Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics) Read online

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Editions

  Œuvres complètes, ed. B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–95), 5 vols. The Reveries and other autobiographical works are in volume 1.

  Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. P. Malandain (Paris: Presses Pocket, 1991).

  Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. E. Leborgne (Paris: Flammarion, 1997).

  Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. M. Crogiez (Paris: Librairie générale française, 2001).

  Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. R. Morrissey (Fasano: Schena, 2003).

  Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, ed. F. S. Eigeldinger (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2010).

  Biography

  Cranston, M., Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 ( London: Allen Lane, 1983).

  —— The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754–1762 (London: Allen Lane, 1991).

  ——The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity (London: Allen Lane, 1997).

  Critical Works

  Broome, J. H., Rousseau: A Study of his Thought (London: Edward Arnold, 1963).

  Davis, M., The Autobiography of Philosophy: Rousseau’s ‘The Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999).

  Dent, N. J. H., Rousseau (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005).

  Friedlander, E., J.-J. Rousseau: An Afterlife of Words (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).

  Grimsley, R., Rousseau and the Religious Quest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968).

  ——Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Study in Self-Awareness, 2nd edn. (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1969).

  McFarland, T., Romanticism and the Heritage of Rousseau (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

  O’Hagan, T., Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1999).

  O’Neal, J. C. (ed.), The Nature of Rousseau’s ‘Rêveries’: Physical, Human, Aesthetic (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008).

  ——and Mostefai, O. (eds.), Approaches to Teaching Rousseau’s ‘Confessions’ and ‘Reveries of the Solitary Walker’ (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2003).

  Shklar, J., Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

  Starobinski, J., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

  Williams, D., Rousseau, ‘Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire’ (London: Grant and Cutler, 1984).

  Wokler, R., Rousseau: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

  Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics

  De Quincey, Thomas, The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, ed. Grevel Lindop.

  Dostoevsky, Fyodor, Notes from the Underground, trans. Jane Kentish, ed. Malcolm Jones.

  Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Confessions, trans. Angela Scholar, ed. Patrick Coleman.

  —— Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, trans. Franklin Philip, ed. Patrick Coleman.

  —— The Social Contract, ed. and trans. Christopher Betts.

  Shelley, Percy Bysshe, The Major Works, ed. Zachary Leader and Michael O’Neill.

  Staël, Madame de, Corinne, trans. Sylvia Raphael, ed. John Isbell.

  Thoreau, Henry David, Walden, ed. Stephen Allen Fender.

  Wollstonecraft, Mary, Letters written in Sweden, Norway and Denmark, ed. Tone Brekke and John Mee.

  Wordsworth, William, The Major Works, ed. Stephen Gill.

  A CHRONOLOGY OF

  JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

  1712

  Birth in Geneva, 28 June, of Jean-Jacques, second son of Isaac Rousseau, a clockmaker, and his wife Suzanne Bernard; she dies on 7 July. He is brought up mainly by his father.

  1728

  Having been apprenticed to an engraver since 1725, he leaves Geneva; he is briefly a convert to Catholicism in Turin and so forfeits Genevan citizenship.

  1729

  At Annecy, he is taken in by Mme de Warens, through whom he had been converted; he earns his living through various musical, secretarial, and teaching jobs.

  1735–8

  Liaison with Mme de Warens at her house Les Charmettes.

  1742

  Largely self-taught, he goes to Paris intending to make a career as a musician and composer.

  1743–4

  Post at French Embassy in Venice under Comte de Montaigu; his first direct contact with political life.

  1745

  Return to Paris; his opera The Gallant Muses (Les Muses galantes) is performed; he meets Thérèse Levasseur who is to be his permanent companion and the mother of his five children, all left at the Paris orphanage; he is friendly with Diderot and the philosopher Condillac; secretarial and musical work, including articles on music for Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopaedia (Encyclopédie).

  1748

  Publication of Montesquieu’s great work on political theory and other subjects, The Spirit of Laws (De l’Esprit des lois), which is to be an important influence on Rousseau’s thought in The Social Contract.

  1750

  Rousseau gains prize with essay for Dijon Academy competition, Whether the Restoration of the Sciences and the Arts has Assisted in the Purification of Morals (Si le rétablissement des sciences et des arts a contribué à épurer les mœurs), his First Discourse.

  1752

  Success of his opera The Village Soothsayer (Le Devin du village).

  1754

  The Second Discourse, also for the Academy of Dijon: On the Origin and Foundations of Inequality (Sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité), dedicated to the city of Geneva; Rousseau makes public return to Geneva and Calvinism.

  1755

  Publication of the Second Discourse, and of Volume V of the Encyclopaedia, containing Rousseau’s article on Political Economy (Économie politique). He studies the political writings of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre and begins an all-embracing political work later abandoned.

  1757–8

  Nebulous love affair with Sophie d’Houdetot; quarrel involving her but mainly with Diderot and other philosophe friends.

