties of one through the properties of the other. Thus, he pushes into the background the question of the adequacy of art to nature, emphasizing that conventionality is inherent in all art.
Here is his apology for illusion, and reflections on the imperfection of human language, and an addiction to talking about art. First of all, about the art of the word in terms of purely “material” (the richness and oiliness of the style, its relief, etc.).
In general, we can say that Joubert considers art as an area in a sense, self-valuable. Art that has its own laws and is connected with the real world through complex mediations.
The relationship with the audience is the second most important aspect of Joubert’s thinking. Joubert was a moralist, a teacher by his very nature.
For him, maxim and aphorism were not only a means to entrust paper with “sore” problems or to express their own thoughts in the form of an elegant, polished paradox. His main goal was to teach himself and others to properly use their own spiritual opportunities. Correctly create and perceive the creation of others.
Hence his frequent references to memory as one of the most important properties of human consciousness. His reasoning about comparisons and epithets and their “pedagogical” significance, attention to such “mass” forms of literature as “vulgar” folk songs or sensitive novels.
In all cases, Joubert strenuously seeks the classic balance of beauty and moral benefit. But he goes to it in original, purely individual ways.
Joseph Joubert died on May 4, 1824 in Villeneuve-sur-Yonne, France, at the age of 70.
Joubert’s aphorisms
- Justice is truth in action.
- Never cut if you can untie.
- Don’t marry a woman you wouldn’t take as a friend if she were a man.
- Children need a role model more than criticism.
- He who never changes his views loves himself more than the truth.
- To teach is doubly learning.
- Any excess spoils either morals or taste.
- Justice without strength and strength without justice are both terrible.
Dear readers, if the information “Joseph Joubert: Biography” was useful to you, please share it on social networks. 😉 Visit this site, there are many interesting topics ahead!