Rousseau's Confessions (Part III / III FINAL)
She didn't look unto me as beautiful till I beheld her in the clothes of a man...
The Solenoid Notebooks is a series of letters reporting on the capacious field of literary and bibliographical references within Cărtărescu’s big book, translated by Sean Cotter.
Solenoid is a massive, ambitious novel that, in addition to spinning a long conspiratorial narrative, kind of summarizes the last century of modernist aesthetics and art in Europe and their relationship with scientific and mathematical knowledge. We’ll try to elucidate the many literary and historical threads woven into this meganovel, one book at a time.
These letters are meant to accompany my review piece that ran in Asymptote.
Without further ado, the finale to the readalong of Rousseau’s Confessions.
IX
The two years covered in this book include Rousseau’s move to the Hermitage in Montmorency, a charming forested area where his landlady Madam d’Epinay is also his patron, and his breakup with the Encyclopédistes.
Rousseau doesn’t like d’Epinay at all:
She was very thin, very pale, and had a bosom which resembled the back of her hand. This defect alone would have been sufficient to moderate my most ardent desires; my heart never could distinguish a woman in a person who had it; and besides other causes useless to mention, always made me forget the sex of this lady.
It’s also the book where he begins his crush on d’Epinay’s cousin Sophia d’Houdetot.
It begins when he sees her stuck in a muddy road:
This visit had something of the appearance of the beginning of a romance. She lost her way. Her coachman, quitting the road, which turned to the right, attempted to cross straight over from the mill of Clairvaux to the Hermitage: her carriage stuck in a quagmire in the bottom of the valley, and she got out and walked the rest of the road. Her delicate shoes were soon worn through; she sunk into the dirt, her servants had the greatest difficulty in extricating her, and she at length arrived at the Hermitage in boots, making the place resound with her laughter, in which I most heartily joined. She had to change everything. Theresa provided her with what was necessary, and I prevailed upon her to forget her dignity and partake of a rustic collation, with which she seemed highly satisfied. It was late, and her stay was short; but the interview was so mirthful that it pleased her, and she seemed disposed to return.
And return she does, on horseback, and in men’s clothing. “Although I am not very fond of this kind of masquerade, I was struck with the romantic appearance she made, and, for once, it was with love.”
This infatuation animates Rousseau to write Julie (called Eloisa in this translation), which is apparently a synthesis of his relationships to Sophia and “Mamma” de Warens.
But after a short while, word gets out. Someone has done them “ill offices.” d’Epinay and d’Holbach exchange witty in-jokes about him, eyes sparkling with “malicious joy.” This is the beginning of the conspiracism that takes over the work’s atmosphere in this final leg.
Sophia for her part says to Rousseau she has been honest about her relationship to her husband, “except for your extravagant passion, of which I hoped to cure you; and which he imputes to me as a crime.”
“I was sensible of the shame of feeling myself humbled by the sentiment of my fault, in presence of a young woman of whose just reproaches I approved, and to whom I ought to have been a mentor,” Rousseau writes. But his feelings give over to “rage against the vile informers, who had seen nothing but the evil of a criminal but involuntary sentiment, without believing or even imagining the sincere uprightness of heart by which it was counteracted.”
Rousseau starts exchanging notes with d’Epinay announcing his suspicious, and the move begins a sequence that eventually prompts the whole Encyclopédist coterie, including Grimm and Diderot, to consolidate on d’Epinay’s side. (Though Rousseau’s article on Geneva is still published in their project.)
A lot of book 9 is just quoted correspondence, where we can witness his relationship with d’Epinay rapidly degenerate. The situation gets exacerbated when the lady goes on a trip to Geneva and Rousseau declines to accompany her.
At the end of book 9 Rousseau is moving out of the Hermitage, in the winter of 1757. He writes to d’Epinay: “You are right in believing me unhappy; nobody upon earth knows better than yourself to what a degree I must be so. If being deceived in the choice of our friends be a misfortune, it is another not less cruel to recover from so pleasing an error.”
X
Now that Rousseau’s literary career is in full swing, his reminiscences become increasingly granular. Book 10 only covers three years, from 1758 to the end of 1760. On the flipside, this material is easier to synopsize than ever.
Rousseau finishes both his Letter to d’Alembert, published in the fall of 1758, and Julie. The publication of the former includes an announcement that Rousseau’s and Diderot’s friendship has ended. Diderot had spilled the beans to Sophia’s husband in the spring.
