Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712, Geneva — July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, near Paris) — French writer, thinker, composer. He developed a direct form of government of the people by the state (direct democracy), which is still used today, for example in Switzerland.

The baroque rationalism of the XNUMXth century was replaced by romanticism, the main feature of which was a new cultural stream, the source of which was feeling. It has transformed a cultured person, his attitude towards himself, towards people, towards nature and towards culture. The most original and influential representative and conductor of this trend was Rousseau. It put him in antagonism to the representatives of rationalism — the philosophers of the XNUMXth century. But since Rousseau adopted rationalism in politics and introduced feeling and passion into it, he became the main forerunner of that radical upheaval that ended the XNUMXth century. He was adapted to this role by his upbringing, living conditions, temperament, tastes, properties and talents.

Rousseau was also a musicologist, composer and botanist.

Rousseau’s life

Detstvo

A Frenchman by birth, Rousseau was a native of Protestant Geneva, which preserved until the 1672th century. its strictly Calvinistic and municipal spirit. At birth, he lost his mother. His father, Isaac Rousseau (1747–XNUMX), a watchmaker and dance teacher, was deeply distressed by the loss of his wife. Jean-Jacques was loved by the child in the family, for seven years he had been reading with his father until dawn «Astrea» and the biographies of Plutarch; imagining himself an ancient hero, he burned his hand over the brazier.

Due to an armed attack on a fellow citizen, Isaac was forced to flee to a neighboring canton and entered into a second marriage there. Jean-Jacques, left in Geneva, was apprenticed to a notary, then to an engraver. He continued to read books while working, was subjected to harsh treatment; as he points out in his book «Confessions», he is used to lying, pretending, stealing. Leaving the city on Sundays, he returned more than once when the gates were already locked, and he had to spend the night in the open. At the age of 16, on March 14, 1728, he decided to leave the city.

Maturity

Outside the gates of Geneva began the Catholic Savoy; the priest of a neighboring village invited him to accept Catholicism and gave him a letter in Annecy, to Madame de Varane (Warens). This was a young woman from a wealthy family in the canton of Vaud, who upset her fortune with industrial enterprises, left her husband and moved to Savoy. For the adoption of Catholicism, she received an allowance from the king.

Madame de Varane sent Rousseau to a convent in Turin, where proselytes were trained. After four months, the conversion was completed and Rousseau was released into the street.

Work as a footman

He entered as a lackey in an aristocratic house, where he was treated with participation; the count’s son, the abbot, began to teach him Italian and read Virgil with him. Having met with a rogue from Geneva, Rousseau left Turin with him, without thanking his benefactor.

He reappeared in Annecy to Madame de Varane, who left him with her and became his «mother». She taught him to write correctly, to speak the language of educated people and, as far as he was susceptible to this, to behave in a secular manner. But «mother» was only 30 years old; she was completely devoid of moral principles and in this respect had the most harmful influence on Rousseau. Concerned about his future, she placed him in a seminary, and then apprenticed him to an organist, whom he soon abandoned and returned to Annecy, from where Madame de Varane left, meanwhile, for Paris.

For more than 2 years, Rousseau wandered around Switzerland, undergoing every need: once he was even in Paris, which he did not like. He made his crossings on foot, spending the night in the open, but he was not burdened by this while enjoying nature. In the spring of 1732, Rousseau again became the guest of Madame de Varane; his place was taken by the young Swiss Ana, which did not prevent Rousseau from remaining a member of the friendly trio.

In his «Confessions» he described his then love with the most passionate colors. After Anet’s death, he remained alone with Madame de Varane until 1737, when she sent him to Montpellier for treatment. Upon his return, he found his benefactor near the city of Chambéry, where she rented a farm in the town of «Charmettes»; her new «factotum» was the young Swiss Wincinried. Rousseau called him brother and again took refuge with «mother».

Working as a home tutor

But his happiness was no longer so serene; he yearned, retired, and the first signs of misanthropy began to appear in him. He sought solace in nature: he got up with the dawn, worked in the garden, gathered fruits, followed doves and bees. So two years passed: Rousseau was superfluous in the new trio and had to take care of earnings. He entered in 1740 as a home tutor to the Mably family (the writer’s brother), who lived in Lyon. But he was very ill-suited for this role; he did not know how to behave either with students or with adults, he secretly took wine to his room, made “eyes” to the hostess of the house. He had to leave.

After an unsuccessful attempt to return to the Charmettes, Rousseau went to Paris to present to the academy the system he had invented to designate notes by numbers; She was not accepted despiteDiscourse on contemporary music”, written by Rousseau in her defense.

