Rousseau au travail

Dans l’atelier de Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Genèse et interprétation, c’est d’abord le choix d’un point de vue – adopté dans la nouvelle collection « Dans l’atelier de… » aux éditions Hermann – : celui d’entrer dans une œuvre depuis l’espace de travail de l’écrivain au milieu de ses manuscrits. Chez un auteur comme Rousseau, autant dire tout de suite qu’il s’agit d’une invitation au voyage.

Récit de l’atelier et métier de l’écrivain

Nathalie Ferrand, Dans l’atelier de Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Pour faire entrer les lecteurs dans l’espace de travail de Rousseau, le premier chapitre commence par l’observer tel qu’il s’est lui-même raconté quand il se plaçait face à une page blanche. On traverse ainsi une série de lieux d’écriture les plus divers – chambres d’hôtel, lazaret à Gênes, « donjon » de Montmorency, « laboratoire » de Môtiers… –, qui, mis bout à bout, forment ce que j’ai appelé un « récit de l’atelier », à considérer comme une première trace documentaire pour cerner l’image de l’écrivain dans laquelle Rousseau se projette, et comme une rêverie quasi bachelardienne sur les espaces de l’écriture. Dans cette visite ambulante et guidée par l’auteur lui-même d’un atelier de travail polymorphe, se révèlent sa conception et sa pratique du métier d’écrivain au XVIIIe siècle, sont mises en situation ses valeurs, ses aspirations, parfois ses hantises vis-à-vis d’une destinée qu’il finit par vivre comme une douloureuse fatalité, au point que dans les dernières années son écriture entre quasiment en clandestinité.

Un legs imposant et éclaté

Quelle est l’ampleur du corpus des manuscrits de travail de Rousseau ? On peut l’estimer à environ 17 000 pages autographes (ch.2, p.62) qui, rappelons-le, ne sont qu’une partie des manuscrits issus de sa main (lettres et minutes de sa correspondance, notes de secrétaire prises pour ceux qu’il sert, copies de textes ou d’œuvres musicales qu’il réalise en tant que copiste pour gagner sa vie…). En tout cas, c’est beaucoup si l’on considère qu’à l’époque la conservation des ébauches était loin d’être une habitude, et si l’on tient compte de la vie accidentée de l’auteur. Parmi ces papiers, se trouvent des premiers jets tracés hâtivement au crayon, des mises au net remaniées mais aussi, à l’autre bout de la chaîne, plusieurs manuscrits pour l’imprimeur préparés par Rousseau lui-même et qu’il retravaille encore et encore, jusqu’au seuil de la publication. Ceux-ci sont exceptionnels, car ils étaient en général détruits après l’impression. Parmi eux, figure celui de la Lettre à D’Alembert qui vient d’être acquis par la Fondation Bodmer à Cologny et ainsi rendu aux chercheurs du monde entier.

Manuscrit autographe de la Lettre à D’Alembert envoyé à M.-M. Rey pour l’impression en 1758, avec des corrections de l’auteur dans le texte (ajouts marginaux et biffures). Le feuillet inséré qui contient le texte d’une note ajoutée n’est pas de la main de Rousseau. (Avec l’aimable autorisation de la Fondation Bodmer, Genève.)

Lecture génétique d’un chef-d’œuvre : Julie, ou La Nouvelle Héloïse

Après un tour d’horizon concernant la situation la plus actuelle des manuscrits pour les principales œuvres de Rousseau, sans oublier le cas fascinant de la Correspondance avec ses nombreux brouillons encore conservés, le chapitre suivant se consacre à une œuvre en particulier, son roman épistolaire La Nouvelle Héloïse, dont on peut suivre la genèse en disposant sur une table imaginaire son impressionnant dossier génétique enfin (numériquement) rassemblé – sept mille pages, avec quelques versions inconnues de certains passages. Tandis que l’œuvre s’étoffe et se transforme au fil de ses rédactions, une poétique romanesque en acte émerge du fouillis des réécritures, l’écrivain juge son travail avec ses notes de régie et suggère les normes qui le guident, les phases créatives deviennent repérables et interprétables.

Page avec note de régie dans un brouillon de La Nouvelle Héloïse (Lettre 18 de la IIIe partie ; Paris, BnF : NAF 28006, f.12r / Gallica).

On considère souvent que Rousseau est un écrivain de la spontanéité, du sentiment, de l’effusion, un auteur qui pratiquerait une forme d’écriture instinctive. Il faut réviser ce point de vue : il est plutôt un écrivain du repentir, de la retouche corrective, du contrôle de soi, de la maîtrise. Et c’est aussi un écrivain autodictate qui joue, d’une manière géniale, avec cette culture qui ne lui était pas donnée au départ. L’un des mécanismes les plus frappants de son invention littéraire tient à ce jeu, à ces ancrages référencés qu’il construit au fil du travail de l’écriture avec un immense patrimoine littéraire et philosophique. Dans La Nouvelle Héloïse, on le voit ajouter au fil de la rédaction toute une série d’allusions lettrées, à la poésie italienne par exemple (des citations qui ne sont jamais ornementales mais profondément pensées). Au seuil de la publication, il décide d’ajouter dans le manuscrit pour l’imprimeur la mention explicite, en note de bas de page, de deux romanciers de son temps, S. Richardson et Mme Riccoboni, ce qui inscrit l’œuvre dans son époque littéraire et en avoue encore davantage l’appartenance générique. L’étude des brouillons donne également à comprendre l’invention du système des noms et pseudonymes (St. Preux, Héloïse) qui innerve la structure symbolique et pulsionnelle du roman.

Les bibliothèques du promeneur solitaire

Il vaut vraiment la peine de s’intéresser à la bibliothèque de Rousseau et d’en ouvrir les quelques volumes aujourd’hui connus, si l’on veut réellement comprendre quel laboratoire de l’écriture ses livres ont pu constituer pour lui. Cet aspect, qui est l’objet du dernier chapitre, n’a jusqu’à présent été que peu étudié. Or comme Voltaire, Rousseau fut un « marginaliste » écrivant dans les livres ; mais différemment de lui, il a périodiquement vendu ses bibliothèques, de sorte qu’aujourd’hui il n’y a pas un endroit où ils seraient tous rassemblés. La vente la plus significative se fit à Londres, au début de l’année 1767, avant qu’il ne quitte l’Angleterre. L’échange de lettres entre Rousseau et ses amis britanniques qui eut lieu alors nous fait comprendre à quoi ressemblaient ses livres après être passés entre ses mains (beaucoup étaient autographés) ; il révèle aussi le type d’intérêt que les contemporains pouvaient avoir pour les bibliothèques d’écrivains, dès le milieu du siècle des Lumières – Diderot avait vendu la sienne à Catherine II deux ans auparavant. Parmi les mille volumes de la bibliothèque « anglaise » de Rousseau qui fut achetée en grande partie par Vincent Louis Dutens – huguenot installé à Londres, futur membre de la Société royale de Londres et historiographe du roi d’Angleterre –, certains se trouvent encore en Angleterre. C’est le cas des Œuvres de Platon aujourd’hui à la British Library ou de l’édition partielle des Lettres écrites de la campagne de J.-R. Tronchin qui est à la Bodleian Library à Oxford, dans laquelle Rousseau rédige les premiers jets de ses Lettres écrites de la montagne, l’un de ses derniers textes publiés. En revanche, le volume des Essais de Montaigne annoté par Rousseau aujourd’hui à Cambridge a connu une autre trajectoire, car ce volume faisait partie de la petite collection de livres que Rousseau avait gardé auprès de lui jusqu’au moment de sa mort à Ermenonville. Parmi les autres auteurs de son panthéon littéraire, son exemplaire commenté de De l’esprit d’Helvétius aujourd’hui à la BnF à Paris est d’autant plus intéressant que de leur côté Diderot et Voltaire ont eux aussi annoté le leur, et qu’on peut comparer leur manière de s’approprier depuis ses marges un texte si important.

