Rousseau begins his Confessions with a most daring preface, which it is well to offer here to the reader:
I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself.
Simply myself. I know my own heart and understand my fellow man. But I am made unlike any one I have ever met; I will even venture to say that I am like no one in the whole world. I may be no better, but at least I am different. Whether Nature did well or ill in breaking the mould in which she formed me, is a question which can only be resolved after the reading of my book. (1.1; the first number refers to book, second to page)
As with much of this work, because it is honest, there is an embarrassment of riches here to analyze. His concept of “nature;” his need to be “at least different;” and his proof that he is different, by attempting something unprecedented and inimitable. All of these are crucial aspects of his personality, and all revealed in the literary portrait he commissioned himself to write.
As for the question of imitators, while it cannot be said that he has had none, it should be said that he has had too few good ones. Besides Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit, I do not know of any autobiographies that can match Rousseau’s for interest, style, or profundity. Memoirs are usually written by people considered important by the world, and they take as their theme the doings and personages their importance gave them access to; but Rousseau truly attempted what he described, a portrait of himself, and on reading it you do not always feel admiration for the author, but you always feel that you are seeing him as he really was. Such is the power of Rousseau’s honesty and eloquence.
Let us deal immediately with the most unusual and notorious aspect of his autobiography, his frankness about sexuality. In his youth, almost every event in Rousseau’s life appears to be motivated by some woman’s bosom or hair. He is almost walking proof of Goethe’s dictum “The eternal-feminine draws us on.” We all know the power of sexual attraction, how often it determines where we live, what job we accept, or where we spend our free hours; and so it was for Rousseau. Frequently beauty simply spreads an enchantment over his universe, as with the lady of a house where he did odd jobs as a teenager:
There I enjoyed some little foretaste of the sweetest and purest pleasures of love. She was an extremely attractive brunette, with a vivacity that was the more appealing for the natural kindness that shone in her pretty face. Her name was Madame Basile…. I feasted my eyes greedily on everything I could see without being observed – on the flowers of her dress, the tip of her pretty toes, the glimpse of her firm white arm between her glove and her sleeve, and her bosom, which was sometimes visible between her kerchief and her bodice. Every detail added to the general impression. (2.78)
The sexual enchantment is usually mutual in Rousseau’s universe, the women enjoying displaying their charms and smiling upon young Jean-Jacques’ gallantry, and the atmosphere of the work at times resembles the movie Dangerous Liaisons, interspersed with the reflections of a genius:
She had a scar on her breast where she had scalded herself with boiling water, which was only partially hidden by a neckerchief of blue chenille. This mark sometimes called my attention in this direction, though soon it was no longer on account of the scar. (5.183)
He [his mistress’s husband] always sent his lackey ahead to engage them [the rooms], and the rascal, either on his own responsibility or on his master’s instructions, always placed him in the next room to Madame de Larnage and me at the other end of the house. But this caused me very little embarrassment, and added a spice to our meetings. This delicious existence lasted three or four days during which I grew drunk on the sweetest of pleasures. They were pure and sharp and without any alloy of pain; and they were the first and the last I have ever savoured in that way. I may say, indeed, that I owe it to Madame de Larnage that I shall not die without having known sensual delight.
