Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Oxford World's Classics)

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  fifteen years later: in fact only twelve years later, since Rousseau left the Île de St Pierre in 1765 and wrote the Fifth Walk in all likelihood in spring 1777.

  the new boulevard: a reference to the present-day boulevard Raspail.

  the Bièvre: a river that flows up from the south of Paris and into the Seine close to the Île de la Cité, though today it is buried in tunnels for its whole course within the city.

  Gentilly: a village south of Paris; it was annexed to become part of the city in 1860.

  the Barrière d’Enfer: this gate (literally the ‘Barrier of Hell’) was situated just north of what is today the Place Denfert-Rochereau in the Montparnasse district in the south of Paris; it became, in 1784–91, part of the city wall built by the corporation of tax farmers, the Fermiers-Généraux, to ensure the payment to them of a tax on any goods entering Paris.

  tisane: an infusion, often made in the eighteenth century with barley, liquorice, or couch-grass root and used for medicinal purposes.

  fulfil the duties of their position: an echo, not of Émile, but of Book 5 of the Confessions: ‘It is said that at dawn in Muslim countries a man goes about the streets ordering husbands to do their duty by their wives. I would be a bad Turk at such moments’ (p. 186).

  was never betrayed: a possible allusion to the attempt made in 1754 by Jean-Vincent Caperonnier de Gauffecourt (1691–1766), Rousseau’s friend and fellow Genevan, to seduce his companion, Thérèse, by offering her money and showing her pornographic images, as Rousseau recounts in Book 8 of the Confessions (pp. 380–1).

  the ring of Gyges: according to Plato’s Republic (359d–360c), the shepherd Gyges, who was king of Lydia from 716 to 678 BC, had managed to murder his predecessor King Candaules and seduce his Queen thanks to a magic ring he discovered that made him invisible. Plato uses the story of the ring of Gyges as a metaphor for the corruption caused by power: Glaucon recounts the story to Socrates, arguing that men are inherently unjust and are only restrained from unjust behaviour by the fetters of law and society.

  the Golden Legend: a reference to the hagiographical work by Jacobus de Voragine (c.1230–98), the Legenda aurea (1261–6), which gives an account of 180 saints’ lives and their miracles; it was one of the most popular religious works in medieval Europe.

  St Medard: a reference to the tomb of François de Pâris (1690–1727), a well-known Jansenist deacon, in the cemetery of the church of St Médard in Paris, which quickly became a site of religious pilgrimage, with many pilgrims declaring that they had been miraculously cured, notably in 1731 and 1732, when a large number of cases of convulsions, particularly amongst women, were recorded.

  I am incapable of doing good: see also Book 3 of the Confessions: ‘I would enjoy society as much as the next man, if I were not certain to show myself there not only to my own disadvantage, but as quite different from what I am’ (p. 114).

  rarely of commission: in Christian theology, a sin of commission is a positive act contrary to some prohibitive precept, whereas a sin of omission is a failure to do what is commanded. See also Book 10 of the Confessions: ‘My worst faults have been those of omission: I have rarely done what I ought not to have done, and unfortunately I have even more rarely done what I ought’ (p. 497).

  Murray’s Regnum vegetabile: the Swedish botanist Johan Andreas Murray (1740–91), a disciple of Linnaeus, published in 1774 the thirteenth edition of the System of Nature (see the note to p. 52, above) under the title System of the Vegetable Kingdom (Systema vegetabilium), which included his own introduction, entitled The Vegetable Kingdom (Regnum vegetabile).

  a painful and unappealing occupation: see also Part I of the Discourse on Inequality: ‘If nature has destined us to be healthy, I would almost venture to assert that the state of reflection is contrary to nature and that the man who meditates is a perverse animal’ (p. 30).

  by outside forces: a reference to the publication of the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts in 1751.

  drugs and medicine: see also Book 5 of the Confessions: ‘I know of no other study that is more compatible with my own natural bent than that of plants, and indeed the life I have led in the country these past ten years has been more or less one continual herborization, although without, it is true, either objective or progress; but having at the time no notion of what botany was, I viewed it with a sort of contempt and even disgust, as being of interest only to apothecaries. . . . Thus it was that botany, chemistry, and anatomy, all of which were confused in my mind under the general title of medicine, served only to supply me with an endless succession of sarcastic jokes and to earn me an occasional box on the ears’ (p. 176).