Exemplaire de De l’esprit (Paris, Durand, 1758) d’Helvétius commenté par Rousseau (Paris, BnF : RES-R-895, p.79 / Gallica).

Chez Rousseau, la note marginale s’adapte au texte sur lequel elle se greffe et varie fortement d’une œuvre à l’autre, non pas seulement du point de vue du contenu mais dans sa forme et son style. Il n’annote pas Montaigne comme il annote Platon, Helvétius ou même Voltaire (dont on découvrira que Rousseau l’a annoté deux fois). Le rapport de Rousseau marginaliste à ses livres montre à quel point il s’engage dans sa lecture et peut se transformer lui-même dans la profondeur du dialogue qu’il établit avec l’auteur lu. Mais surtout au cours de sa lecture active, il lui arrive de déposer des états préparatoires de ses propres œuvres, comme cette esquisse jusqu’à présent ignorée d’une lettre de La Nouvelle Héloïse inscrite au crayon sur une page de garde des Œuvres de Platon. Elle peut rejoindre désormais le dossier génétique de ce roman (son analyse est au ch.3, p.160-65).

Ainsi il est possible de mieux cerner le profil d’écrivain-lecteur de Rousseau et ses méthodes de travail quand sa plume ou son crayon court non plus sur une feuille vierge mais sur la page imprimée d’un livre ouvert. La connaissance de ses usages de la bibliothèque donne maintenant une nouvelle dimension à celle de ses pratiques de créateur.

– Nathalie Ferrand

Rousseau et Locke: Dialogues critiques

Rousseau et Locke: Dialogues critiques is the July volume in the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series. This volume, edited by Johanna Lenne-Cornuez and Céline Spector, reassesses the legacy of Lockean thought in all areas of Rousseau’s philosophy. This blog post introduces readers to the edited collection by discussing its claims and ambitions.

Après le colloque que nous avons organisé en 2019 à Sorbonne Université, il nous a semblé qu’une réévaluation de l’héritage de la pensée de Locke chez Rousseau s’imposait. C’est ainsi que ce volume est né. Tout en établissant l’étendue de la dette de l’auteur d’Émile à l’égard du ‘sage Locke’ dans tous les domaines de sa philosophie (identité personnelle, épistémologie, médecine, morale, pédagogie, économie, politique), il met en lumière les usages des thèmes et concepts lockiens chez Rousseau – quitte à identifier les distorsions que le philosophe genevois fait subir à son prédécesseur.

D’un point de vue philosophique, la thèse défendue par ce volume est la suivante: Rousseau a élaboré un grand nombre de ses thèses majeures dans un dialogue critique avec la philosophie lockienne. Loin d’être une influence évanescente, les thèses de Locke sont une référence constante pour Rousseau, dont il fait un usage aussi varié que fécond. La philosophie rousseauiste institue une relation singulière à cette source: Locke n’est ni un pur adversaire avec lequel il s’agirait toujours de marquer son désaccord, ni une simple ressource textuelle à laquelle il se contenterait de puiser.

Locke est tantôt un allié, tantôt un adversaire, ou plutôt il n’est ni l’un ni l’autre: la philosophie lockienne est le lieu théorique et méthodologique au sein duquel Rousseau s’inscrit et l’origine des principes auxquels il fait subir de notables subversions. Il s’avère beaucoup plus proche de l’auteur de l’Essai et du second Traité que l’exégèse l’a longtemps perçu. Aussi l’ambition de ce volume est-elle de s’écarter de toute vision réductrice de l’héritage lockien pour redonner aux rapports entre les deux auteurs toute sa profondeur et ses nuances. Interroger l’héritage de Locke par-delà le prisme d’oppositions préconçues – naturalisme/historicisme; matérialisme/dualisme; libéralisme/républicanisme – donne son unité à ce volume.

L’usage de Locke par Rousseau pourrait n’être que stratégique. Derrière l’éloge de ‘l’illustre Locke’, l’auteur en exil brandirait une communauté de principes comme un bouclier défensif. À s’en tenir à un usage stratégique, la dette reconnue à l’égard de Locke ne serait qu’une illusion rétrospective. Cependant, par-delà un usage rhétorique, l’auteur du Contrat social fait de Locke un usage instituant une communauté de pensée contre une autre: celle des partisans de l’inaliénabilité de la liberté contre celle des ‘fauteurs du despotisme’ (CS, I, 5). Cet usage est notamment éclairé dans ce volume par les contributions de Céline Spector, à propos de l’inaliénabilité de la liberté, de Jean Terrel, au sujet de l’institution du contrat, et de Ludmilla Lorrain, sur le consentement à la représentation.

S’inscrivant de plain-pied dans les controverses de son temps, le philosophe fait également un usage polémique de la philosophie lockienne. Au-delà de la critique ouverte de Locke, le volume cherche alors à identifier le point de rupture. Cet usage polémique est notamment éclairé par les contributions de Anne Morvan, à propos du différend qui oppose Locke et Rousseau dans l’utilisation d’arguments naturalistes, et de Philippe Hamou au sujet des implications épistémiques et anthropologiques de leur différend sur la religion naturelle. À l’inverse, Rousseau peut apparaître comme un allié, comme le montre Claire Crignon, à propos de la critique des médecins.

Mais la critique ciblée de Locke peut masquer un héritage conséquent, notamment en matière de pédagogie. Cette dette est éclairée par les contributions de Christophe Martin, à propos de la révolution pédagogique initiée par Locke, et par Gabrielle Radica, à propos de l’usage éducatif des sanctions. Dans le même esprit, une filiation surprenante entre leurs philosophies morales doit être restituée. Par-delà la rupture que constitue la Profession de foi du Vicaire savoyard, c’est la cohérence du projet empiriste qui doit être interrogée. Le dialogue critique est éclairé par Louis Guerpillon, à propos du sens de l’empirisme en morale, et par Johanna Lenne‑Cornuez, au sujet de la définition du citoyen des temps modernes.

Portrait de J-J Rousseau, Ecole anglaise du XVIIIe siècle, Voltaire Foundation, Oxford.

Enfin, Rousseau utilise parfois Locke comme source d’arguments d’autorité. C’est le cas du fondement mémoriel de l’identité personnelle ou encore de l’inquiétude qui motive nos actions. Pourtant, cette reprise ne saurait être une simple redite. Concernant le rapport entre mémoire et identité subjective, l’appropriation de Locke par Rousseau est bien plus complexe qu’il n’y paraît. La question des mobiles de l’action suppose quant à elle de revenir à la lettre du texte de Locke. Ces usages qui n’échappent pas à la dimension critique seront éclairés par Stéphane Chauvier, à propos du fondement de l’identité personnelle, et par Christophe Litwin, à propos de l’inquiétude comme mobile de l’action.

Pour chacun de ces trois types d’usages – usage stratégique, usage polémique et appropriation critique –, le terme de dialogue critique est pertinent: dialogue, parce que Rousseau se situe d’abord sur un terrain qu’il identifie comme lockien, critique, parce que l’usage que Rousseau fait des idées lockiennes n’en est jamais la simple répétition. Aussi peut-on parler de critique menée de l’intérieur de thèses héritées de Locke.

– Johanna Lenne-Cornuez (Sorbonne University/CNRS) and Céline Spector (Sorbonne University)

This post first appeared in the Liverpool University Press blog.

Reframing Rousseau

What can Enlightenment philosophes – especially Rousseau, arguably the most difficult of them all – have to tell us about modern life that we don’t already know?

