JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU
The Confessions

In the last few days I have been reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “The Confessions” book. I don’t think I have read any other book, apart from a couple, which interested me this much. I will write a very brief description of this great book in here. It amazed me to see that this great man opens his heart to his readers and shares the most private and most intimate moments of his life with them. The more I read, the more I fell in love with him. His honesty throughout the book attracts his readers consciously and unconsciously towards his character and personality, specially when he says to his reader that “ … and I will make this confession as frankly as the rest.” Or a few times he says that maybe his readers hate him for what he had done but he would still tell the story as it was.

One reads it and say to oneself, would I ever be this frank if I wanted to write my confessions!!? Well here comes Rousseau’s answer: he says in the first page of his book that: “ let them hear my confessions, lament for my unworthiness, and blush for my imperfections. Then let each of them in turn reveal, with the same frankness, the secrets of his heart at the foot of the Thorne, and say, if he dare, “ I was better than that man!” “ Maybe after we read the book confess to ourselves and not any other soul that he has been so much better than we are!

He even reveals his very intimate thoughts, the ones he did not put into practice. What a great man and what a great book.

The confessions includes twelve books of each different time lines of his life, as below:

1712 June 12, born in Geneva to a watchmaker and the daughter of a minister who died after giving birth to him. His father loved his wife very much. When she died Rousseau wrote that, in spite of him thinking that his father might hate or blame him for his wife’s death, his father loved him very much and saw his wife in Rousseau.

1722 His father is exiled from Geneva after a fight and moves to Lyons. Rousseau stays in Geneva in the charge of his mother's relations.

1724 Apprenticed to his uncle a lawyer who finds him incapable and sends him back.

1725 Apprenticed to an engraver.

1728 Runs away from his apprenticeship and wanders about Italy France and Switzerland. Meets Madame de Warens after converting to Catholicism in Turin.

1731 Lives in Chambery protected by the widow Madame de Warens.

1733 Madam de Warens becomes his mistress. Rousseau writes a great deal about Madam de Warens and his pure and great love to her. Rousseau calls her “mummy” and she calls her ‘ my child”. He writes that “one of the proofs of the excellent character of this admirable woman is, that all those who loved her loved one another.” Then he continues “ let my readers pause a moment at this panegyric, and if they can think of any other woman of whom they can say the same, I advise them to attach themselves to her, if they value their repose.”

1738 Becomes ill and goes to Montpellier which facilitates a liason with Madame de Larange. Loses his relationship to Madam de Warens. During this illness his hearing was affected and he became hard of hearing for the rest of his life.

1740 Tutors at Lyon.

1741 Goes to Paris after discovering he neither likes teaching nor is very good at it.

1742 Unsuccessfully presents a new system of music to the Academy of Sciences. Becomes secretary to the ambassador to Venice, M. de Montaigu.

1743 Meets Therese le Vasseur who will become his mistress, bearing him five children, and whom he marries near the end of his life.

1745 Returns to Paris. Collaborates on the Encyclopedia.

1751 Publishes Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.

1752 Production of his opera the Village Soothsayer.

1754 Returns to Geneva and abjures his abjuration of the Protestant religion.

1755 Publishes Discourse on Inequality.

1756 April moves back to Paris in a cottage at Montmorency. Writes Heloise.

1757 Leaves Montmorency for nearby Montlouis after a quarrel with Diderot.

1758 Publication of Letter to d'Alembert and final rupture in his relations with Diderot.

1761 Publication of Heloise.

1762 Publication of Emile and The Social Contract which forces him to leave France to avoid arrest. Lives briefly in Neuchatel.

1763 Renounces citizenship of Geneva.

1765 Driven from Motiers to the Island of Saint-Pierre.

1766 David Hume offers him asylum in England. Begins work on Confessions.

1767 Returns to live in various provinces of France.

1770 Returns to live in Paris. Writes many of his most important works while in Paris over the next eight years including his Dialogues and Reveries.

1778 Moves to Ermenonville where he dies suddenly on July 2.

It is good to know that Rousseau a "philosopher of the Enlightenment whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution, the development of socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. Rousseau also made important contributions to music both as a theorist and as a composer. With his Confessions and other writings, he practically invented modern autobiography and encouraged a new focus on the development of subjectivity that would bear fruit in the work of thinkers as diverse as Hegel and Freud. His novel Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse was one of the best-selling fictional works of the eighteenth century and was important to the development of romanticism."

I hope that, when you read the book, enjoy it as much as I did.

"Modesty is the lowest of the virtues, and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself is justly overvalued by others". Hazlitt, William