  Theophrastus: a student of Aristotle and Plato, Theophrastus (c. 371–c.287 BC) wrote, amongst other things, two major botanical works, Enquiry into Plants (De historia plantarum) and On the Causes of Plants (De causis plantarum), which were the first systematic study of the botanical world and which greatly influenced medieval science.

  Dioscorides: the Greek physician, pharmacologist, and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides (c.40–c.90) is best known as the author of the five–book work On Medical Matters (De materia medica), detailing the herbs and remedies used by the Greeks, Romans, and other cultures of antiquity.

  anatomy: see also Book 6 of the Confessions: ‘What set the seal on my disquiet was that I had included some physiology in my reading and had begun to study anatomy, so that, constantly revising the multitude and functioning of the parts of which my system was composed, I expected to feel it going wrong twenty times a day; far from being surprised at finding myself dying, I was amazed that I should still be alive; I had only to read the description of an illness to be quite certain that I was suffering from it’ (p. 242).

  La Robella: situated on the north face of the Chasseron mountain, above the village of Buttes, in the Jura, Switzerland.

  Clerc: Jean-Henri Clerc was a surgeon and judge in the civil court in Val-de-Travers; he was also a confidant of Rousseau’s long-standing friend Mme Boy de la Tour.

  nidus avis: bird’s-nest orchid.

  the large laserpitium: presumably the laserpitium latifolium, or laserwort.

  lycopodium: a genus of clubmosses, also known as ground pines or creeping cedar.

  Montmollin: Frédéric Guillaume de Montmollin (1709–83), Protestant minister of Môtiers. Originally a friend of Rousseau, Montmollin turned against him after the scandal surrounding the Letters Written from the Mountain (Lettres écrites de la montagne, 1764), in which Rousseau defended himself against the attacks made on him after the publication of Émile by the Genevan authorities, whose abuses of authority he also set about exposing; these Letters were in turn condemned, under pressure from Geneva, by the authorities in Neuchâtel, and Montmollin subsequently fell into line. The term used by Rousseau to describe Montmollin here, ‘prédicant’, which literally means ‘preacher’, was in the eighteenth century a pejorative term for a Protestant minister.

  the rue St Antoine: a long, wide road in Paris in Rousseau’s time, running from the Bastille past the Place Royale (the present–day Place des Vosges) to the church of St Paul.

  Du Peyrou: Pierre-Alexandre Du Peyrou (1729–94), a businessman from Neuchâtel who went on, as one of Rousseau’s executors, to publish a posthumous edition of his collected works; Rousseau refers to him in Books 6 and 12 of the Confessions (pp. 221, 589).

  d’Escherny: François-Louis d’Escherny (1733–1815), a writer whose works include The Lacunae of Philosophy (Les Lacunes de la philosophie, 1783). He went on to write a eulogy of Rousseau in 1789–90, which he published as an introduction to his work On Equality (De l’Égalité, 1796); his memoirs, published in 1811, include an admiring account of Rousseau, whom he had first met in Paris in 1762.

  Pury: Abram Pury (1724–1807), a former officer in the army in Sardinia, who defended Rousseau against Montmollin; one of his daughters married Du Peyrou in 1769. Rousseau refers to him in Book 12 of the Confessions (p. 589).

  Grenoble: Rousseau s
tayed in Grenoble from 11 July to 12 August 1768.

  Bovier: Gaspard Bovier (1733?–1806), a lawyer in the Grenoble parlement; he went on to write an account of Rousseau’s stay in the town, first published in 1898.

  Isère: the Isère river, in south-eastern France, flows through Grenoble.