Le Lévite d’Ephraïm: la douleur du Lévite (c.1806), by Jean-Pierre Saint-Ours of Geneva, 1752-1809 (MAH Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève).

We are a team of scholars from different academic areas, each of whom offers a unique vantage point in understanding Rousseau’s texts. This constellation of approaches – grounded in an appreciation of the shared background of feminist critique promoted by the contributors to our volume Reframing Rousseau’s Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, hospitality and modern identity – provides the density that allows Rousseau’s nuanced writings to be read in their full complexity.

This book focuses on a relatively unfamiliar work of Rousseau’s: Le Lévite d’Ephraïm, a prose-poem in which Rousseau elaborates on a little-known Hebrew biblical text to interrogate many of the accepted, conventional views on issues ranging from the role of sacred texts; to Rousseau’s self-construction through the representation of guilt and remorse; to the role of hospitality in structuring both individual self-representation and social cohesion; to the place of violence in establishing national and communal self-identity. In each of these spheres, Rousseau reveals a particularly modern perspective in trying to honor both personal and social needs, and in privileging both the individual viewpoint and the political structure.

In keeping with Rousseau’s own multifocal writings as reflected in our own authors’ distinct voices, each contributor here provides a more detailed description of the sections in this book.

Reframing Rousseau’s Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, hospitality and modern identity (Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment May 2021).

In focusing on Rousseau’s rewriting of one narrative in the Hebrew biblical text, the first chapter interrogates the uses to which Enlightenment thinkers put the ancient – to many, still sacred – understanding of the biblical text. Why do 18th-century thinkers feel the need to refer to biblical texts at all? What new ways of reading do they create to construct a world view that differs markedly both from ancient and classical philosophical and political thought? This section foregrounds the ‘strange’ reliance Rousseau places on an ancient text to propose a modern critique of the conventional way of understanding the world.

Although Rousseau named Le Lévite d’Ephraïm the ‘most cherished’ of his works, it has drawn far less scholarly attention than most of his other works. Taking the author at his word, the second chapter of the volume explores the paradox behind Rousseau’s valorization of the most disturbing of his writings and his contention that it provided proof of his gentle nature. This chapter identifies links between Le Lévite d’Ephraïm and Rousseau’s autobiographical works and writings on language and society. Rousseau’s rewriting of this Biblical narrative reflects his vision of language, human nature and the fragility of community bonds while offering unique insight into Rousseau’s understanding of human psychology, manipulation of language, and the dynamics of scapegoating and civil unrest.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Line engraving. Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).

Chapter three looks to how Rousseau incorporates the metatext of hospitality into his œuvre, utilizing the social and textual themes of misguided and absent hospitality. It seems that Rousseau’s personal circumstances intensified his conviction that the subversion of hospitality by the host (individual, group, or nation), ineluctably leads to moral catastrophe. Inter alia, this presentation addresses the issue of failed hospitality as it relates to the marginalization of individuals and to the eventual alienation of the group. In the end, society creates its own strangers, and by mistreating them, prefigures its own demise. Le Lévite constitutes a plea for society to restore its moral compass. While much of Rousseau’s work, including the Confessions and Emile, provides insight into the context of his interpretation of faulty hospitality, it is Le Lévite d’Ephraïm that offers a view from a different vantage point of the developing political philosophy explored more fully in the Contrat social.

The book’s final chapter focuses on Rousseau’s view of how nationalism can intersect with violence. Do these two movements inevitably presuppose each other? What determines the notion of ‘belonging’ to a nation? Concomitantly, Rousseau treats the inverse implication of these questions: what is the status of the stranger, of the person who doesn’t belong? Rousseau’s choice of an abstruse biblical text through which to examine this complicated issue highlights Rousseau’s understanding of the complexities of texts, and of others, as we try to interpret these all to get at their essences.

The Afterword of this volume explores some of the current implications of the questions raised, both implicitly and explicitly, by the text of Le Lévite d’Ephraïm. How do Rousseau’s writings – particularly Le Lévite d’Ephraïm – speak to a 21st-century world fractured by demonization and alienation? This section of the book outlines the ways in which strangeness and nationalism can be utilized to unite the world of variegated individuals and communities that form the complicated texture of our lives.

In Reframing Rousseau’s Lévite d’Ephraim, Abrams, Morgenstern and Sullivan offer us a new look at Rousseau’s writing on political and cultural issues that continue to be salient in contemporary times. The authors look forward to expanding this conversation with the responses and reactions from the readers of this book.

– Barbara Abrams, Mira Morgenstern, and Karen Sullivan
(Suffolk University Boston, City College / City University of New York, Queens College / City University of New York)

Reframing Rousseau’s Lévite d’Ephraïm: The Hebrew Bible, hospitality and modern identity is part of the Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, published in collaboration with the Voltaire Foundation, University of Oxford.

A version of this blog first appeared in the Liverpool University Press blog in May 2021.

From the mundane to the philosophical: topic-modelling Voltaire and Rousseau’s correspondence

Voltaire and Rousseau’s correspondence are two fascinating collections which have perhaps not received the amount of attention than they could have due to the nature of these texts. Written over five decades, these letters cover a wide range of topics, from the mundanity of everyday concerns to more elaborate subjects. Getting an overall picture of these correspondences is challenging for the simple reader. This is unfortunate since these correspondences not only constitute a window into the private lives of Voltaire and Rousseau, or show an unfiltered expression of their respective thoughts, but they are also an example of the eclecticism professed by the philosophes. Fortunately modern computational techniques can truly help in providing an overview of the content of these letters and hopefully recapture – in a somewhat organized fashion – this very eclecticism of the Lumières. Thanks to the collaboration between the Voltaire Foundation and the ARTFL Project, I will be briefly discussing how topic-modeling can be used to draw an overall picture of these correspondences, and show a couple of examples of the model built from the Voltaire letters.

The ARTFL Project has long been engaged in exploring 18th-century discourses using digital tools, and the thematic opacity of correspondences is an ideal use-case for topic-modelling. This particular algorithm was designed to generate clusters of closely related words (or topics) by analyzing all word co-occurrences in any given corpus. Because these topics are extracted from their source texts, they are understood to describe the contents of the corpus analyzed. We recently released a topic-modelling browser – called TopoLogic – which was designed to explore such clusters of co-occurring words, and ran a preliminary experiment against the French Revolutionary Collection, the results of which can be seen here. When we built the topic models for Voltaire and Rousseau’s correspondences, we made sure to use the same parameters for both collections such that 40 topics (or discourses) were generated from each set of letters. We also only used those letters written by Voltaire on one side, and Rousseau on the other, hoping that we could perhaps make some comparisons between both models.

Let’s start with the Voltaire model, from which you can see the first 20 topics below:

As a first view into the topic model, the browser gives us the top 10 words for each topic, as well as their overall prevalence in the letters by Voltaire. From there we can further explore any topic, such as 16, which seems to map to Voltaire’s idea of the philosophe fighting against religious intolerance. By clicking on the topic however, we get an overview of how the topic is distributed in time, most important words in the topic, correlated topics, as well as documents where the topic is prominent (see figure below).

Let’s focus on several sections of this overview. We note below that the terms of philosophe and philosophie are weighted far more heavily than any other term, suggesting perhaps that all other words in this cluster may just constitute different characteristics of the philosophe in Voltaire’s eyes: religious concerns (prêtre, jésuite, religion, tolérance), attributes (honnête, sage), means of expression (article, livre).

All of these observations can of course be verified by exploring letters that feature topic 16 in a prominent way, which the browser does list. We can also see how the philosophe discourse evolves over the more than sixty years of Voltaire’s letters. Unsurprisingly, as his public involvement in religious affairs increases, the prevalence of such terms discussing his idea of the philosophe rises as well in his letters.

