Confessions
Jean-Jacques
Rousseau has not been my favorite acquaintance over the past year so when “Confessions”
arrived in the mail I was pleased this looked manageable, the book is barely
200 pages. That was until I opened it. This edition was written with the smallest
font imaginable, and my wife immediately vetoed me ruining my eyesight on that.
That would be too much of a sacrifice for Rousseau. Instead, I cheated and got
is as an audiobook. In that format it is still 30 hours long, but had it not
been for that I am likely to have spent the next half year in pain, reading it.
To my great
and pleasant surprise “Confessions” is a lot better than expected. In fact, it
may be the best of all four of his books on the List. At least the first half
of it.
“Confessions”
is Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s autobiography and what makes it stand out is that
this may be the first of its kind. I feel confident there has been earlier
autobiographies, but not with Rousseau’s zeal of being brutally honest. In this
way it set a new standard and became hugely influential. At least that is what
I keep reading.
A critique
of “Confessions” will necessarily be a critique of its author as well and
Rousseau was a complex one. The way he tries to present himself is as an honest
man with no desire for conflict and without disposition for hatred and avarice,
but with plenty of faults in the form of shyness and stupidity as well as naivety.
The way he across though is as a smart man prone to paranoia and a need to be
liked and accepted. Although he continuously states that he bears no ill will
to anybody, he readily throws accusations left and right and his text often
becomes more of a defense than the confession he claims to be writing.
When
Rousseau is best he is actually funny. Particular in his recollection of his
youth he throws up some pretty baroque scenes and describe some amusing
characters. This was a surprise, having become used to his normal endless
stream of complaints. His description of his time in Turin and Venice are not a
little interesting and colorful.
It is also interesting
to note how relatively modern his life was. Rather then simply apprenticing
himself, Rousseau shops around, trying this and trying that. He travels a lot
and face the differences in people with an open mind that makes him a good
observer. Rousseau enters into an odd relationship with the older Madame de
Warens, which can best be described as a hippie collective. He becomes a music
teacher, a diplomat, a tutor and a cartographer until he eventually starts
writing. When going to live in Paris Rousseau meets Therese with whom he begets
five children which are all given away to an orphanage and only marries late in
life. Pretty unusual stuff.
The second
part of the book sees him fall out with everybody and their mother. Rousseau
sees enemies everywhere, plots designed for his destruction and almost every friendship
of his turns sour. This despite he, through his writing, has been elevated to the
highest circles and is sought after by the upper nobility. That all this could
have something to do with the highly inflammable things he has been writing on
everything from statecraft to religion and education, not to mention his
bigotry against almost every craft in existence, never seems to occur to him.
Although
this felt long and confusing towards the end, I must say I enjoyed this (audio)book
a lot more than I had anticipated and I guess the best story Rousseau had was
the one about his own life.