“When I broke with Diderot, whom I thought less ill-natured than weak and indiscreet, I still always preserved for his person an attachment, an esteem even, and a respect for our ancient friendship, which I know was for a long time as sincere on his part as on mine,” Rousseau writes. “The case was quite different with Grimm; a man false by nature, who never loved me, who is not even capable of friendship, and a person who, without the least subject of complaint, and solely to satisfy his gloomy jealousy, became, under the mask of friendship, my most cruel calumniator. This man is to me a cipher; the other will always be my old friend.”
The following year Rousseau gets acquainted with the de Luxembourgs, and stays at a little house they have while his Mont-Louis residence receives some needed repairs. It’s here that, on the occasion of giving Madam de Luxembourg’s granddaughter Mademoiselle de Boufflers a kiss on the cheek, on Luxembourg’s orders, he handles himself awkwardly. “Instead of saying flattering things to her, as any other person would have done, I remained silent and disconcerted, and I know not which of the two, the little girl or myself, was most ashamed.”
Later, when the two of them are alone, he proposes to try it again. Then he reads a passage from his own work in progress Emile, “in which I justly censure that which I had done…”:
How was I enraged at my incredible stupidity, which has frequently given me the appearance of guilt when I was nothing more than a fool and embarrassed! A stupidity, which in a man known to be endowed with some wit, is considered as a false excuse. …Whence comes it that even a child can intimidate a man, whom the power of kings has never inspired with fear? What is to be done? How, without presence of mind, am I to act? If I strive to speak to the persons I meet, I certainly say some stupid thing to them; if I remain silent, I am a misanthrope, an unsociable animal, a bear. Total imbecility would have been more favorable to me; but the talents which I have failed to improve in the world have become the instruments of my destruction, and of that of the talents I possessed.
XI
Rousseau’s Juliet goes to print, to much anticipation from readers across England and continental Europe. Emile and Social Contract come out in this period as well.
Emile didn’t come out without difficulty, and on this occasion Rousseau began to suspect a Jesuit conspiracy against him.
My imagination instantly unveiled to me the mystery of iniquity; I saw the whole progress of it as clearly as if it had been revealed to me. I figured to myself that the Jesuits, furious on account of the contemptuous manner in which I had spoken of colleges, were in possession of my work; that it was they who had delayed the publication; that, informed by their friend Guerin of my situation, and foreseeing my approaching dissolution, of which I myself had no manner of doubt, they wished to delay the appearance of the work until after that event, with an intention to curtail and mutilate it, and in favor of their own views, to attribute to me sentiments not my own. The number of facts and circumstances which occurred to my mind, in confirmation of this silly proposition, and gave it an appearance of truth supported by evidence and demonstration, is astonishing.
The controversy generated by Emile meanwhile prompts a warrant from the French parliament for Rousseau’s arrest.
But there is still a moment of respite for Jean Jacques, sipping wine from the bottle through a rye stalk, and discoursing about his nocturnal reading habits:
I had since that time contracted a habit of reading every night in my bed, until I found my eyes begin to grow heavy. I then extinguished my wax taper, and endeavored to slumber for a few moments, which were in general very short. The book I commonly read at night was the Bible, which, in this manner I read five or six times from the beginning to the end.
(Rousseau converted from Catholicism back to Calvinism to regain his Genevan citizenship, and broke with the Encyclopedistes over their militant materialism and atheism, among other things.)
To flee the authorities, Rousseau picks up and leaves for Switzerland.
XII
Unlike the previous few books, this the final one spans a whole decade. It picks up with Rousseau hiding out in Yverdon, a Swiss municipality some ways north of Lausanne and Geneva. In the latter city, people are publicly burning copies of Emile and Social Contract. Soon another edict for his arrest is issued.
“These two decrees were the signal for the cry of malediction, raised against me with unexampled fury in every part of Europe,” Rousseau writes. “All the gazettes, journals and pamphlets, rang the alarm-bell. The French especially, that mild, generous, and polished people, who so much pique themselves upon their attention and proper condescension to the unfortunate, instantly forgetting their favorite virtues, signalized themselves by the number and violence of the outrages with which, while each seemed to strive who should afflict me most, they overwhelmed me. I was impious, an atheist, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf.”
Rousseau leaves Yverdon, but not Switzerland—he relocates a little further north, in Môtiers, also renouncing his Genevan citizenship. “After having, during a whole year, vainly expected that some one would remonstrate against an illegal proceeding, and seeing myself abandoned by my fellow-citizens, I determined to renounce my ungrateful country in which I never had lived, from which I had not received either inheritance or services, and by which, in return for the honor I had endeavored to do it, I saw myself so unworthily treated by unanimous consent, since they, who should have spoken, had remained silent.”