Among the discourses which tend to follow the same trend over time (see figure below), the cluster of terms related to justice (topic 5) stands out, once again showing that his public involvement is mirrored in his private correspondence. While these aspects are nothing really new, they provide for the prospective reader an easy way to find those letters that do discuss these topics.

Another interesting aspect of topic-modeling is that we can also examine the discursive make-up of any of Voltaire’s letters, and see if there are any other letters that share the same themes. Let’s examine Voltaire’s famous letter to Rousseau in which he mocks the citoyen de Genève’s position on the impact of literature in the second discourse (see figure below): ‘Les Lettres nourissent l’âme, la rectifient, la consolent’.

When we look at topical representation of this letter in the browser, we can note that the model found a number of different topics within this letter, which when combined do provide an overview of its contents. In it, Voltaire discusses – with much irony – his own experience as a writer (topic 33), which includes his role as historiographe du roi (topic 36), as well as the many controversies he was involved in (topic 10). He sarcastically laments the fact that he cannot afford to live with savages in a distant land (topic 25) because his health requires him to be treated by a doctor (topic 26 and 35). And as a whole, he defends the role of literature as a positive good for man (topic 0). Of course, one could argue that this topical structure is approximate, prone to discussion, and this is certainly true. However, this approximation is now available for all 15,000 letters, which then allows the computer to compare and group letters by this very topical structure. In this same document view, we can see documents which share a similar mixture of topics, such as a letter to Ivan Shuvalov from 1757 where Voltaire discusses his writing of history while displaying a very keen concern for the perception and impact of his writing, or another to D’Alembert where he complains about his bad health while stressing the importance of writing about useful things (‘il y avait cent choses utiles à dire qu’on n’a point dittes encore’).

One last aspect of the topic model is to examine the individual uses of words and the different contexts in which they are used. If we look at the uses of écrivain in the correspondences (see figure below), we can see how that its uses span across different types of discourses related to reason, the writing of history, or the public role of the writer. Looking at the actual word associations, we also note potentially interesting patterns. In the case of words that share similar topic distributions (used with a similar mix of discourses), a group of terms related to ignorance seems to dominate: fausseté, mensonge, ignorance, vérité, erreur, fable… This may allude to a sense of mission in Voltaire’s writings: to correct inaccuracies, to dispel lies, to reestablish the truth in the face of ignorance. Looking this time at words that tend to co-occur with écrivain, we get a very different picture, with terms that relate more to the activity of writing and the product of that writing. These two views on word associations do not contradict one another, but suggest different ways of thinking of the role of the écrivain as depicted in Voltaire’s letters.

To finish, let’s take a look at the topic model of Rousseau’s correspondence, and in particular how we can relate it to that of Voltaire. A quick overview of the first 20 topics in Rousseau’s letters reveals a similar – yet distinct – picture of the topical composition of his correspondence (see figure below).

Using the browser, we could track down Rousseau’s response to Voltaire’s criticism of the second discourse, and see if other letters discuss similar themes. This is all within the scope of this browser. For the sake of brevity however, and to show how topic models can be used to run comparative experiments, we wanted to focus on Rousseau’s usage of the word écrivain in order to see if and how it differed from what was suggested in the Voltaire model. As we can see below, Rousseau tends to use the term in similar contexts: the écrivain is invoked first and foremost as a conveyor of truth. But looking more closely at word associations, a distinctive pattern does emerge: such terms as lâche, haine, hypocrite, acharnement, or jalousie highlight a well-known trait of Rousseau, his paranoia in the face of his success as a writer. Clicking on any these words in the browser would allow a researcher to track down the individual uses of these terms as they relate to écrivain, and find those letters to discuss his persecution complex.

To conclude, we are well aware that any analysis provided here is purely built on the patterns derived from the topic models, and as such, remain unproven until verified by a close reading of the letters themselves. However, we hope to have shown how using a tool such as topic modeling can potentially provide new insights into the correspondences of Voltaire and Rousseau, or at the very least offer better guidance to scholars working on these two incredibly rich collections.

– Clovis Gladstone

This article was first published in the Café Lumières blog in June 2020.

Clovis Gladstone’s Rousseau et le matérialisme appeared in Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment 2020:8.

 

Prof. Catriona Seth, ‘Girls with Books. Reading, Contagion and Acquired Immunity in Eighteenth-Century Fiction’: The Inaugural Lecture of the eighth Oxford Marshal Foch Professor

Prof. Catriona Seth, outside the Taylorian Institution, Oxford. Photograph: Henrike Lähnemann.

On 9 May, Oxford’s eighth Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature gave her inaugural lecture to a packed hall at the Taylorian Institute. As she noted in her introductory remarks, the date is significant: 9 May is Europe day, commemorating the 1950 Schuman Declaration. What is also significant is that the eighth Marshal Foch Professor is the first to deliver her lecture at all: Catriona Seth is the first woman to hold the professorship.

Fellow of the British Academy, Member of the Académie Royale de Belgique, President of the Société Française d’étude du dix-huitième siècle, and Member of the Franco-British Council, Seth’s accolades testify to the respect for her research across Europe, and reflect her European academic career (which has included posts in the UK, France and Germany). She has published monographs on eighteenth-century French poets, on the history of smallpox, and on Marie-Antoinette; she has established the Pléiade editions of Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses, and Germaine de Staël’s novels and De la littérature; she has published on the gothic novel, on women’s writing, on book illustration, and on the history of childhood, not to mention her article, with Katherine Astbury, on Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s boxer shorts…[1] Beyond the headline undergarment, the latter is actually about a woman’s correspondence: that of Bernardin’s sister, Catherine. Indeed, much of Seth’s research to date has uncovered – and helped restore to the canon – the neglected history of what women read and wrote during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As the title of her lecture hinted, among many other things, Seth’s work has changed our understanding of the history of ‘girls with books’.

We were introduced to many such girls over the course of the hour: from Rousseau’s Julie and the women who devoured her story, to Laclos’s Merteuil who herself devoured La Nouvelle Héloïse (as well as every man, woman and child who crossed her path). Seth discussed less well-known women, too, showing that they were not only readers of novels, but often their champion and their raison d’être. Her analysis of Bougeant’s Voyage merveilleux du prince Fan-Férédin dans la Romancie (1735), for instance, highlighted that without women, this novel would not have existed. It was Prince Fan-Férédin’s mother who introduced him to novels and set off his travels in ‘la Romancie’, and without Bougeant’s female dedicatee, Madame C** B**, for whom he claimed to have written the novel, there would have been no text at all.

Weaving together some of the strands of her research, Seth merged close reading with cultural history, medical humanities, and the visual arts. Her argument centred on a metaphor and an analogy, both of which bridged the fields of medicine and literature. The metaphor (that reading the body is a metaphor for reading texts), and the analogy (that as inoculation can protect the body, so book-based instruction can protect the mind), are central to the two most famous eighteenth-century French epistolary novels: La Nouvelle Héloïse and Les Liaisons dangereuses. Both of these novels suggest that reading books in the right way can provide you with what Seth calls a ‘textually transmitted immunity’, to protect you from irksome textually transmitted diseases such as a romantic imagination or, worse, libertinage. The prophylactic needed is not a barrier, but an inoculation.

Gravelot (illustrator) and Mire (engraver), ‘L’Inoculation de l’amour’ (La Nouvelle Héloïse, 1761), Bryn Mawr Collections, accessed 12 May 2019.