  1758

  Publication of Letter to d’Alembert on Theatre (Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles), which attacks a plan for a theatre at Geneva, desired by Voltaire among others; preparation of The Social Contract and other works.

  1761

  Publication of Julie, or the New Héloï se (Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloï se), one of the century’s best-selling novels; in July, writes to publisher Rey to say that his treatise on politics is ready.

  1762

  April: publication of The Social Contract (Du Contrat social) by Rey in Amsterdam; May: publication of Émile, or On Education (Émile ou De l’éducation) by Duchesne, in Holland and secretly in France. Both books are condemned by the authorities in Paris and Geneva. Rousseau leaves France to take refuge in Yverdon, in Bernese territory, and then (when expelled by the Bern government), in Neuchâtel, governed by the King of Prussia.

  1763

  Publication of the Letter to Christophe de Beaumont (Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont), the Archbishop of Paris, answering the latter’s criticisms of the religious ideas in Émile. Rousseau gives up Genevan citizenship. J.-R. Tronchin attacks The Social Contract in his Letters Written from the Country (Lettres écrites de la campagne).

  1764

  Rousseau replies to Tronchin in the Letters written from the Mountain (Lettres écrites de la montagne), also criticizing Genevan institutions. His cause is taken up by the ‘Représentants’ party in Geneva. He undertakes his Project for a Constitution for Corsica (Projet d’une constitution pour la Corse); decides to write his Confessions.

  1765

  After difficulties with the Swiss religious authorities and a stone-throwing incident (the ‘lapidation de Môtiers’), he returns to Bernese territory, only to be expelled again; he goes to Berlin and Paris, where he is much visited. Voltaire publishes his Idées rép
ublicaines, in large part a critique of The Social Contract.

  1766

  Rousseau leaves for England at the invitation of David Hume and lives for a while at Wootton in Staffordshire.

  1767

  After quarrelling with Hume he returns to France incognito to live for three years in the south-east.

  1770

  He returns to Paris and copies music for a living.

  1771

  He writes the Considerations on the Government of Poland (Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne) at the invitation of a Polish nobleman, Wielhorski; gives readings of the Confessions.

  1778

  Having written mainly personal works (Dialogues; Reveries of the Solitary Walker) in his last years, he dies on 2 July at Ermenonville, north of Paris, where he is buried on a lake island.

  1782–9

  Rousseau’s autobiographical works are published posthumously. His late political writings will only be fully published in the nineteenth century.

  1794

  Rousseau’s remains are transported to the Panthéon.

  REVERIES OF THE

  SOLITARY WALKER

  FIRST WALK

  So here I am, all alone on this earth, with no brother, neighbour, or friend, and no company but my own. The most sociable and loving of human beings has by common consent been banished by the rest of society. In the refinement of their hatred they have continued to seek out the cruellest forms of torture for my sensitive soul, and they have brutally severed all the ties which bound me to them. I would have loved my fellow men in spite of themselves. Only by ceasing to be men have they succeeded in losing my affection for them. So now they are strangers, persons unknown who mean nothing to me since that is what they wanted. But what about me, cut off from them and from everything else, what am I? This is what remains for me to find out now. Unfortunately this enquiry must be preceded by a brief examination of my current situation. This is something that I must necessarily address first if I am to make the transition from them to me.

  I have been in this strange situation for fifteen years or more,* and it still seems as if I must be dreaming. I still imagine that I must be suffering from indigestion, that I must be sleeping badly, and that I am going to wake up and find myself relieved of my pain and back amongst my friends again. Yes, it must be, I must without realizing it have made the leap from being awake to being asleep, or rather from being alive to being dead. Wrenched somehow out of the normal order of things, I have been thrown into an incomprehensible chaos in which I can make out nothing at all, and the more I think about my current situation, the less I understand where I am.

  Ah, but how could I have foreseen the fate which awaited me? And how can I make sense of it today, just as I am living through it? Could I ever in my right mind have thought that one day I, the same man that I was then and the same man that I still am now, would appear and be thought of, without the shadow of a doubt, as a monster, a poisoner, and a murderer, that I would become an abomination to the human race and the plaything of the rabble, that the only greeting that passers-by would offer would be to spit on me, and that a whole generation would by common consent delight in burying me alive? When this strange transformation came about, I was taken unawares and was initially thrown into confusion. My distress and indignation plunged me into a frenzy which has taken no less than ten years to subside,* during which time, as I reeled from one error to another, from one mistake to another and from one foolish act to another, my reckless behaviour gave those who were responsible for my fate all the ammunition that they have so skilfully used to determine it once and for all.

  For a long time I put up a fight that was as fierce as it was futile. By fighting without cunning, without skill, without deceit, without caution, frankly, openly, impatiently, and angrily, I managed simply to ensnare myself further and constantly gave them new holds over me which they were careful to exploit. Finally realizing that all my efforts were useless and that I was tormenting myself to no avail whatsoever, I took the only remaining course of action left open to me, which was to accept my fate and stop struggling against the inevitable. I have found in this resignation the cure for all my ills through the peace of mind that it gives me and which was incompatible with continually pursuing a struggle that was as agonizing as it was ineffectual.