If what I felt for her was not precisely love, it was at least so tender a return for the love she showed me, there was so hot a sensuality in our pleasures and so sweet an intimacy in our talk, that it had all the charm of passion without the delirium which turns the head and makes enjoyment impossible. I have only felt true love once in my life and that was not for her. I did not love her either as I had loved Madame de Warens [his first patroness and lover, whom he called ‘Mamma’]; and it was for that reason that I was a hundred times more successful in our intercourse. With Mamma my pleasure was always troubled by a feeling of sadness, by a secret oppression at the heart that I had difficulty in overcoming; instead of congratulating myself upon possessing her, I would reproach myself for degrading her. With Madame de Larnage, on the other hand, I was proud of my manhood and my good fortune, and abandoned myself joyfully and confidently to my senses; I shared the sensuality I roused in her, and was sufficiently master of myself to look on my triumph with as much pride as pleasure, and thereby to derive the wherewithal to repeat it. (6.240-1)
The pride of conquest is a key psychological phenomenon for him. About his novel Julie, or the New Heloise he says:
Opinions differed among men of letters, but in the world the verdict was unanimous, and the women especially were wild about the book and its author. Such was their infatuation indeed that there were few of them, even of the highest rank, whose conquest I could not have made if I had attempted it. (11.504)
This is how he defends himself against the charge that his patroness, Madame d’Epinay, was also his mistress:
She was very thin, very fair, and with a chest as flat as my hand. That defect alone would have been enough to freeze me; for neither my heart nor my senses have ever been able to think of one without breasts as a woman. (9.384)
There is also a humor in all this gallantry, though of course it exposes our horrible human superficiality. Look at this episode from the period when he was secretary to France’s ambassador to Venice:
One kind of music, in my opinion greatly superior to the operatic, is that of the scuole. The scuole are charitable institutions founded for the education of young women without means, who subsequently receive dowries from the State either at marriage or for the cloister. Amongst the talents cultivated in these young girls music holds pride of place. Every Sunday, in the church of each of these four scuole, motets are sung during vespers, for full choir and orchestra, composed and conducted by the greatest masters in Italy and sung in the grilled galleries by these girls, the oldest of whom is under twenty. I cannot conceive of anything so pleasurable or so moving as that music: the artistic riches, the exquisite taste of the singing, the beauty of the voices, the delicacy of execution, everything about those delightful concerts combines to produce an impression which is certainly not a fashionable one, but against which I doubt any man’s heart is proof. Never did Carrio or I miss those vespers in the Mendicanti, and we were not the only ones. The church was always full of music-lovers; even singers from the opera came here to have a real lesson in tasteful singing from these excellent models. What distressed me were the accursed grilles, which only let the sound through but concealed those angels of beauty – for the singing was worthy of angels – from my sight. I could talk of nothing else. One day when I spoke of them at Monsieur Le Blond’s he replied, “If you are so curious to see these young girls, it is quite easy to satisfy you. I am one of the directors of the institution, and I will take you to tea with them.” I gave him no peace until he kept his word. As we entered the room where sat these beauties I had so desired, I felt such an amorous trembling as I had never known. Monsieur Le Blond introduced me to one of these famous singers after another, whose names and voices were all I knew of them. “Come, Sophie…” She was hideous. “Come, Cattina…” She had only one eye. “Come, Bettina…” She was disfigured by smallpox. Scarcely one of them was without some notable defect. My tormentor laughed at my cruel surprise. Two or three, however, seemed passable to me; they only sang in the chorus. I was in despair. We teased them at tea, and they became quite lively. Plainness does not preclude the graces, and these I found they possessed. “No one can sing like that without a soul,” I said to myself. “They have souls.” In the end my way of looking at them was so changed that when I left I was almost in love with every one of those plain creatures. (7.295-6)
But he left and of course no romance developed. Plainness may not preclude the graces, but it often precludes romance. (Let it also be noted that Vivaldi was the maestro di capello of one of the scuole at the time Rousseau was in Venice – Rousseau’s claim that the music there was excellent is not an exaggeration.)