Rousseau shows us this in La Nouvelle Héloïse. Wolmar attempts to cure Julie and Saint-Preux of their love for one another, for example, but never quite succeeds. As Julie contracts smallpox, recovers, but is scarred for life, so she manages to get over her love for Saint-Preux, but will always bear its scars; the physical trace of the disease – like the trace of her love for Saint-Preux – remains. Building on the argument of scholars such as, of course, Jean Starobinski, Seth explained that this is how Rousseau expected the novel to function: as a literary inoculation that infects readers with a carefully administered dose of morally harmful material, in order to protect them from greater, worldly hazards.[2] Since French society was rife with moral sickness, Rousseau believed, the only way to stem the contagion was to inoculate girls with books. However, the remedy was not fool-proof. Inoculation produced side effects, as Seth touched upon with reference to the work of Claude Labrosse on contemporary readers’ reactions to La Nouvelle Héloïse.[3] In their letters to Rousseau and their pilgrimages to the shores of Lake Geneva, Seth suggested that readers were not content with having received their treatment: they now wanted to see the doctor.

Side-effects were not the only problem; some readers signally failed to acquire immunity. Merteuil may have read and admired La Nouvelle Héloïse, as well as bundles of other people’s letters, but she failed to learn the lesson that her own letters could also be read in a way that her outward appearance could not… at least initially. The famous autobiographical letter 81, and letter 85 recounting her entrapment of Prévan, eventually uncover the true Merteuil behind her carefully constructed façade. In the end, Merteuil is not only publicly disgraced, but is also irremediably scarred by smallpox. Her punishment for failing to learn her lesson about the nature of texts, therefore, is to have her body finally betray her soul. Whether she likes it or not, everyone can now read her like a book. Seth argues that by leaving Merteuil vulnerable to smallpox (at a time when inoculation was becoming recognised as a cure), Laclos uses her as an illustration of what happens if one is not ‘inoculated’, by one’s reading, against the ills of society.

Seth closed by highlighting the present-day stakes of her argument, with a reference to Boko Haram’s abduction of over 250 school girls from their secondary school in Nigeria in April 2014. Citing New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof (a peer from Seth’s years as an undergraduate at Magdalen College), Seth reminded us that still today, girls’ education is perceived as a threat by certain extremist groups because of its ability to transform society. The socially transformative potential of education is precisely what made it the site of countless disputes during the eighteenth century and, as Seth showed, these disputes show no sign of abating. Borrowing Kristof’s words, she noted, ‘the greatest threat to extremism isn’t a drone overhead but a girl with a book.’[4] The new Marshal Foch Professor thus concluded with a health warning, or rather a call to arms: ‘reading can seriously damage your ignorance’.

– Gemma Tidman

[1] For a list of Seth’s major publications, see her faculty profile. For the latter article, see Katherine Astbury and Catriona Seth, ‘Unblocking Enlightenment Loos, Bernardin’s Boxer Shorts and Other Day-to-Day Practicalities in Eighteenth-Century Normandy: A Whistle-Stop Tour of Catherine de Saint-Pierre’s Networks’, Nottingham French Studies, 54.2 (2015), 210–23.

[2] Starobinski, Le Remède dans le mal: critique et légitimation de l’artifice à l’âge des Lumières (Paris: Gallimard, 1989).

[3] Labrosse, Lire au XVIIIe siècle: La Nouvelle Héloïse et ses lecteurs (Lyon: Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1985).

[4] Nicholas Kristof, ‘Honoring the Missing Schoolgirls’, The New York Times (7 May 2014).

‘La nouvelle édition de ces choses merveilleuses’

Page de titre de notre texte de base.

Passage de la mer Rouge à pied sec, arrêt du Soleil et de la Lune, résurrection des morts, transformation de la farine en anguilles, refus de s’agenouiller devant le Consistoire de Genève, habitude d’entendre le contraire de ce qui est dit et écrit, tours de passe-passe de Rousseau à Venise: tel est l’assemblage – hétéroclite, on en conviendra – de ‘miracles’ – ou prétendus tels – dont Voltaire se gausse en les réunissant au sein de cette Collection des lettres sur les miracles. Ecrites à Genève, et à Neufchâtel. L’ouvrage est loin d’avoir la rigueur d’un quelconque traité susceptible de répondre aux très sérieuses Considérations sur les miracles de l’Evangile pour répondre aux difficultés de M. J.-J. Rousseau (1765) publiées par le pasteur David Claparède, qui fournissent le prétexte de la première intervention de Voltaire, dans une feuille volante intitulée Questions sur les miracles, à M. le professeur Cl……. par un proposant. Loin même d’être, dans sa forme finale, le fruit d’un projet concerté dès l’origine: d’Autres questions, puis une Troisième Lettre paraissent peu après, et l’affaire aurait pu en rester là. Mais lorsque John Turberville Needham publie une Réponse au ‘proposant’, son intervention met le feu aux poudres, et la présence à Genève du prêtre catholique irlandais – présenté, pour l’occasion, comme un jésuite anglais – suscite encore un rapprochement avec les derniers épisodes des troubles qui agitent alors la République (affaire Covelle, poursuites contre Rousseau), relançant successivement l’activité de l’artillerie de Ferney: à jets continus, ce sont au total vingt Lettres qui se succèdent, entre mi-juillet 1765 et janvier 1766; elles seront au mois de mai réunies au sein d’un recueil, qui comporte aussi les réponses de l’adversaire, dûment annotées, le tout entrelardé de paratextes.

Aux circonstances singulières qui conduisent à la publication de la Collection s’ajoute ultérieurement une histoire éditoriale complexe: d’abord dans les Nouveaux Mélanges (voir OCV, t.60A), puis dans les collections dites ‘complètes’ des Œuvres de Voltaire, à commencer par l’‘encadrée’, le recueil est défait, ramené à la succession des Lettres originales à l’exception de l’une d’entre elles, réutilisée entre-temps dans les Questions sur l’Encyclopédie. Si les éditeurs de Kehl cherchent à retrouver l’esprit du recueil, ils ne réintroduisent les textes de l’adversaire, jugés excessivement ennuyeux, que sous la forme d’extraits. Les choix qui ont conduit à éditer, dans ce volume des OCV, l’intégralité de la Collection, accomplissent ainsi – osons le mot – une résurrection: le texte, connu par la suite sous le titre trompeur de Questions sur les miracles, n’a pas été donné à lire sous cette forme depuis plus de 250 ans. C’est l’occasion de procéder à une redécouverte qui permet d’apprécier, dans leur diversité, les expérimentations que Voltaire y effectue.

Expérimentation, d’abord, dans la construction a posteriori d’un recueil, organisé autour d’une fiction minimale qui s’invente au fil des Lettres, à l’intérieur d’un cadre narratif et discursif faisant intervenir une foule de personnages, les uns fictifs, proches des marionnettes qui peuplent l’univers des contes, les autres réels mais largement fictionnalisés, chacun doté d’une voix propre: de quoi orchestrer un beau raffut par la mise en place d’une structure polyphonique qui tient à la fois – sans se réduire à l’une de ces composantes – du micro roman épistolaire, du brûlot polémique et du pamphlet.

Expérimentation aussi dans la diversification de modes d’écriture pamphlétaire, même si l’on retrouve à l’occasion les recettes éprouvées d’une entreprise visant à faire taire l’adversaire en l’accablant de ridicules et en discréditant son discours: Needham se prétend-il imprudemment ‘qualifié par ses recherches’ pour faire pièce aux objections des incrédules? Il s’agira conjointement de disqualifier sa personne et ses interventions dans l’espace public: le pseudo-savant qui a cru observer, au cours d’expériences mal conduites sur de la farine de blé ergoté délayée dans de l’eau, sa ‘transformation’ – voire sa ‘transfiguration’ – en ‘anguilles’, lui-même ‘jésuite transfiguré’, devient le ‘jésuite des anguilles’, enfin l’‘anguillard’, que son ‘galimatias’ désigne comme un homme à enfermer. Il est même condamné ‘à faire amende honorable une anguille à la main’ avant d’être ‘lapidé’: il ne s’agit cependant que d’une exécution de papier, et le coupable finit d’ailleurs par s’échapper. Jean-Jacques aussi réchappe à sa propre lapidation, mais l’affaire est plus sérieuse.