So far, Rousseau has only suffered public invective and a lot of gossip, but the fall of 1765, he gets stoned in his home—this is a bad thing in the 18th century.
At midnight I heard a great noise in the gallery which ran along the back part of the house. A shower of stones thrown against the window and the door which opened to the gallery fell into it with so much noise and violence, that my dog, which usually slept there, and had begun to bark, ceased from fright, and ran into a corner gnawing and scratching the planks to endeavor to make his escape. I immediately rose, and was preparing to go from my chamber into the kitchen, when a stone thrown by a vigorous arm crossed the latter, after having broken the window, forced open the door of my chamber, and fell at my feet, so that had I been a moment sooner upon the floor I should have had the stone against my stomach. I judged the noise had been made to bring me to the door, and the stone thrown to receive me as I went out. I ran into the kitchen, where I found Theresa, who also had risen, and was tremblingly making her way to me as fast as she could. We placed ourselves against the wall out of the direction of the window to avoid the stones, and deliberate upon what was best to be done; for going out to call assistance was the certain means of getting ourselves knocked on the head. Fortunately the maid-servant of an old man who lodged under me was waked by the noise, and got up and ran to call the chatelain, whose house was next to mine. He jumped from his bed, put on his robe de chambre, and instantly came to me with the guard, which, on account of the fair, went the round that night, and was just at hand. The chatelain was so alarmed at the sight of the effects of what had happened that he turned pale and on seeing the stones in the gallery, exclaimed, “Good God! here is a quarry!” On examining below stairs, a door of a little court was found to have been forced, and there was an appearance of an attempt having been made to get into the house by the gallery.
Rousseau moves yet again, west to St. Peter’s Island, in Lake Biel, on the outskirts of Bern. These two months are apparently the happiest of his life.
However, these years are marked by some devastating losses. First, M. de Luxembourg, who had been a generous benefactor during these late trials. Then “Mamma” de Warens, who passed away in July 1762. She was
the best of women and mothers, who, already weighed down with years, and overburthened with infirmities and misery, quitted this vale of tears for the abode of the blessed, where the amiable remembrance of the good we have done here below is the eternal reward of our benevolence. Go, gentle and beneficent shade, to those of Fenelon, Bernex, Catinat, and others, who in a more humble state have, like them, opened their hearts to pure charity; go and taste of the fruit of your own benevolence, and prepare for your son the place he hopes to fill by your side.
Also in this island interlude are some pages reflecting on the dynamism of one’s inner life, and some thoughts in praise of “indolence,” particularly the productive indolence of solitude, as opposed to the “forced” indolence of society.
The indolence I love is not that of a lazy fellow who sits with his arms across in total inaction, and thinks no more than he acts, but that of a child which is incessantly in motion doing nothing, and that of a dotard who wanders from his subject. I love to amuse myself with trifles, by beginning a hundred things and never finishing one of them, by going or coming as I take either into my head, by changing my project at every instant, by following a fly through all its windings, in wishing to overturn a rock to see what is under it, by undertaking with ardor the work of ten years, and abandoning it without regret at the end of ten minutes; finally, in musing from morning until night without order or coherence, and in following in everything the caprice of a moment.
Rousseau gets kicked out of St. Peter’s Island, and is in the process of moving to Berlin when he instead heads for England. And here the Confessions stop.
“… I wished my persecutors to condemn me to perpetual imprisonment rather than oblige me incessantly to wander upon the earth, by successively expelling me from the asylums of which I should make choice…”
Damn, what a journey, one that I found mysteriously compelling for all its dryness. It was so long I practically lost sight of the context of picking the book up in the first place, for the Solenoid notebooks. Rousseau was mentioned in that novel by the narrator, as being among the subjects of his earliest notebooks, which also had notes on Thaïs by Anatole France and Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann.
The consonances between the two texts are manifold, I think: the length, the cadence of the sentences filled with details, the limpid switchbacks between incident and reflection, and the first-person drive—almost inverse-voyeuristic—to, well, “confess,” spill it all out and win the audience over with the raw sincerity of the performance.
But if Rousseau in the 18th century had been crystalizing ideas that would animate the bourgeois-democratic revolution in France, Solenoid, which takes place from the 1950s to the 80s in Bucharest, Romania, is summarizing a historical area of decay, degeneration, and—to use a loaded word—decadence, in the sense of general social decline. In terms of theme and tenor, then, Solenoid stands with the petty-bourgeois despair of the underground man than Rousseau’s optimism about humankind’s intrinsic goodness (against the Original Sin doctrine; all of nature in Rousseau’s world is spontaneously good; vices are external influences, but virtue also seems to be an externally based inspiration).
PART III