The masculine humor in the above scene is found elsewhere in the book, and many of these little anecdotes, because they are so real, remain in the memory:
At about this same time I indulged in a cruder pleasure, the last of its kind with which I have to reproach myself. I have said that Klupffel the minister was a pleasant fellow; my relationship with him became almost as close as with Grimm, and became equally intimate. Sometimes they dined with me. These meals, which were rather more than simple, were enlivened by Kluppfel’s wild and witty remarks and by the course and German humor of Grimm, who had not yet turned purist. Luxury did not preside at our little orgies; but gaiety made up for it, and we so enjoyed each other’s company that we could never break the party up. Kluppfel had furnished some rooms for a little girl who, however, remained at everyone’s disposal because he could not entirely keep her himself. One evening, on going to a café, we met him coming out on his way to sup with her. We chaffed him, and he took a gallant revenge by inviting us to share their supper, at which he chaffed us in his turn. The poor creature seemed to me of a fairly good disposition, very gentle and ill-adapted to her profession, for which an old witch who lived with her did her best to groom her. The excellent Kluppfel did not want to do the honors by halves, and we all three went in turn into the next room with the little girl, who did not know whether to laugh or to cry. Grimm has always sworn that he never touched her; it was only for the pleasure of making us impatient that he stayed with her so long; but if he refrained it is not very likely it was out of any scruples, for before he went to the Count de Friese he had lived in a brothel in this same Saint-Roch quarter….
That good girl’s kindness of heart was equalled only by her simplemindedness, which tells the whole story. But one example that occurs to me is nevertheless worth adding. I had told her that Kluppfel was a minister and chaplain to the Prince of Saxe-Gotha. A minister was so extraordinary a person in her eyes that, muddling up two quite unrelated ideas, she took it into her head that Kluppfel was the Pope. I thought she was mad the first time she told me, on my coming home, that the Pope had come to see me. I made her explain, and went off at top speed to tell this story to Grimm and Kluppfel. Ever afterwards he was known amongst us as the Pope, and we called the girl in the Rue des Moineaux [the young prostitute] Pope Joan. We could not control our laughter; we almost choked. (8.331-2)
The above story of a “little girl” serving as a personal prostitute and handling three young men one after the other is not unusually direct within this narrative, which includes: frequent reference to masturbation; a period where Rousseau himself routinely exposed himself to women on the streets; an encounter with a man who wants to masturbate with him; an arrangement to maintain a twelve-year-old girl in exchange for sex once her development had reasonably progressed; a man who attempts to molest him and finally ejaculates at him; defending himself against the advances of a homosexual priest; and others. Many of these are minor episodes, but are valuable for their picture of a basically unchanging human sexuality. But others, such as his description of losing his virginity to an older female friend, and the psychological analysis surrounding it, are liable to make the reader long for more such intelligent, honest accounts of what must be a significant concern of any person’s life.
These episodes are also made much more charming by Rousseau’s treatment, which is worth commenting on. While he is very frank and hardly flinches from telling the truth of his sexual life, he is simultaneously a great master of euphemism, so that a child might read his book and never know what was happening. So when he talks of periods of abstinence, he notes that he did avail himself of “the compensatory vice” (masturbation). He describes with glowing warmth his love-friendship for Madame de Warens, who had sex with all of her friends, and when she makes a new friend he says, “in order to attach him to herself she used every means she thought likely to be effective, not omitting the one in which she placed most reliance” (6.249). This is what periphrasis is about, charming and honest at the same time. Look at his rapture and restraint in narrating a sexual encounter with a Venetian courtesan:
As I left, I made an appointment for the next day. I did not keep her waiting. I found her in vestito di confidenza, in a more than seductive undress, which is unknown except in southern lands and which I will not amuse myself by describing, although I remember it only too well…. I have spoken of Madame de Larnage with the rapture that her memory still sometimes arouses in me. But how old and plain and cold she was compared to my Giulietta. Do not attempt to imagine the charms and graces of that enchanting girl. You would not come near the truth. Young virgins in their cloisters are not more fresh, seraglio beauties are not so sportive, the houris of paradise are less enticing. Never was such sweet pleasure offered to mortal heart and senses. (7.299-300)
This encounter produces one of his emotional transports which led him, as a pamphleteer, to lay siege to Europe’s vast system of social inequality. His eloquence cannot be surpassed, so I let him speak for himself:
