I was barely allowed to spend two months on this island,* but I could have spent two years, two centuries, and the whole of eternity there without for a moment becoming bored, even though the only company I had there, apart from my companion, was the steward, his wife, and his servants, who were certainly all very good people and nothing more, but this was precisely what I needed. I consider those two months to be the happiest time in my life, so happy in fact that it would have been enough for me to have lived like that for the whole of my life, without ever feeling in my soul the desire to live in any other state.
So what was this happiness and in what consisted its enjoyment? This would remain a mystery to all the men of this current age, were I to describe to them the life I led there. Precious far niente* was of all the pleasures the first and foremost that I wished to enjoy in all its sweetness, and everything I did during my stay there was in fact nothing more than the delicious and necessary pastime of a man dedicated to idleness.*
The hope that no more would be required of me than to remain in this isolated place where I had willingly ensnared myself, which it was impossible for me to leave without help and without being seen, and where the only communication or correspondence I could have was through the people surrounding me, this hope in turn gave me the hope of finishing my days there more peacefully than I had lived, and the idea that I would have all the time I needed to settle in meant that, to begin with, I made no attempt to settle in at all. Having arrived there suddenly, alone and with nothing, I sent in turn for my companion, my books, and my few belongings, which I had the pleasure of not unpacking, leaving my boxes and trunks just as they were when they arrived and living in the home in which I intended to end my days as if it were an inn that I was supposed to leave the next day. Everything was going so well as it was that to try to arrange things better would have been to spoil them. One of my greatest pleasures was above all to leave my books boxed up and to have no writing desk. When wretched letters forced me to pick up my pen to write in reply, grumbling I would borrow the steward’s writing desk, and I would quickly return it in the vain hope of having no further need of it again. Instead of these sad papers and piles of old books, I filled my room with flowers and grasses; for I had at that time just become enthusiastic about botany, a taste for which I owed to Doctor d’Ivernois* and which would soon become a passion. No longer wanting to work, I needed an entertaining pastime that I liked and that would not require any more effort than an idler could happily devote to it. I decided to compose a Flora petrinsularis* and to describe all the plants on the island, not leaving a single one out, in sufficient detail to keep me busy for the rest of my days. It is said that a German once wrote a book about a lemon rind; I could have written one on every grass in the meadows, on every moss in the woods, and on every lichen covering the rocks; in short, I wanted every single blade of grass and atom of a plant to be fully described. In order to carry out this fine plan, every morning after breakfast, which we all took together, I would set off, magnifying glass in hand and my copy of Systema naturae* under my arm, to visit a particular area of the island, which I had divided into small squares for this very purpose, intending to visit them all one after the other in every season. Nothing could be more extraordinary than the great joy and ecstasy I felt every time I observed something about the structure and organization of plants and about the role of the sexual parts in the process of fertilization, which was at that time completely new to me. The distinctions between groups of plants, about which I had previously had no idea, fascinated me as I examined common species and anticipated moving on to rarer ones. The forking of the self-heal’s two long stamens, the springiness of those of the nettle and the wall pellitory, the way the fruit of the balsam and the fruit capsule of the box burst open, and the thousand little tricks of fertilization which I was observing for the first time filled me with joy, and I went about asking people if they had seen the horns of the self-heal, just as La Fontaine asked if they had read Habakkuk.* After two or three hours I would come back, laden with an ample harvest, enough to keep me amused at home in the afternoon, should it rain. I spent the rest of the morning with the steward, his wife, and Thérèse, visiting their workers and their harvest, more often than not lending a hand, and often people from Bern who came to see me would find me atop a tall tree with a sack tied round my waist, which I would fill with fruit before lowering to the ground on the end of a rope. My morning exercise and the good mood it invariably put me in made it very pleasant to have a relaxing lunch; but if it went on for too long and the fine weather was enticing me, I could not bear waiting, and while the others were still at the table, I would slip away and get in a boat all alone, which I would row out to the middle of the lake when it was calm, and there, stretching out full-length in the boat, my eyes looking up to the sky, I would let myself float and drift slowly wherever the water took me, sometimes for several hours at a time, plunged in a thousand vague but delightful reveries, which, although they did not have any clear or constant subject, I always found a hundred times preferable to all the sweetest things I had enjoyed in what are known as the pleasures of life.* Often alerted by the setting sun to the fact that it was time to head home, I would find myself so far from the island that I was forced to row with all my strength to get back before nightfall. On other occasions, instead of heading off into the middle of the lake, I enjoyed staying close to the green shores of the island, where the limpid water and cool shade often tempted me to bathe. But one of my most frequent trips was to go from the large island to the small one, to disembark and to spend the afternoon there, sometimes taking very short walks amidst the pussy willows, alder blackthorns, persicarias, and shrubs of all varieties, sometimes setting myself on top of a sandy hillock covered with grass, wild thyme, and flowers, even including sainfoin and clover that had presumably been sown there in the past and that were very suitable for rabbits, which could multiply there in peace, with nothing to fear and without harming anything. I put the idea to the steward, who had male and female rabbits brought over from Neuchâtel, and his wife, one of his sisters, Thérèse, and I went with great ceremony to introduce them onto the little island, where they started breeding before I had left and where they will no doubt have thrived, as long as they have been able to survive the harsh winters. Establishing this little colony was a real celebration. The pilot of the Argonauts* was not prouder than I was as I triumphantly led the people and the rabbits from the large island to the small one, and I was gratified to see that the steward’s wife, who had a morbid fear of water and who always got sick in a boat, embarked confidently with me in charge and showed no sign of fear during the crossing.
