"Reflections"

Vanitas

July 9, 2014
Three More Réflexions from Uncle Albert

    - It is seldom out of kindness we help others, rather out of curiosity.

     - We often confuse morality and taste.

     - We imagine ourselves as we wish to be.  The same is true with regard to God. We do not create God in our image but as we wish him to be, as he would be most useful to us at any one time.

The following note is from my battered paperback, Rochefoucauld: Collected Maxims and Other Reflections.  The footnote is from me. :  

La Rochefoucauld’s various collections were all titled Réflexions ou Sentences et Maximes morales with the “adjective morales . . . to be taken as modifying all three  nouns, because the brief form of the title, appearing after the introductory address to the reader and in running heads at the top of each page, is Réflexions morales (Moral Reflections).

            “La Rochefoucauld’s writings do not draw any clear distinction between the words  réflexions, sentences, and maximes; indeed in his correspondence he applies all three terms to the work as a whole – sentences being used mainly during the early years (1658-62), and maximes later (perhaps under the influence of Madame de Sablé and others who were favouring that word).  Definitions in the French dictionaries compiled by Antoine Furetière (1690) and the Académie Française (1694) may help us to appreciate the significance that these terms would have had for the book’s first readers.  Réflexion is defined by Furetière as ‘meditations on some topic’ (‘the Moral Reflections of Monsieur de La Rochefoucauld’ being cited as an example of this meaning), and by the Académie as ‘the act of the mind when it reflects; serious meditation, attentive consideration of something’.  Furetière defines sentence as ‘noteworthy saying, remark that contains a great truth, a fine moral saying, apophthegm[1] uttered by some great man; the Proverbs of Solomon are all sentientiae’; and the Académie defines maxime as ‘general proposition that serves as principle foundation, rule in some art or science’; in each case the definition in the other dictionary is very similar though briefer.  Thus the three words were not exact synonyms.  By applying them all to his book, La Rochefoucauld was evoking a richer and more diverse range of associations than any one of them could have conveyed – a richer and more diverse range than some of his contemporaries were willing to grant – though it is evident that, in all five authorized editions, he wished the term réflexion to be pre-eminent.”

“Introduction” to La Rochefoucauld: Collected Maxims and Other Reflections. Translated with an introduction and notes by E.H. and A.M. Blackmore and Francine Giguére.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

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[1] Apophthegm is an interesting word from the Greek apophthegma,  from apophthengesthai  to speak one's opinion frankly, from phthengesthai  to speak.  Sometimes spelled apothegm, though apo’thegm would be more correct, it seems to me.