“This thing which is at my disposal,” I said to myself, “is Nature’s masterpiece and love’s. Its mind, its body, every part is perfect. She is not only charming and beautiful, but good also and generous. Great men and princes should be her slaves. Sceptres should lie at her feet. Yet here she is, a wretched street-walker, on sale to the world. The captain of a merchant ship can dispose of her. She comes and throws herself at me although she knows I am a nobody, although my merits, which she cannot know, would be nothing in her eyes. There is something incomprehensible about this.” (7.300-1)
However, this passage highlights the great defect of Rousseau’s work. We know Rousseau now as one of the great figures of the 18th Century, who as a prophet of equality helped overthrow the ancien regime. As in the above anecdote, is easy to see his theories generated by his life – he is revolted by the inexperience of inequality. He was born poor, served as an apprentice to an engraver, but ran away from his master. He was taken in for his looks and intelligence and served in various subordinate roles to the aristocracy, always rising, as a table-servant, tutor, and secretary as his talents began to be appreciated. But for his entire life he was always subordinate to the countesses and dukes who employed him, though he could see that he was their equal or sometimes, with respect to talents, their superior. As I said, this is evident from his autobiography. But his autobiography almost never engages with the ideas which arose from his life. His great interest is his own emotions, and what the people close to him think of him. His theories were at times bold and even sensational in his own day, but his autobiography rather apologizes for them. This is probably accurate self-portraiture. He was consumed by self-doubt and in the end, this doubt caused him to create a revolutionary persona – who had no doubts at all (as he calls it, “trampling underfoot the senseless opinions of the vulgar herd of so-called great and so-called wise” (8.338)). But in the end, the doubt was more central to his personality than the persona, and it triumphed. But it is astonishing to see it operating:
Only one thing alarmed me about the publication of the book, and that not so much out of consideration for my safety as out of obligation to men who had shown me kindness. At the Hermitage and at Montmorency I had had a close view of the vexation suffered by the unhappy peasants owing to the jealous care taken to preserve the pleasures of the great. This had aroused my indignation, for the poor creatures are forced to put up with the damage caused to their fields by wild animals, and do not dare to protect themselves by any means other than scaring them off. They are compelled, therefore, to spent the nights among their beans and peas, beating kettles, drums, and bells, to keep the wild boar away. Having witnessed the barbarous severity with which the Count de Charolais treated his unfortunate peasants, I had made an attack on this form of cruelty towards the end of Emile; another infraction of my principles which did not go unpunished. I learned that the Prince de Conti’s servants were hardly less severe with the people on his estates, and I trembled for fear that this prince, towards whom I felt deep respect and gratitude, should take what a feeling of outraged humanity had made me say about his uncle as applying to himself, and be offended by it. However, as my conscience fully acquitted me on this score I allowed its voice to reassure me, and I was justified in doing so. At least I have never heard that this great prince paid the slightest attention to the passage, which was written a long time before I had the honor of his acquaintance. (11.531)
He is really worried about whether the Prince de Conti is going to be offended by being told that peasants are people too. But he is reassured by the fact that the Prince de Conti couldn’t care less and is going to treat his peasants the way his family has always treated peasants. Thank goodness.
There are many other examples of this boldness overwhelmed, in the end, by insecurity:
I had a dog which had been given me as a puppy very soon after I had moved to the Hermitage, and which I had then called ‘Duke.’ The creature was not handsome but of an uncommon breed, and had become my friend and constant companion. As for his name, he certainly deserved it better than the majority who have assumed it. He had become famous at the castle of Montmorency for his intelligent and affectionate nature and for the fondness we felt for one another. But out of foolish weakness I had changed his name to ‘Turk,’ as if there were not countless dogs called ‘Marquis’ without any Marquis feeling insulted by the fact. The Marquis de Villeroy, who knew about the change of name, pressed me so hard that I was obliged to tell the story of what I had done before all the company. Now the offensive side of it was not so much that I had originally called the dog Duke but that I had altered his name, and the trouble was that there were several dukes present. (11.514)
Sometimes Rousseau’s insecurity begins to read like a bad dream, as when he attends a performance for the king of his opera The Village Soothsayer (he was besides all else a talented musician and wrote the music for the opera as well as the libretto).