When the lake was too rough to let me go out in a boat, I would spend my afternoon criss-crossing the island, collecting plants as I went, stopping to sit sometimes in the most beautiful and secluded little spots to dream there at leisure, sometimes on the terraces and hillocks to enjoy the superb and spectacular view over the lake and its shores, on the one side crowned by the nearby mountains, on the other giving way to rich and fertile plains, over which the view extended as far as the distant, bluish mountains.
As evening approached, I would come down from the heights of the island, and I liked to go and sit at the lakeside in some secluded spot on the shingle; there, the sound of the waves and the movement of the water, gripping my senses and ridding my soul of all other agitation, plunged it into a delicious reverie, in the course of which night often fell without my noticing and took me by surprise.* The ebb and flow of the water and its continuous yet constantly varying sound, ever breaking against my ears and my eyes, took the place of the movements inside me that reverie did away with and were enough to make me pleasantly aware of my existence, without my having to take the trouble to think. From time to time there came to mind some slight and brief reflection on the instability of this world, the image of which I saw in the surface of the water: but soon these fragile impressions faded away before the steadiness of the continu
ous movement which lulled me and which, without my soul actively doing anything, kept me transfixed, so much so that, when time and the agreed signal called me home, I struggled to tear myself away.
After supper, when the evening was fine, we would all go out for a walk on the terrace to breath in the coolness and the air off the lake. We would relax in the summerhouse, laugh, talk, sing some old song which was just as good as the excessively complicated modern ones,* and finally go off to bed, happy with the day that had passed and wishing only for the next day to be similar.
Apart from the unexpected and tiresome visits I sometimes received, this is how I spent my time on this island during my stay there. I wish I knew what was so attractive about it that it should stir in my heart regrets that are so deep, so tender, and so lasting that, fifteen years later,* I still find it impossible to think about this dear place without each time feeling myself transported there by pangs of longing.
I have noticed, however, in the ups and downs of a long life, that it is not the memory of the periods of the sweetest joys and keenest pleasures that draws me and touches me the most. These brief moments of madness and passion, however intense they may be, are, precisely because of their very intensity, only ever scattered points along the line of our life. They are too rare and too fleeting to constitute a proper state of being, and the happiness that my heart longs for is not made up of short-lived moments, but of a simple and lasting state, which has nothing intense about it in itself, but which is all the more charming because it lasts, so much so that it finally offers the height of happiness.
Everything on earth is in a state of constant flux. Nothing keeps the same, fixed shape, and our affections, which are attached to external things, like them necessarily pass away and change. Always beyond or behind us, they remind us of the past which is no longer or anticipate the future which is often not to be: there is nothing solid in them for the heart to become attached to. Thus the pleasure that we enjoy in this world is almost always transitory; I suspect it is impossible to find any lasting happiness at all. Hardly is there a single moment even in our keenest pleasures when our heart can truly say to us: ‘If only this moment would last for ever’, and how is it possible to give the name happiness to a fleeting state which still leaves our heart anxious and empty, and which makes us regret something beforehand or long for something afterwards?
But if there is a state where the soul can find a position solid enough to allow it to remain there entirely and gather together its whole being, without needing to recall the past or encroach upon the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present lasts for ever, albeit imperceptibly and giving no sign of its passing, with no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than simply that of our existence, a feeling that completely fills our soul; as long as this state lasts, the person who is in it can call himself happy, not with an imperfect, poor, and relative happiness, such as one finds in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, perfect, and full happiness, which leaves in the soul no void needing to be filled. Such is the state in which I often found myself on the Île de St Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether I was lying in my boat as it drifted wherever the water took it, or sitting on the banks of the choppy lake, or elsewhere beside a beautiful river or a stream gurgling over the stones.
What does one enjoy in such a situation? Nothing external to the self, nothing but oneself and one’s own existence: as long as this state lasts, one is self-sufficient like God. The feeling of existence stripped of all other affections is in itself a precious feeling of contentment and peace which alone would be enough to make this existence prized and cherished by anyone who could banish all the sensual and earthly impressions which constantly distract us from it and upset the joy of it in this world. But most men, being constantly stirred by passion, know little of this state, and, having only ever experienced it imperfectly and briefly, they have only a vague and confused idea of it, which gives them no sense of its charm. It would not even be good in the present circumstances for them, avidly desiring these sweet ecstasies, to take a dislike to the active life which their constantly recurring needs impose upon them. But an unfortunate man who has been cut off from human society and who can no longer do anything useful or good in this world either for others or for himself, may find in this state compensation for human joys which neither fortune nor men could take away from him.
