À l’extrême de l’écriture de soi: les derniers textes autobiographiques de J.-J. Rousseau. Par Béatrice Didier

Abstract

This book provides a fresh and thorough examination of two texts: first, the still under-appreciated Dialogues (Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques) and, second, the Rêveries du promeneur solitaire. Béatrice Didier brings to bear traditional literary analysis, plenty of historical and literary context, and much respect for the work of scholarly editors. There is some emphasis on life-writing as a genre, but since, ultimately, Rousseau’s texts are ‘unique’ and ‘d’une originalité qui n’a guère d’antécédents’ (p. 268), that is set aside. Rather, the book’s approach is open-ended: it considers all relevant evidence, analyses the texts themselves at length, and builds towards a general interpretation of each. While this method is not always the most efficient, it yields many fine insights, and pays off by the ends of both halves of the book, which contain the most interesting material. The presentation of the Dialogues opens with a wealth of context, whether about the real-life sources of Rousseau’s sense of persecution or, more illuminatingly, about the Ancien Régime judicial system and the traditions of judicial oratory. Didier interprets the Dialogues primarily as an attempt to anchor Rousseau’s threatened sense of identity through a text that is not disorganized or rambling: on the contrary, ‘l’ensemble s’ordonne de façon impeccable’ and is indeed even a ‘somme’ of Rousseau’s thought (pp. 127, 154). Rousseau provides an ‘enharmonic’ version of himself that combines his two tonalities, ‘J.-J.’ and ‘Rousseau’, making one ‘J.-J. Rousseau’ (p. 138). Didier’s analysis of the Rêveries starts with a noteworthy account of the little-known playing cards on which Rousseau wrote laconic drafts of his text, but goes on to address familiar themes such as happiness, solitude, the reader, and time. The most original and stimulating section, which deals with space and description, comes towards the end of the discussion. Didier’s excursus on botany is seriously outdated, but her attention to the complex spatialities of the Rêveries allows us to see Rousseau’s last text not just as a text in and about time but as a radical and discontinuous series of spatiotemporal experiments. In conclusion, the Rêveries is presented as a fully philosophical and indeed religious text, yet one whose subtlety of writing transcends any attempt to pin down Rousseau’s thought. Ultimately, poetic writing itself is the real source of mysticism in the text. Although the existing secondary literature is acknowledged, long sections of the book tread over ground familiar to Rousseau scholars without always making non-expert readers aware of that fact. Further attention could have been paid to more recent scholarship on late Rousseau (especially in English but also in French), and Didier’s reliance on the now dated Pléiade edition is a particular weakness. Still, overall, this welcome and accessible book shines in its codicological emphasis, its attentiveness to context, its account of Rousseau’s radical creation of a multiplicity of literary forms, and its thorough readings and thought-provoking conclusions. It will be useful to anyone interested in the late Rousseau and opens the way to the fuller inclusion of Rousseau’s late and eccentric texts within the canon of life writing.