On that day I dressed in my usual careless style, with a rough beard and an ill-combed wig. Considering my unkempt state an act of courage, I entered the theatre where the King, the Queen, the Royal Family, and the whole Court were shortly due to arrive. I then went and took my seat in the box to which Monsieur Cury conducted me, which was his own; it was a large stage-box opposite a smaller and higher one where the King sat with Madame de Pompadour. Surrounded by ladies and being the only man in the front of the box, I could not doubt that I had been placed there purposely to be seen. When the theatre was lighted up, and I saw myself dressed like that in the middle of such an overdressed crowd, I began to feel ill at ease. I asked myself whether I was in my right place, and whether I was suitably attired, and after some uncomfortable minutes I answered “Yes” with a boldness which, perhaps, proceeded rather from the impossibility of drawing back than from the strength of my conviction. “I am in my proper place,” I told myself, “since I have come to see my piece performed, and since I have been invited, and since I only wrote it for this purpose, and since no one can possibly have a better right than I to enjoy the fruit of my work and my talents. I am dressed in my ordinary way, neither better nor worse. If I begin to pander to opinion over one matter, I shall pretty soon be doing so over everything. To be consistent with myself, I must not blush, wherever I may be, at being dressed according to the position in life I have chosen. My outward appearance is simple and careless, but not dirty or slovenly. Nor is a beard so in itself, since it is a gift of Nature and, depending on the time and the fashion, is sometimes considered an ornament. I shall be considered ridiculous, offensive. Well, what is that to me? I must know how to bear ridicule and censure, provided they are undeserved.” After this little soliloquy I felt so fortified that I should have behaved with boldness if that had been necessary. But, whether because of the Master’s presence or of the natural kindness of the courtiers, I saw nothing uncivil or ill-bred about the curiosity of which I was the object. This so affected me that I began to be uneasy once more about myself and the reception of my play. I was afraid that I might disappoint these people who seemed so predisposed in my favor and so anxious to applaud. I was armed against jeering; but their unexpected attitude of kindness so overcame me that I trembled like a child when the thing began. (8.352-3)
That this is the way most people like Rousseau – people driven by a need to be different from others – live, alternating between bold defiance of convention and self-torment about being different from everyone else, does not make it any less sad. But we should be grateful to him for providing us with these honest accounts of his experiences. These situations reveal something very deep and significant, which somehow he never seems to have quite induced but for which he has provided the raw materials of observation: he treated people whom he perceived as different from him as potential enemies, but face-to-face he found he could not see them as anything but human. And so really, if he could have pressed his realizations further, he might have seen that the Prince de Conti was, in fact, a victim, as Rousseau was, of the system of inequality he inherited; the Prince was in a different position, to be sure, because his personal interests were aligned with the system, which was not the case for the poor. Again, Rousseau was on the verge of this insight, because he speaks elsewhere in the book how he made it his personal habit to avoid putting himself into situations where his interests were in conflict with virtue, which, he says, is the only way to guard it; the example he gives is refusing to be named in people’s wills, because then your interests are aligned with a loved one’s death.
But Rousseau’s interests were also aligned with the system, a fact which clearly produced tremendous inner tension for him, but which he never seems to have achieved full consciousness of. This is most frustrating to read. In a work which is in many ways deeply honest and reflective, he seems to have no sense of the larger patterns and truths of his own experience. The latter half of his life followed a consistent pattern: while visiting the estate of some aristocrat-friend, he would enthuse about the gardener’s cottage or some old barn in a forgotten nook of the grounds, and be offered residence there, which after some agonizing he would determine he was bound to accept, “so as not to offend his friend.” There he would pen screeds against inequality and in praise of the noble savage who ate acorns while himself serving as a literary lawn ornament and coming to the table of the aristocrats to offer amusing philosophical reflections. This situation produced tremendous interior conflict in him, which made him by turns cold and abusive to his patrons, who accused him of ingratitude; they then quarreled and Rousseau would pack up and leave in a huff, complaining of the injustice and small-mindedness of the great, and lacking a place to go would end up at the estate down the road, where he would be offered accommodation on similar terms, which he would accept, again so as not to appear that he favored one aristocrat over another. Rousseau himself never saw the structural impossibilities of this arrangement, and so he fell into it again and again, with a foolishness that is exasperating. But very real.