It is true that such compensations cannot be felt by every soul or in every situation. The heart must be at peace and its calm untroubled by passion. The person who experiences them must be suitably disposed to them, as must all the surrounding objects. There must be neither total calm nor too much agitation, but a steady and moderate movement with neither jolts nor pauses. Without movement life is but lethargy. If the movement is irregular or too violent, it rouses us; by reminding us about the surrounding objects, it destroys the charm of the reverie, tears us out of ourselves, immediately puts us back beneath the yoke of fortune and men, and makes us aware of our misfortunes again. Absolute silence leads to sadness. It offers an image of death. So the help of a cheerful imagination is necessary and comes quite naturally to those whom Heaven has blessed with it. The movement which does not come from outside is created within us on such occasions. There is less rest, it is true, but it is also more agreeable when light and pleasant ideas simply brush the surface of the soul, as it were, without stirring up its depths. One needs just enough of such ideas to remember oneself while forgetting all one’s woes. This kind of reverie can be experienced wherever one can be quiet, and I have often thought that in the Bastille, and even in a dungeon with nothing to look at, I could still have dreamed pleasantly.
But admittedly this happened more easily and more pleasantly on a fertile and isolated island, naturally closed off and separated from the rest of the world, where nothing but cheerful images came to me, where nothing recalled sad memories, where the company of the small number of inhabitants was attractive and enjoyable without being so interesting as to take up all my time, where I could, in short, devote myself all day, unhindered and carefree, to the pastimes of my liking or to the most languid idleness. The opportunity was undoubtedly a fine one for a dreamer who, capable of living on agreeable fantasies in the midst of the most unpleasant objects, could take his fill of them at leisure by adding to them everything which actually struck his senses. Emerging from a long and happy reverie and finding myself surrounded by greenery, flowers, and birds, and letting my eyes wander into the distance over the romantic shores bordering a vast stretch of clear and crystalline water, I absorbed into my fictions all these delightful objects, and, finding myself at last gradually brought back to myself and my surroundings, I could not distinguish between fiction and reality, so much did everything combine to make so dear to me the meditative and solitary life I led in that beautiful place. If it could only happen again! If I could only go and end my days on that beloved island, never to leave it again nor see again any inhabitants of the mainland who might remind me of the calamities of all kinds which they have delighted in piling upon me for so many years! They would soon be forgotten for ever; they would not forget me in the same way, of course, but what would it matter to me, so long as they should not be able to come and disturb my peace? Freed from all the earthly passions that the tumult of social life gives rise to, my soul would often soar beyond this atmosphere and would commune before its time with the celestial spirits whose number it hopes soon to increase. Men will, I know, refuse to give me back such a dear refuge, where they did not want to leave me. But at least they will not stop me from transporting myself there every day on the wings of my imagination and tasting for a few hours the same pleasure as if I were still living there. The sweetest thing I would do there would be to dream at my leisure. By dreaming that I am there, am I not doing that very thing? I am in fact doing more: to the attraction of an abstract and monotonous reverie I am able to add charming images which enliven it. The objects of these images o
ften eluded my senses in my ecstasies, and now, the deeper my reverie is, the more vividly it presents them to me. I am often more in their midst and more pleasurably so than I was when I was really there. My misfortune is that as my imagination wanes, this happens with greater difficulty and for shorter periods of time. Alas, it is when one is beginning to leave behind one’s mortal body that one is the most hindered by it!
SIXTH WALK
WE have very few instinctive actions whose cause we cannot find in our hearts, if only we know how to look. Yesterday, while walking along the new boulevard* on my way to gather plants along the Bièvre* towards Gentilly,* I took a detour to the right as I approached the Barrière d’Enfer,* and, heading off into the countryside, I took the Fontainebleau road up to the heights alongside this little river. This walk was in itself of no particular interest, but as I remembered that I had several times automatically made the same detour, I sought in myself the reason why, and I could not prevent myself from laughing when I eventually discovered it.
On a corner of the boulevard just beyond the Barrière d’Enfer, a woman sets up a stall every day in summer, selling fruit, tisane,* and bread rolls. This woman has a little boy who is very sweet, but a cripple, and he hobbles along on his crutches, quite cheerfully asking passers-by for money. I had in a sense got to know this little chap; whenever I passed by he would always come and pay me his little compliment, which was always followed by my giving him a little gift. On the first few occasions I was delighted to see him, I gave him money very willingly, and for some time I continued doing so with the same pleasure, most of the time even offering myself the added pleasure of making him chatter and listening to him, which I found to my liking. This pleasure gradually became a habit and thus was somehow transformed into a kind of duty which I soon began to find irksome, above all because of the opening harangue that I was obliged to listen to and during which he never failed to call me Monsieur Rousseau several times to show that he knew me well, which actually showed me, on the contrary, that he knew me no better than those who had taught him. From then on I felt less inclined to go that way, and in the end I instinctively got into the habit of usually making a detour when I approached this gate.
Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics) Page 10