Expérimentation encore, à l’occasion de l’évocation des troubles qui affectent Genève, d’une pensée politique dont les éléments se mettent en place: les tirades enflammées d’un Covelle, doté d’une éloquence dont l’original était sans doute incapable, sur la liberté, qui est tout à la fois liberté de penser et accomplissement d’une libération du ‘despotisme presbytéral’, préludent aux textes ultérieurs sur les affaires genevoises (Idées républicaines, OCV, t.60B), avant l’ultime réécriture, en mode burlesque, des tribulations qui agitent la ‘parvulissime’ dans La Guerre civile de Genève (t.63A).

‘Je n’aime l’érudition que quand elle est un peu égayée.’ (Page 150 de notre texte de base.)

C’est dire que la Collection a enfin valeur de jalon dans une réflexion continue, ce que vérifie l’examen de celle, conduite en pointillés, sur la question des miracles: au niveau des arguments avancés comme des sources qui leur servent de fondement, les Lettres sur les miracles font aussi office de laboratoire dans l’élaboration de l’arsenal polémique qui nourrit en parallèle les rééditions contemporaines du Dictionnaire philosophique (OCV, t.35-36) ainsi que, par la suite, les opuscules antichrétiens des années 1766-1767, en particulier L’Examen important de milord Bolingbroke (t.62), Le Dîner du comte de Boulainvilliers (t.63A), jusqu’aux Questions sur l’Encyclopédie, dont une section de l’article ‘Miracles’ (t.42B) est ‘tirée d’une lettre déjà imprimée’ – la Douzième de la Collection, probablement après un essai infructueux de remaniement de la Première, fourni en Annexe de l’édition.

La Collection des lettres sur les miracles est en somme un objet étrange et foisonnant, à même de susciter la curiosité de quiconque s’intéresse à l’histoire éditoriale des ouvrages de Voltaire et à l’élaboration d’une manière et d’un positionnement polémiques sur des questions idéologiques importantes. Voltaire invente ici une formule appelée à une certaine fortune dans les productions tardives du ‘patriarche’, dont le fin mot est réservé au pseudo M. Beaudinet, ‘citoyen de Neufchâtel’: ‘Je n’aime l’érudition que quand elle est un peu égayée.’

– Olivier Ferret

D’Éon vs Rousseau: Gender, slavery and the unique self

Portrait of Charles-Geneviève-Louis-Auguste-André-Timothée d’Éon de Beaumont by Thomas Stewart (1792), at the National Portrait Gallery.

Virtually everything about the Chevalier d’Éon’s life was extraordinary. D’Éon had a decorated career as a dragoon, diplomat, spy for the French king and rumoured double agent, not to mention being a prolific author, proto-feminist, freemason, international celebrity and exceptional fencer.[1] However, far more remarkable than all of this is the fact that, aged forty-nine, the Chevalier began a new life as a woman. After rumours began to circulate in 1770, d’Éon, who was living in England at the time, was subsequently taken to court, declared a woman and required to adopt female dress for the last thirty-two years of their life. Upon death, the body was examined and described as ‘unambiguously male’.[2] The reasons for d’Éon’s acceptance of a female identity instead of proving otherwise have been guessed at but never fully explained. Suggestions have ranged from the purely practical, such as the avoidance of assassination, to the deeply personal, such as the hypothesis that d’Éon was an example of a transgender individual avant la lettre.[3]

In around 1785, d’Éon wrote The Maiden of Tonnerre as an attempt to justify their decisions and lifestyle.[4] The intention was for this work to be translated into English and published, but the translation was not completed and the work remained unpublished until 2001. No French edition is currently available. The Maiden of Tonnerre contains a collection of semi-truths, letters, historical fiction and outright fibs claiming to be autobiographical, all tailored to maintain d’Éon’s self-image as a woman who lived as a man for the first forty-nine years of her life. Given this authorial intent, the literary persona of the Chevalière d’Éon, as portrayed in The Maiden of Tonnerre, will accordingly be referred to as ‘she/her’, while the real-life Chevalier d’Éon will continue to be referred to using the gender-neutral pronouns ‘they/their’.

Due to its hybrid nature, The Maiden of Tonnerre is something of a trans-genre text, existing at the crossroads of several literary genres just as its author existed at the crossroads of traditional sex and gender identities. In this work, the Chevalière outlines a conception of gender that is radically different from the stringent gender roles that are so often cited as typical of the late eighteenth century, attesting to a deep-seated psychological component to her embodied situation:

‘I had two personalities. My mind tended toward tranquillity, solitude, and study. Prudence told me that this was the wisest and simplest way to shield myself, but my heart loved the clash of weapons and the display of all the military drills. Unable to consult either man or woman, I consulted God and the Devil and, so as not to fall into the water, I jumped into the fire.’ (p.7)

D’Éon locates stereotypical eighteenth-century masculine and feminine gender roles as central to her anguish. Her hybrid psychological gender identity made up of ‘two personalities’ cannot bring itself to conform to the rigid gender roles society expects of a woman. The real-life d’Éon is likely to have encountered these gender roles as expressed in the famed writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of whom they were an avid follower. However, as will become clear, the two authors vehemently disagreed on key issues surrounding gender.

Engravings of the Chevalier and Chevalière d’Éon by Jean-Baptiste Bradel (c. 1780) which demonstrate a very different interpretation of gender ambiguity, namely that d’Éon is presented as two different people.

To exemplify this, we might recall Rousseau’s declarations in Émile that the ideal woman is ‘modeste en apparence’ and that ‘la femme est faite pour plaire et pour être subjuguée’.[5] Every time the Chevalière is reprimanded by others, it is for violating this strict Rousseauian conception of femininity, whether it be by wearing her dragoon uniform in public or initially refusing to wear dresses when ordered to by the king (p.28-32). It is telling that d’Éon associates her modest, traditionally feminine side with her ‘mind’, while her traditionally masculine military side is associated with her ‘heart’. Not only does d’Éon mingle gender roles, she completely inverts them, reversing the accepted eighteenth-century dichotomy of ‘à l’homme le rationnel, à la femme la sensibilité’.[6]

Indeed, ‘man’ and ‘woman’, ‘god’ and ‘devil’, ‘water’ and ‘fire’ all refer to binary logic founded on the principle of ‘either/or’, which, as d’Éon makes clear, offers no consolation to her unique gendered condition. This claim to singularity resembles Rousseau’s very own conception of the unique self as put forward in his autobiography, the Confessions.[7] It is d’Éon’s singularly non-conforming ‘style of life’ and ‘personality’ that causes her to resent the assimilation imposed upon her when the ladies of the court ‘have [her] play all the roles necessary to teach [her] how to behave at all times like an important noblewoman’ (p.17). This coerced assimilation is comparable to how transgender people are often compelled to ‘pass’ (either fully masculinise or fully feminise their appearance) to minimise their visibility by conforming to modern social custom. Likewise, d’Éon describes these predetermined roles as ‘chains’ and ‘shackles’ and likens the conformity they demand to ‘slavery’, desperately pleading, ‘Just leave me as I am’ (p.74, 62). In using this lexis, d’Éon draws upon yet another Rousseauian concept: the opposition between free will and slavery laid out in Du Contrat social. Thus, d’Éon appropriates two key notions found in Rousseau’s autobiographical and political writings to argue against Jean-Jacques (and much of eighteenth-century French society) on the topic of predetermined, fixed gender roles.

The translated edition of d’Éon’s ‘autobiography’, The Maiden of Tonnerre: The Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and the Chevalière d’Éon, by Roland A. Champagne, Nina Ekstein and Gary Kates (London, 2001).