  Dauphiné humility: the Dauphiné is a former province in south-eastern France, the capital of which was Grenoble; in 1790 it was divided into three départements: the current Isère, Drôme, and Hautes-Alpes.

  hippophae: buckthorn.

  snuff out my lantern: an allusion to Diogenes of Sinope (412?–323 BC), who walked through Athens carrying a lantern in daylight, looking for an honest man. See also Part II of the Discourse on Inequality: ‘[The attentive reader] will understand that because the human race of one era is not the human race of another, Diogenes could not find a man because he searched among his contemporaries for a man from a time that no longer was’ (p. 83).

  yoke of public opinion: Rousseau’s distinction here between self-love (amour-propre) and love of self (amour de soi) recalls his Discourse on Inequality, in which he argues that society’s negative influence on humankind is seen in particular in its transformation of love of self into self-love, or vanity (p. 115).

  anxious and unhappy: see also Book 3 of the Confessions: ‘For me, foresight has always been the ruin of enjoyment. Seeing into the future has availed me nothing; I have never been able to avoid it’ (pp. 103–4).

  one of my reveries: see the Fifth Walk, above.

  Monsieur P.: presumably a reference to Pierre Prévost (1751–1839), a Genevan and tutor to the children of Etienne Delessert who went on to translate Euripides and Adam Smith; he visited Rousseau in the last two years of his life.

  Madame Geoffrin: Marie-Thérèse Geoffrin (1699–1777) was one of the leading women in the French Enlightenment, hosting an important salon in Paris attended by major writers and freethinkers. Following her death on 6 October 1777, d’Alembert published his eulogy of her, the Letter from M. d’Al*** to M. the Marquis de C*** [Condorcet] about Madame Geoffrin (Lettre de M. d’Al*** à M. le Marquis de C*** sur Madame Geoffrin), in which he observes: ‘Madame Geoffrin had all the tastes of a sensitive and sweet soul: she loved children passionately; she could not see a single one without being moved; she was drawn by the innocence and the weakness of their youth. . . . She enjoyed talking with them and asking them questions, and she could not abide their governesses prompting their answers. “I prefer”, she used to say to them, “to hear his own inanities rather than those you dictate to him. . . . I wish one question could be asked of all those unfortunate people who are going to be put to death for their crimes: Did you love children? I am sure their answer will be no”.’

  Military Academy: the Royal Military Academy (L’École royale militaire) in Paris was founded by Louis XV in 1751, with the help of Madame de Pompadour and the financier Pâris-Duverney, in order to offer a military training to men from humble backgrounds.

  Foundlings’ Hospital: following on from the work done amongst the poor by the Catholic priest Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), the Paris Foundlings’ Hospital (L’Hôpital des Enfants-Trouvés) was founded by Louis XIV in 1670. To begin with, abandoned children were gathered into several existing houses scattered around the city, until 1748, when it was decided to erect a dedicated building close to the cathedral of Notre-Dame. From the time of its founding, the number of children brought to the Foundlings’ Hospital each year grew rapidly: in 1670, 312 children were admitted; in 1680, 890; in 1700, 1,738; in 1740, 3,150; and by the end of the eighteenth century, more than 6,000 children were being admitted each year. It was Voltaire who, in his pamphlet The Feeling of the Citizens (Le Sentiment des citoyens, 1764), revealed that Rousseau had abandoned his children to the Foundlings’ Hospital; convinced that he was now under attack from both religious authorities and intellectuals, Rousseau responded by starting to write his Confessions.

  a thousand times worse: see also Book 8 of the Confessions: ‘In handing over my children to be raised at public expense, since I had not the means to bring them up myself, in ensuring that they became labourers and peasants rather than adventurers and fortune-seekers, I believed that I was acting as a true citizen and father, and I looked upon myself as a member of Plato’s republic. On more than one occasion since, my heartfelt regrets have told me that I was mistaken, but far from my reason offering me the same advice, I have often thanked heaven for having preserved them from their father’s destiny, and from the one that threatened to be their lot if I had been forced to abandon them’ (pp. 347–8).