Books Nine, Ten, and Eleven (there are twelve) devolve, consequently, into an endless series of mindless quarrels, and Rousseau takes great pains to prove he was the offended party in all of them. This debate-team approach to life is sensible for a sixteen-year-old, but is ludicrously puerile in a man of fifty. And so we see him hysterically complaining against the conduct of his friends – although it is not clear in the least what they did wrong – and losing them one by one. The way he twists himself about is quite astonishing. He falls in love with Madame d’Houdetot, a friend’s mistress, pursues her with a remarkable persistence, and in the end blames them for it, especially because they had initially wanted a friendship to develop:
If I were partly to blame for all that had transpired, it was to a very slight extent. Was it I who had sought out his mistress? Was it not he who had sent her to me? Was it not she who had come to seek me? Could I avoid receiving her? What could I do? They alone had done the mischief, and it was I who had suffered by it. In my place he would have acted much as I did, perhaps worse. For however faithful, however estimable Madame d’Houdetot, might be, she was after all a woman; he was away, opportunities were frequent, temptations were severe, and it would have been very difficult for her always to defend herself with equal success against a more persistent lover. It undoubtedly said much for her and for me that in such a situation we should have imposed limits on ourselves which we never allowed ourselves to infringe. (9.429-30)
This self-justification coupled with blaming other people – the victim syndrome – must have been very difficult for his friends to live with. Occasionally he reports their comments, which seem full of sympathy (“You are a very unhappy man”), but he considers them absurd.
He was not the only one prone to taking insult, and in many ways his portrait of 18th-Century France, a society of etiquette, is a society of continual taking offense. Everyone writes letters to one another, which result in endless misunderstandings; everyone is obsessed with the symbols of social life, who sits next to whom, who receives whom, what is implied by certain comments, and so forth. And of course, someone is always right, and someone is always wrong. Rousseau reproduces a letter from Madame d’Epinay which quoted one of his own letters and was strangely worded, but no more; probably she wrote it in haste. Rousseau writes the following back, which can serve as a parody of this entire culture:
Montmorency, 8 December 1759.
Since my last letter I have examined the passage in question hundreds and hundreds of times. I have considered it in its own natural meaning, and have considered every interpretation that can be put on it; and I assure you, Madame, that I do not yet know whether I owe you an apology or you owe me one. (10.485)
He claims that ten years later he still does not know. The obvious solution – that no insult occurred and no apologies are necessary at all – does not suggest itself to him.
This endless taking offense begs for some kind of solution. We all know how much human life consists of this, and how many people are ruled by insecurities that appear almost demonic. In Rousseau’s case they appear to be linked to the simple fact that his horizons were so small: he was an isolated, individual ego, unconnected to others, and hence terribly fragile. He did not truly conceive of the “unhappy peasants” as people in themselves; but if he saw their unhappiness, that could affect him, which he did not like. But then again, if he offended the Prince de Conti for their sake and he became unhappy, that was perhaps more traumatic for Rousseau, because he saw the Prince de Conti more often. But everything revolved around Rousseau himself. As often as I see people of this sort, I am always struck by how unhappy they are. Man is not made to live unattached and distinct forever. And people of this sort must always prove themselves: as can be seen by the fact that Rousseau always, always, always had to be right in his quarrels. And other people had to be wrong, especially the aristocrats around him, because it was important to him that he have some form of superiority over them.