The Chevalière instead affirms that, as a unique individual, she should be left to interpret gender in her own unique way. D’Éon consequently lives as a woman but performs some aspects of masculinity rather than aligning herself neatly with one or the other. So, if the one concrete conclusion we arrive at is the apparent lack of any concrete conclusion, then it is worth emphasising how d’Éon’s primary concern is pointing out the flaws in neat binary logic that operates with categories like man or woman, real or fake, body or mind and sex or gender. D’Éon’s text reminds us that the Enlightenment should be viewed as an ongoing project rather than an arrogant quest for definitive answers, and, in the absence of sufficient understanding of a phenomenon, it is vital to avoid pre-emptively passing judgement.

This sentiment of not rushing to conclusions when faced with something we do not fully understand is as relevant today as it was in the late eighteenth century. Transgender academics such as Stephen Whittle, Susan Stryker and Eli Clare continue to argue against the compulsion to pathologise trans bodies as undesirably defective. Furthermore, trans individuals are increasingly questioning whether the deeply held self-understandings they have can be entirely due to nurture and environment, denouncing the ‘diarrhoea of theories’ used to conveniently explain away their identity.[8] As The Maiden of Tonnerre makes abundantly clear, these ideas about gender identity are not some passing fad that sprung up in the 1990s. They have, in fact, been around for centuries, and remarkably similar arguments are made, and ignored, in each instance. Now, as before, without stable facts to work with, we must refrain from hastily jumping to conclusions: we begin to question what we think we know, recalling a humbler side to the Enlightenment that is often forgotten.

– Sam Bailey

[1] For a biography of d’Éon, see Gary Kates, Monsieur d’Éon is a Woman: a tale of political intrigue and sexual masquerade (London, 2001).

[2] Roland A. Champagne, Nina Ekstein and Gary Kates trans. and eds., The Maiden of Tonnerre: The Vicissitudes of the Chevalier and the Chevalière d’Éon (London, 2001), p. xvi. All page numbers in our blog post refer to this edition.

[3] These and many other theories are explored in The Chevalier d’Éon and his Worlds: Gender, Espionage and Politics in the Eighteenth Century, eds. Simon Burrows, Jonathan Conlin, Russell Goulbourne, Valerie Mainz (London, 2010).

[4] Tonnerre is d’Éon’s place of birth. The title is an adaptation of la pucelle d’Orléans, Joan of Arc’s French nickname.

[5] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes de J.-J. Rousseau, vol. 2 (Paris, 1852), p. 659, p. 632.

[6] Raymond Trousson, ‘Préface’, in Romans de femmes du XVIIe siècle, ed. Trousson (Paris, 1996), pp. I-XXXIII (p. XV).

[7] For more on this, see Anna Clarke, ‘The Chevalier d’Éon, Rousseau, and New Ideas of Gender, Sex and the Self in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in The Chevalier d’Éon, eds. Burrows et al, pp. 187-200.

[8] Stephen Whittle, ‘Foreword’, in The Transgender Studies Reader, ed. Whittle and Stryker (London, 2006), pp. i-xvi (p. xiii).

Rousseau on stage: Vitam impendere vero

Fig. 1: João Luís Paixão in the role of Pygmalion, in the research project Performing Premodernity’s production of Rousseau’s Pygmalion at the Castle Theatre of Český Krumlov 2015. Photo by Maria Gullstam.

In the Lettre à d’Alembert (1758) – Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s critical assessment of the Parisian theatre – the philosopher writes in a footnote: ‘[J]’ai presque toujours écrit contre mon propre intérêt. Vitam impendere vero. Voilà la devise que j’ai choisie et dont je me sens digne. Lecteurs, je puis me tromper moi-même, mais non pas vous tromper volontairement; craignez mes erreurs et non ma mauvaise foi. L’amour du bien public est la seule passion qui me fait parler au public.’[1] Rousseau claims to be writing with the ‘public good’ in mind, even though it might go against his own interests – such as his love for theatre and opera. When approaching Rousseau’s writings for and about theatre, we need to consider the often forgotten parts of his œuvre, as well as highlight the relation between these works and his political, musical, and literary writings. There are still numerous links to be made, and the task of making the connections is not always easy.

An illustrative example of this is Rousseau’s essay De l’imitation théâtrale – a translation and adaptation of parts of the tenth book of Plato’s Republic, with personal annotations by Rousseau himself. Originally, the text was composed in connection with the Lettre à d’Alembert in 1758, and Rousseau planned to publish the two texts together. However, he writes in the preface of De l’imitation théâtrale, ‘n’ayant pu commodément l’y faire entrer, je le mis à part pour être employé ailleurs’.[2] A few years later, Rousseau finds himself in a similar situation when publishing Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloïse in 1761. Its preface in dialogue form had to be published separately from the novel, ‘sa forme et sa longueur ne m’ayant permis de le mettre que par extrait à la tête du recueil’, as its author writes in the avertissement of the separate publication.[3] Interestingly, he then attempts to publish it together with De l’imitation théâtrale, though without success.

Fig. 2: Laila Cathleen Neuman as Galathée and João Luís Paixão as Pygmalion, in the research project Performing Premodernity’s production of Rousseau’s Pygmalion at the House of Nobility (Riddarhuset) in Stockholm 2016. Photo by Maria Gullstam.

Two years later, in 1763, Rousseau has new plans to publish his ‘extrait de divers endroits où Platon traite de l’Imitation théatrâle’[4] – this time together with the Essai sur l’origine des langues and Lévite d’Ephraïm, and he starts to write a preface (Projet de préface).[5] But, just as in previous attempts, this third initiative to publish De l’imitation théâtrale is never finalised. Instead, the text is published on its own in 1764.

Rousseau saw fit to publish his essay on theatrical imitation together with texts ranging over a whole spectrum of topics and genres: his apparently complex treatise the Lettre à d’Alembert – criticising the Parisian theatre from both an anthropological and a moral perspective; the Préface to his novel Julie, ou La Nouvelle Heloïse, which when published separately in 1761 carried the subtitle Entretien sur les romans; further, the Essai sur l’origine des langues, which has strong connections to both Rousseau’s political writings (through its kinship with the Discours sur l’inégalité) and his writings on music (parts of the Essai started to develop in his unpublished response to Rameau’s accusations in the Erreurs sur la musique dans ‘l’Encyclopédie’); and finally, his moral tale Le Lévite d’Ephraïm. Thus, Rousseau could see connections between his essay on theatrical imitation and all these works. This is just one example amongst his many works for or about theatre that need to be reincorporated in his œuvre as a whole.

Rousseau loved drama passionately, he was aware of the consequences of attacking the Parisian theatre, and yet he criticised the Comédie-Française so fiercely in his Lettre à d’Alembert that this work’s inflammatory reputation still echoes in the twenty-first century. The Lettre’s notoriety has kept most theatre scholars from further exploring Rousseau’s own works for the stage, while the widespread labelling of Rousseau as an homme à paradoxes has every so often justified loose ends within Rousseau studies on the topic. Rousseau’s seemingly dual position in relation to theatre does entail numerous challenges. Our volume Rousseau on stage: playwright, musician, spectator does not claim to resolve these challenges, but to aim, nonetheless, at probing certain difficulties and starting to unravel others. The point of departure for Rousseau on stage is Rousseau’s passionate and double relationship to theatre as expressed and elaborated in the Lettre à d’Alembert, his theoretical texts on music and opera, his compositions for the stage and many descriptions of his experiences as a theatre-goer. Its authors and editors hope to add to the recent increasing interest in Rousseau as playwright, musician and spectator.

– Maria Gullstam and Michael O’Dea

[1] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Œuvres complètes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, 5 vols (Paris, 1959-1895) (henceforward OC), vol.5, Lettre à d’Alembert, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Jean Rousset, p.120.