Working as a house secretary

Rousseau then received a position as house secretary to Count Montagu, the French envoy in Venice. The envoy looked at him like a servant, Rousseau imagined himself a diplomat and began to put on airs; he subsequently wrote that he had saved the kingdom of Naples at that time. The messenger kicked him out of the house without paying his salary.

Rousseau returned to Paris and filed a complaint against Montagu, which was successful.

He managed to stage the opera he wroteThe Gallant Muses«in the home theater, but she did not get on the royal stage.

Wife and kids

Without a livelihood, Rousseau entered into an affair with the maid of the hotel in which he lived, Teresa Levasseur, a young peasant woman, ugly, illiterate, limited — she could not learn to know what time it was — and very vulgar. He admitted that he never had the slightest love for her, but married her twenty years later.

Together with her, he had to keep her parents and their relatives. He had 5 children, all of whom were sent to an orphanage. Rousseau justified himself by saying that he did not have the means to feed them, that they would not allow him to study in peace, and that he preferred to make peasants out of them than adventurers, as he himself was.

Acquaintance with encyclopedists

Having received the position of secretary from the farmer Frankel and his mother-in-law, Rousseau became a household man in a circle to which the famous Madame d’Epinay, her friend Grimm and Diderot belonged. Rousseau often visited them, staged comedies, enchanted them with his naive, albeit fantasy-colored, stories from his life. He was forgiven for his tactlessness (for example, he began by writing a letter to Frankel’s mother-in-law with a declaration of love).

In the summer of 1749, Rousseau went to visit Diderot, who was imprisoned in the Château de Vincennes; on the way, he opened a newspaper and read an announcement from the Dijon Academy for a prize on the topic “Did the revival of sciences and arts contribute to the purification of morals.” A sudden thought struck Rousseau; the impression was so strong that, according to his description, he lay in some kind of intoxication under a tree for half an hour; when he came to, his vest was wet with tears. The thought that dawned on Rousseau contains the whole essence of his worldview: «enlightenment is harmful and culture itself is a lie and a crime.»

Rousseau’s response was awarded a prize; the entire enlightened and refined society applauded its accuser. For him, a decade of the most fruitful activity and uninterrupted triumph has come. Two years later, his operetta «The Village Diviner«was staged on the court stage. Louis XV hummed his arias; they wanted to introduce him to the king, but Rousseau shied away from the honor that could create a secure position for him.

He himself believed in his paradox, or, in any case, was carried away by it and took the appropriate pose. He announced that he wanted to live in accordance with his principle, refused a favorable place at Frankel and became a copyist of music in order to live by the labor of his own hands, left the dandy costume of the then salons, dressed in gu.e.e. cloth, blessing the thief who stole his thin shirts ; refused polite speech, responding with insulting antics to the courtesies of his aristocratic friends. There was a lot of theatricality in all this.

«Savage» became «fashionable man»

He was not given rest; from all sides they brought him notes for correspondence, in order to have a reason to look at him; society ladies visited him and showered him with invitations to lunches and dinners. Teresa and her greedy mother took the opportunity to accept all kinds of gifts from visitors. But this comedy also had a serious side. Rousseau found his calling; he became, as it was aptly said, the «Jeremiah» of the cultural society of his day.

The Dijon Academy again came to his aid, announcing a competition on the topic «On the origin of inequality between people and whether it is in accordance with natural law.» In 1755, Rousseau’s reciprocal «Discourse» on the Republic of Geneva appeared in print.

Considering his answer, Rousseau wandered through the Saint-Germain forest and populated it with the creatures of his imagination. If in the first argument he denounced the sciences and arts for their corrupting influence, then in a new fantastic tale about how people lost their primitive bliss, Rousseau anathematized all culture, everything that was created by history, all the foundations of civil life — the division of labor, property, state, laws.

The rulers of the Republic of Geneva thanked Rousseau with cold politeness for the honor done to them, and secular society again greeted their condemnation with jubilation.

Dacha Hermitage

Madame d’Epinay, to meet the tastes of Rousseau, built for him in the garden of her country estate near Saint-Denis, on the edge of the magnificent forest of Montmorency. In the spring of 1756, Rousseau moved to his «Hermitage»; nightingales sang under his windows, the forest became his «working room», at the same time giving him the opportunity to wander all day long in lonely meditation.