  What Mahomet did to Séide: in Voltaire’s tragedy Mahomet (1742), Mahomet persuades Séide to kill his father.

  Nouvelle France: a district (literally ‘New France’) to the north of Paris, and just east of the hill of Montmartre, along and around the rue Sainte-Anne (the present-day rue du Faubourg-Poissonnière), so called because it was the site of a barracks, built in 1772 to house recruits, often press-ganged from local cabarets, who were to go and serve in Canada.

  Clignancourt: a village to the north of Paris, it was annexed to the city in 1860.

  Nanterre cakes: the town of Nanterre, to the west of Paris, was famous in the eighteenth century for its salt pork and cakes.

  écu: a silver coin worth six livres. In 1764 the statesman and economist Jacques Turgot drew up a table of upper levels of wealth, in which he indicated that an annual income of 6,000 livres was decent, but by no means rich; in the provinces, 12,000 livres was the minimum income with which one could be considered rich, in Paris, 15,000. At the other end of the spectrum, a manual labourer could expect to earn 1 livre a day.

  Porte Maillot: one of the gates into the Bois de Boulogne to the west of Paris, which was a royal park when Rousseau was writing.

  La Muette: a reference to the royal château on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, near the Porte de la Muette; it was demolished in 1793.

  Passy: a village to the west of Paris near the Bois de Boulogne; it was annexed to the city in 1860.

  looking for customers: cone-shaped wafers—or oublies in French, from oblata, the Latin word for the consecrated host—could be had in a kind of lottery by buying chances from a seller (often former soldiers, hence the drum) equipped with a numbered wheel, on which there was a spinning arrow; a customer would buy a spin and receive the number of wafers indicated by the section on which the arrow stopped, though it was known that sellers could determine where the arrow would stop by means of a hidden magnet. There is a painting of a wafer-seller plying his wares by Louis Watteau, painted in 1785 and now in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lille, France.

  liards: a copper coin worth just 3 deniers, or a quarter of a sol, which was worth 12 deniers; 1 livre (see note above) was worth 20 sols or the equivalent of 80 liards.

  sols: see note to p. 99, above.

  louis: a gold coin worth 24 livres.

  La Chevrette: the château belonging to Denis-Joseph Lalive d’Épinay (1724–82) and his well-connected wife Louise d’Épinay (1726–83) in the Montmorency valley, north of Paris. In April 1756 Madame d’Épinay lent Rousseau a cottage in the grounds of La Chevrette, known as The Hermitage, for which he left Paris and where he stayed until the end of 1757, working, amongst other things, on Julie. The celebrations Rousseau refers to here are those held for Monsieur d’Épinay on 9 October 1757: see Book 9 of the Confessions (p. 454).

  the dragon guarding it: in Greek mythology, the Hesperides are nymphs who, aided by a hundred-headed dragon called Ladon, tend and guard the blissful garden of Hera, wife of Zeus, where immortality-giving golden apples grow; the eleventh labour of Hercules was to steal the apples.

  enjoying the day’s pleasures: this echoes Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert, in which he praises popular festivities and condemns the artificial pleasures of Parisian theatres.

  their masters’ hospitality: see also Book 10 of the Confessions: ‘Although I restricted my humble largesse to houses where I wa
s a frequent visitor, it none the less proved ruinous. . . . These expenses are unavoidable for a man of my temperament, who is incapable of acquiring anything or of improvising anything for himself, and who cannot bear the presence of a valet who grumbles and who serves you grudgingly’ (pp. 503–4).

  Invalides: a hospital in Paris for injured soldiers, founded by Louis XIV in 1670.

  We were . . . Young, valiant, and brave: a quotation from Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, 21. 3—the legendary lawgiver of Sparta—in the French translation by Amyot.

  Île des Cygnes: a small island (‘Swan Island’) in the Seine in Paris, near the Invalides.

  Palm Sunday: the date in question is 12 April 1778.

  Madame de Warens: Rousseau first met Mme de Warens on 21 March 1728; see the note to p. 22, above.

  born with the century: Mme de Warens was born on 31 March 1699.