[2] Rousseau, OC, vol.5, ‘Avertissement’ in De l’imitation théâtrale, ed. André Wyss, p.1195.

[3] Rousseau, OC, vol.2, Préface de la Nouvelle Héloïse, ou Entretien sur les romans, ‘Avertissement’, ed. Henri Coulet and Bernard Guyon, p.9.

[4] Rousseau, OC, vol.5, ‘Avertissement’ in De l’imitation théâtrale, p.1195.

[5] Neuchâtel, Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, MS R 91.

Rousseau and the perils of public address

In December 1776, the Courrier d’Avignon reported a curious incident in Ménilmontant: a supposedly mortal collision between the famed philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and…a great dane.

‘Rousseau, qui se promène souvent seul à la campagne, a été renversé il y a quelques jours par un de ces chiens Danois qui précèdent les equipages lestes: on dit qu’il est très malade de cette chute, et on ne peut trop deplorer son sort d’avoir été écrasé par des chiens.’ (no.97, December 3, 1776, p.4).

‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau est mort des suites de sa chute. Il a vécu pauvre, il est mort misérablement; et la singularité de sa destinée  l’a accompagné jusqu’au tombeau.’ (no.102, December 20, 1776, p.4).

Jean Jacques François Le Barbier, Brusselles (éd. de Londres), 1783, ‘Rousseau apportant le manuscrit des “Dialogues” à Notre-Dame de Paris’. Illustration pour Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques dans Œuvres de J.-J. Rousseau.

Rousseau, as we know, died a few years later in 1778 – the event in Ménilmontant leaving him not mortally injured, but with a face bruised and beaten. The mistaken reports in the Courrier d’Avignon prompted his Rêveries’ critical assessment of eighteenth-century public culture and, in particular, the social and discursive mechanisms that permitted the spread of rumours, an absence of fact-checking, and sensationalism. It was hardly, however, his first diagnosis of ‘fake news’.

In the very era when the postal system and print culture brought people together in ‘imagined communities’, Rousseau worried deeply about the risks of dead letters. Although Rousseau’s colleague, Diderot, was convinced that the two most important technological developments in early modern Europe were the postal system and print culture (enthusing to his sculptor friend Falconet, ‘Il y a deux grandes inventions: la poste qui porte en six semaines une découverte de l’équateur au pôle, et l’imprimerie qui la fixe à jamais’), Rousseau was much more leery of the new information age.

A critical assessment of the Enlightenment’s faith in transparent communication must attune itself to the persistent traces of ancient modes of rhetoric: the traditions of doublespeak and dog-whistle politics. Rousseau, sensitive to the tensions between an esoteric, libertine tradition of communication and an intellectual climate of social progressivism, frames the debate in a series of vexed questions: for whom should I be writing? what is a public and what can it do? Despairing over the absence of any true ‘ami de la vérité’, Rousseau heads to Notre Dame cathedral to deposit, in a famous acte manqué, a copy of Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques on the altar of the church.

‘En entrant, mes yeux furent frappés d’une grille que je n’avois jamais remarquée et qui séparoit de la nef la partie des bas-cotés qui entoure le Chœur. Les portes de cette grille étoient fermées, de sorte que cette partie des bas-cotés dont je viens de parler étoit vuide & qu’il m’étoit impossible d’y pénétrer. Au moment où j’apperçus cette grille je fus saisi d’un vertige comme un homme qui tombe en apoplexie, et ce vertige fut suivi d’un bouleversement dans tout mon être, tel que je ne me souviens pas d’en avoir éprouvé jamais un pareil. L’Eglise me parut avoir tellement changé de face que doutant si j’étois bien dans Notre-Dame, je cherchois avec effort à me reconnoître et à mieux discerner ce que je voyois. Depuis trente six ans que je suis à Paris, j’étois venu fort souvent et en divers tems à Notre Dame; j’avois toujours vu le passage autour du Chœur ouvert et libre, et je n’y avois même jamais remarqué ni grille ni porte autant qu’il put m’en souvenir.’ (‘Histoire du précédent écrit’, Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques, OC, t.1, p. 980).

He notes that in spite of having been in the church scores of times, he had failed to notice the barrier blocking access to the altar. The unpredictability of the reading public – indeed, the plurality of publics and their occasionally indeterminate nature – makes literary reception a chancy affair. In the very loud and crowded market of ideas of the French Enlightenment, the rhetorical gesture of address underscored the vulnerability and power of the modern writer. In my study, Jean-Jacques Rousseau face au public: problèmes d’identité, I explore the vagaries of public communication during the Enlightenment and the dialectical tensions between shadow and illumination, musicality and transparency.

As an insider of the Encyclopédie project turned outsider, Rousseau understood the complexities of the new social and ethical demands placed on the philosophes in a way that is fundamentally different from his contemporaries. By noting the unpredictability and inconsistencies of systems of public address (with readers and spectators moved alternatively by emotions, reason, flows of information, and the major works of a few key power players), Rousseau proposes alternative ways of thinking about communication and the circulation of information. He places value on economies of speech that include silence, babil (babbling), laconism, and musicality – modes of communication that contest conventional modalities of rationality and social exchange. His work is thus an invitation to consider the precarity of address within modern social life and, consequently, the politics of truth at stake in symbolic exchange.

– Masano Yamashita

My name is nobody

Debate on authorship, pseudonymity and anonymity has been rife in the past few days in the wake of the revelation of Italian novelist Elena Ferrante’s true identity. What is surprising, one could argue, is that the best-selling author’s unmasking took so long. How could a hugely popular writer hope to keep her identity secret in a celebrity-obsessed age when anonymous publishing is very much the exception?

But it was not always so. The expectations of the reading public were very different in eighteenth-century Europe, a time when most books were published without any mention of their author’s name at all. The cover of anonymity allowed for levels of audacity, risk-taking and mischief that would have been unthinkable otherwise, but it also made possible a fair amount of what we would nowadays call “trolling”.

An unlikely pairing (Image Gallica, 1794-1799, artist unknown)

As observed in an earlier post on this blog, Voltaire was not averse to criticising and mocking his enemies under assumed names (in that particular instance playfully borrowing the identity of his devoted secretary, Jean-Louis Wagnière). One would be hard pressed to find the slightest trace of playfulness in the Sentiment des citoyens though.[1] This short pamphlet was published anonymously in December 1764 and its target was none other than Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who had published – very much under his own name – the Lettres écrites de la montagne only a few weeks earlier.

In the ‘Lettre cinquième’ of his book, Rousseau had advised Voltaire to put into practice that “spirit of tolerance that he preaches relentlessly” and, crucially, he had outed the philosophe as the author of the fiercely anti-Christian Sermon des cinquante, which had been published anonymously in 1752. Voltaire did not take kindly to what he saw as an unforgivable act of treachery, and retaliated with the scathing Sentiment des citoyens, an excoriating ad hominem attack in which he revealed, among other things, that Rousseau had abandoned his children. This attack ended with what can be construed as an exhortation to the Genevan authorities to eliminate Rousseau physically for sowing the seeds of sedition in the Republic.

Just as he always denied being the author of the Sermon des cinquante, Voltaire never admitted to having penned the Sentiment des citoyens, and he was very much amused by Rousseau’s misattribution of the pamphlet to Jacob Vernes, which he did his best to propagate. Central to this episode was of course the deep detestation that the two men had for each other, arising from very different temperaments and worldviews; but, as Jean Sgard explains in his preface to volume 58 of the Complete Works of Voltaire, the fundamentally irreconcilable conceptions of authorship held by the two writers inevitably placed them on a collision course.

– Georges Pilard

[1] Just published in volume 58 of the Complete Works of Voltaire.