Rousseau was like in paradise, but Teresa and her mother were bored at the dacha and were horrified to learn that Rousseau wanted to stay in the Hermitage for the winter. This matter was settled by friends, but Rousseau fell passionately in love with the Countess d’Oudeteau, the «girlfriend» of Saint-Lambert, who was friendly to Jean-Jacques. Saint-Lambert was on the march; the countess lived alone on a neighboring estate. Rousseau often visited her and, finally, settled with her; he wept at her feet, at the same time reproaching himself for betraying his «friend.» The countess felt sorry for him, listened to his eloquent confessions; confident in her love for another, she allowed intimacy, which brought Rousseau’s passion to madness.

Madame d’Epinay mockingly treated the love of the already middle-aged Rousseau for the thirty-year-old Countess d’Udeto and did not believe in the purity of their relationship. Saint-Lambert was notified by an anonymous letter and returned from the army. Rousseau suspected Madame d’Epinay of disclosure and wrote her an ignoble and insulting letter. She forgave him, but her friends were not so condescending, especially Grimm, who saw Rousseau as a maniac and found it dangerous to indulge such people.

Break with the Encyclopedists

This first collision was soon followed by a complete break with the «philosophers» and with the Encyclopedia circle. Madame d’Epinay, going to Geneva for a conference with the famous physician Tronchin, invited Rousseau to see her off; Rousseau replied that it would be strange for a sick man to accompany a sick woman; when Diderot began to insist on a trip, reproaching him for ingratitude, Rousseau suspected that a “conspiracy” had formed against him, with the aim of disgracing him by appearing in Geneva in the role of a lackey of a tax-farmer, etc.

Rousseau informed the public about the break with Didro, stating in the preface to the “Letter on theatrical spectacles” (1758) that he no longer wanted to know his Aristarchus (Didro).

Leaving the Hermitage, he found a new home with the Duke of Luxembourg, the owner of Montmorency Castle, who provided him with a pavilion in his park. Here Rousseau spent 4 years and wrote «New Eloise» and «Emile», reading them to his kind hosts, whom he at the same time insulted with suspicions that they were not sincerely disposed towards him, and statements that he hated their title and high public position.

Publication of novels

In 1761, the «New Eloise» appeared in print, in the spring of the following year — «Emil», and a few weeks later — «The Social Contract» («Social contract«). During the printing of «Emile» Rousseau was in great fear; he had strong patrons, but he suspected that the bookseller would sell the manuscript to the Jesuits and that his enemies would distort its text. «Emil», however, was published; the storm broke a little later.

The Parliament of Paris, preparing to pronounce a verdict on the Jesuits, considered it necessary to condemn the philosophers as well, and sentenced “Emil”, for religious free-thinking and indecency, to be burned by the hand of the executioner, and his author to imprisonment. The Prince of Conti made it known at Montmorency; the Duchess of Luxembourg ordered to wake Rousseau and persuaded him to leave immediately. Rousseau, however, tarried all day and nearly fell victim to his slowness; on the road, he met bailiffs sent for him, who politely bowed to him.

Forced link

He was not detained anywhere, neither in Paris nor on the way. Rousseau, however, fancied torture and fire; everywhere he sensed a pursuit. When he moved across the Swiss border, he rushed to kiss the land of the land of justice and freedom. The Genevan government, however, followed the example of the Paris Parliament, burned not only Emile, but also the Social Contract, and issued an order to arrest the author; the Bernese government, on whose territory (the present canton of Vaud was then subject to him) Rousseau sought shelter, ordered him to leave his possessions.

Rousseau took refuge in the Principality of Neuchâtel, which belonged to the Prussian king, and settled in the town of Motier. He found new friends here, wandered through the mountains, chatted with the villagers, sang romances to the village girls. He adapted for himself a suit that he called Armenian — a spacious, belted arkhaluk, wide trousers and a fur hat, justifying this choice with hygienic considerations. But his peace of mind was not lasting. It seemed to him that the local peasants were too proud, that they had evil tongues; he began to call Motier «the meanest place of residence.» For a little over three years he lived like this; then new disasters and wanderings came for him.

Back in 1754, having arrived in Geneva and received there with great triumph, he wished to regain the right of Genevan citizenship, lost with the transition to Catholicism, and again joined Calvinism.

At Motiers he asked the local pastor to admit him to communion, but in his polemic with his opponents in the Letters from the Mountain he sneered at the authority of Calvin and accused the Calvinist clergy of departing from the spirit of the Reformation.

Relationship with Voltaire

This was joined by a quarrel with Voltaire and with the government party in Geneva. Rousseau once called Voltaire «touching», but in fact there could not be a greater contrast than between these two writers. The antagonism between them manifested itself in 1755, when Voltaire, on the occasion of the terrible Lisbon earthquake, renounced optimism, and Rousseau stood up for Providence. Fed up with glory and living in luxury, Voltaire, according to Rousseau, sees only grief on earth; he, unknown and poor, finds that everything is fine.