  Another thing has contributed to this peace of mind. In all the refinement of their hatred, my persecutors omitted one technique that they had forgotten about in their animosity, namely to increase by carefully calculated degrees the effects of their hatred so that they could constantly maintain and renew my suffering by always inflicting some new torment upon me. If they had been clever enough to leave me some glimmer of hope, they would still have me in their clutches. They could still have me as their plaything by luring me into some trap and then wounding me deeply by tormenting me once again with my dashed hopes. But they exhausted all their resources in advance: by leaving me with nothing, they have robbed themselves of everything. They have heaped upon me insults, disparagement, mockery, and shame, but these are no more capable of being increased than of being relieved; they are as incapable of making them any worse as I am of escaping them. They were so eager to reduce me to my most wretched state that the whole of human power, even abetted by all the tricks of hell, could not now add to my wretchedness any further. Physical pain itself, rather than add to my suffering, would actually distract from it. By making me scream out loud, pain would perhaps spare my groans, and the laceration of my body would deflect that of my heart.

  What do I have to fear from them now that everything is over? Since they can no longer make things any worse for me, they can no longer frighten me. Anxiety and terror are ills from which they have delivered me for ever: this is still a relief to me. Real ills have little hold over me; I deal easily with those that I actually experience, but not with those that I fear. My fevered imagination adds them together, turns them over and over, draws them out and increases them. The expectation of them tortures me a hundred times more than their actual presence, and the threat of them is far worse than the blow itself. As soon as they happen, the experience of them strips them of their imagined aura and cuts them down to their true size. I then find them much less significant than I had pictured them, and even in the midst of my suffering I still feel relieved. In this state, freed from all further fear and released from the anxiety of hope, habit alone will be sufficient to make more bearable day by day a situation that nothing can worsen, and as my awareness of it is dulled with time, they have no further means of reviving it. This is the good that my persecutors have done me by so immoderately exhausting all the shafts of their hatred with such lack of restraint. They have deprived themselves of their control over me, and from now on I can treat them with derision.

  It is still less than two months since a total calm returned to my heart. For a long time I had not been afraid of anything, but I still hoped, and this hope, now cherished, now frustrated, allowed a thousand different passions to trouble me constantly. An event as sad as it was unforeseen has finally wiped out from my heart this last glimmer of hope and has shown me that my earthly fate is irrevocably fixed for evermore.* Since then I have resigned myself completely and have found peace again.

  As soon as I began to realize the full scope of the conspiracy, I gave up all idea of restoring myself to favour in the eye of the public; indeed any such favour, being unreciprocated, would now be quite useless to me. However men tried, they would no longer find in me the same person. Given the disdain that they have inspired in me, I would find any dealings with them dull and even burdensome, and I am a hundred times happier on my own than I could ever be living with them. They have torn from my heart all the pleasures of society. These pleasures could never spring up again at my age; it is too late. From now on they can do me good or ill, everything to do with them is indifferent to me; and whatever they may do, my contemporaries will never mean anything to me.

  But I was still counting on th
e future, and I hoped that a better generation, more closely scrutinizing both the judgements made about me by the present one and its conduct towards me, would easily recognize the lies of those who control it and would finally see me as I am. It is this hope that made me write my Dialogues and that made me think of a thousand foolish ways of trying to ensure that they survive for posterity.* This hope, though distant, meant that my soul was just as restless as it was when I was still trying to discover one true heart in the present century, and my hopes, which I had vainly discarded, still made me the plaything of the people of today. I have explained in my Dialogues what the basis of this hope was. I was wrong. Fortunately I realized this just in time so that I was able to enjoy before my final hour came a period of complete peace and absolute rest. This period began at the time of which I am speaking, and I have reason to believe that it will continue uninterrupted.

  Hardly a day goes by without further reflection confirming to me just how wrong I was to count on the public ever changing its mind about me, even at some future date, since it is led in its view of me by guides who constantly succeed one another in the bodies which have taken against me. Individuals may die, but these collective organizations never die. The same passions thrive in them, and their fervent hatred, as immortal as the Devil who inspires it, remains as active as ever. When all my individual enemies are dead, the doctors* and the Oratorians* will still be alive, and even if these two groups were my only persecutors, I can be sure that they will no more leave my memory in peace after my death than they leave me in peace while I am still alive. Perhaps with the passing of time the doctors, whom I really have offended, might be appeased, but the Oratorians, whom I loved, whom I respected, in whom I had complete trust and whom I have never offended, the Oratorians, men of the Church and semi-monks, will remain forever implacable: their own iniquity makes of me a criminal whom their self-love will never forgive, and the public, whose animosity they will always carefully maintain and renew, will be no more placated than they are.