I will note also that, despite the title, The Confessions is an entirely secular work, the product of a secular age, and neither Rousseau nor any one around him seems to have any mystical concept of religion: at best it is a system of morality, the very concept St. Paul dedicated his life to fighting. The closest thing to mysticism Rousseau experienced is directed toward Nature, and produces some of the most delightful passages in the book. But there is always something a little bit ridiculous about Rousseau’s concept of nature as the benevolent mother (let it be noted that his mother died at his birth), which would be perfectly enjoyable were it not for the malice of men.
Often, letting my boat drift with the wind and the current, I gave myself up to aimless dreams which, foolish though they were, were nonetheless delightful. Sometimes I cried out with emotion: “O Nature! O my mother! I am here under your sole protection. Here there is no cunning and rascally man to thrust himself between us.” (12.594)
Fans of the great Headlong Hall, Thomas Love Peacock’s spoof on 18th Century intellectualism, will recognize Rousseau as the original of Mr. Escot the Deteriorationist, and at times he is nearly as comical.
Rousseau ended in real paranoia, yet another victim of the conspiracy-theory lobe of the human brain, which seems to become enlarged during the course of an egotistical life spent trying to be different from other people. Rousseau could compete with nearly any modern madman in this respect. His Confessions, he hopes, will help foil the worldwide plot to destroy him.
It is from this time that I think I can date the formation of a system, subsequently adopted by those who control my destiny with such rapid and progressive success that it would seem a miracle to anyone who does not know how easily anything can establish itself that favors the malignity of man. (10.456)
Even today, when I can see the most baleful and terrifying plot that has ever been hatched against a man’s memory advancing unchecked towards its execution, I shall die a great deal more peacefully, in the certainty that I am leaving behind me in my writings a witness in my favor that will sooner or later triumph over the machinations of men. (11.525)
Here begins the work of darkness in which I have been entombed for eight years past, without ever having been able, try as I might, to pierce its hideous obscurity. In the abyss of evil in which I am sunk I feel the weight of blows struck at me; I perceive the immediate instrument; but I can neither see the hand which directs it nor the means by which it works. Disgrace and misfortune fall upon me as if of themselves and unseen. When my grief-stricken heart utters groans, I seem like a man complaining for no reason. The authors of my ruin have discovered the unimaginable art of turning the public into the unsuspecting accomplice of their plot, who do not even see its results. In relating, therefore, the events that concern me, the treatment I have suffered and all that has happened to me, I am in no position to trace them to their prime mover or to assume reasons when I state facts. These first causes are all noted down in the three previous books; every interest that was bound up with me and every secret motive is there exposed. But to explain how these various causes combined to bring about the strange events of my life, this I find it impossible to do, even conjecturally. If there are any among my readers generous enough to try and probe these mysteries till they discover the truth, let them carefully re-read the last three books. Then let them apply the information in their possession to each fact that is set down in the book which follows, and go back from intrigue to intrigue and from agent to agent till they come to the prime movers of it all. I am absolutely certain what the result of their researches will be, but I lose myself in the obscure and tortuous windings of the tunnels which lead to it. (12.544)
Let it be said in Rousseau’s defense that he had been noticed by the Princes of Europe, and they were beginning to see him as not merely curious but possibly dangerous. This is the subject of the twelfth book, which becomes interesting again, although Rousseau seems fixated on the idea that the problem was that he had given personal offense to people by the perfect rectitude of his life, rather than that his ideas were revolutionary and challenged the interests of the aristocrats whose company he kept. A warrant was issued for his arrest, although since he escaped openly it is clear that all that was intended was driving him into exile. The Swiss Republics took him in briefly, but they have never been known as bastions of courage, and in the end, afraid that his presence might draw down on them the wrath of one of the powers of Europe, they all one after another ordered him to leave. The Confessions end with Rousseau headed for England, where he lived for some time before being allowed to return to France. Rousseau does not appear to boast of his persecution by tyrants, but whines most piteously that he cannot understand why this is happening to him. This blindness to the larger picture is consistent.
So are the Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a most lively and true portrait of a most ingenious and unhappy man. And like many a portrait, his person is clearly delineated, but the surrounding context is but sketched in, and fades into thick darkness.
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