Relations escalated when Rousseau, in his «Letter on Spectacles», strongly rebelled against the introduction of the theater in Geneva. Voltaire, who lived near Geneva and who, through his home theater at Ferne, was developing a taste for dramatic performances among the Genevans, realized that the letter was directed against him and against his influence in Geneva. Knowing no measure in his anger, Voltaire hated Rousseau and either mocked his ideas and writings, or made him look crazy.

The controversy between them especially flared up when Rousseau was banned from entering Geneva, which he attributed to the influence of Voltaire. Finally, Voltaire published an anonymous pamphlet, accusing Rousseau of intending to overthrow the Geneva constitution and Christianity, and claiming that he had killed Mother Teresa.

The peaceful villagers of Motiers were agitated; Rousseau began to be insulted and threatened; the local pastor delivered a sermon against him. One autumn night, a whole rain of stones fell on his house.

In England at the invitation of Hume

Rousseau fled to an island in Lake Biel; the Bernese government ordered him to leave from there. Then he accepted Hume’s invitation and went to him in England. Rousseau was not able to make observations and learn anything; his only interest was English mosses and ferns.

His nervous system was greatly shaken, and against this background his incredulity, scrupulous pride, suspiciousness and fearful imagination grew to the limits of mania. The hospitable but balanced host failed to calm Rousseau, who was sobbing and throwing himself into his arms; a few days later, Hume was already in the eyes of Rousseau a deceiver and a traitor, who treacherously attracted him to England in order to make him a laughingstock of the newspapers.

Hume saw fit to appeal to the court of public opinion; justifying himself, he exposed Rousseau’s weaknesses to Europe. Voltaire rubbed his hands and declared that the British should have imprisoned Rousseau in Bedlam (lunatic asylum).

Rousseau refused the pension that Hume had secured for him from the British government. For him, a new four-year wandering began, marked only by the antics of a mentally ill person. Rousseau stayed in England for another year, but his Teresa, not being able to talk to anyone, got bored and annoyed Rousseau, who imagined that the British wanted to forcibly keep him in their country.

Return to Paris

He went to Paris, where, despite the sentence weighing on him, no one touched him; lived for about a year in the castle of the Duke of Conti and in various places in southern France. From everywhere he fled, tormented by his sick imagination: in the castle of Three, for example, he imagined that the servants suspected him of the poisoner of one of the deceased servants of the duke and demanded an autopsy of the deceased.

From 1770 he settled in Paris, and a more peaceful life began for him; but still he did not know peace of mind, suspecting conspiracies against him or against his writings; he considered the head of the conspiracy the Duke de Choiseul, who ordered the conquest of Corsica, allegedly so that Rousseau would not become the legislator of this island.

In Paris, he completed his «Confessions» (Confessions). Alarmed by a pamphlet published in 1765 (“The feeling of the citizens”), ruthlessly revealing his past, Rousseau wished to justify himself through sincere, popular repentance and severe humiliation of pride. But selfishness took over: confession turned into a passionate and biased self-defense.

Irritated by a quarrel with Hume, Rousseau changed the tone and content of his notes, crossed out places that were unfavorable for himself and began to write an indictment against his enemies along with a confession. Besides, imagination has taken precedence over memory; confession turned into a novel, into an inseparable fabric truth and poetry.

The novel presents two heterogeneous parts: the first is a poetic idyll, an outpouring of a poet in love with nature, an idealization of his love for Madame de Varane; the second part is imbued with malice and suspicion, which did not spare Rousseau’s best and most sincere friends. Another work written in Paris by Rousseau was also aimed at self-defence, this is a dialogue entitled «Rousseau as Judge of Jean-Jacqueswhere Rousseau defends himself against his interlocutor, the «Frenchman».

Death

In the summer of 1777, Rousseau’s health began to inspire fear in his friends. In the spring of 1778, one of them, the Marquis de Girardin, took him to his dacha in Ermenonville. At the end of June a concert was arranged for him on an island in the middle of a park; Rousseau asked to be buried in this place. On July 2, Rousseau died suddenly in Teresa’s arms.

His wish was granted; his grave on the island of Eve began to attract hundreds of admirers who saw in him a victim of social tyranny and a martyr of humanity — a representation expressed by the youth Schiller in famous poems, comparing with Socrates, who died from the sophists, Rousseau, who suffered from Christians, whom he tried to make human . During the Convention, Rousseau’s body, along with the remains of Voltaire, was transferred to the Pantheon, but 20 years later, during the restoration, two fanatics secretly stole Rousseau’s ashes at night and threw them into a lime pit.