Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

First published:Les Confessions de J.-J. Rousseau, 1782, 1789 (English translation, 1783–1790)

Type of work: Autobiography

The Work

Jean-Jacques Rousseau undoubtedly succeeded in his effort to write an autobiography of such character that he could present himself before “the sovereign Judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, Thus have I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no crimes, added no virtues.” Rousseau’s revolutionary view of the human psyche led to the flowering of the autobiography as a form of expression. There are few examples before his. Rousseau’s Confessions (full title: The Confessions of J.-J. Rousseau) has been praised as perhaps the first instance of a writer’s being candid and honest with the world about the writer. The book became a model for what, paradoxically, is indeed an art form: being honest, telling all.

Only a person attempting to tell all would have revealed so frankly the sensual satisfaction he received from the spankings administered by Mlle Lambercier, the sister of the pastor at Bossey, who was his tutor. Only a writer finding satisfaction either in truth or self-abasement would have gone on to tell that his passion for being overpowered by women continued throughout his adult life: “To fall at the feet of an imperious mistress, obey her mandates, or implore pardon, were for me the most exquisite enjoyments; and the more my blood was inflamed by the efforts of a lively imagination, the more I acquired the appearance of a whining lover.” Having made this confession, Rousseau probably found it easier to tell of his extended affair with Madame de Warens at Annecy and of his experiences with his mistress and common-law wife, Thérèse Levasseur.

Rousseau records that he was born at Geneva in 1712, the son of Isaac Rousseau, a watchmaker, and Suzanne Bernard. His mother died at his birth, “the first of my misfortunes.” According to the son’s account of his father’s grief, Isaac Rousseau had mixed feelings toward his son, seeing in him an image of Suzanne and, at the same time, the cause of her death. Rousseau writes: “[N]or did he ever embrace me, but his sighs, the convulsive pressure of his arms, witnessed that a bitter regret mingled itself with his caresses. When he said to me, ’Jean Jacques, let us talk of your mother,’ my usual reply was, ’Yes, father, but then you know we shall cry,’ and immediately the tears started from his eyes.”

Rousseau describes his first experiences with reading. He turned to the romances that his mother had loved, and he and his father sometimes spent the entire night reading aloud alternately. His response to these books was almost entirely emotional, but he finally discovered other books in his grandfather’s library, works that demanded something from the intellect: Plutarch, Ovid, Molière, and others.

He describes with great affection how his Aunt Suzanne, his father’s sister, moved him with her singing; and he attributes his interest in music to her influence. After his stay at Bossey with Pastor Lambercier, Rousseau was apprenticed to an engraver, Abel Ducommun, in the hope that he would succeed better in the engraver’s workshop than he had with City Registrar Masseron, who had fired him after a brief trial. Ducommun is described as “a young man of a very violent and boorish character,” who was something of a tyrant, punishing Rousseau if he failed to return to the city before the gates were closed. Rousseau was by this time, according to his account, a liar and a petty thief, and without reluctance he stole his master’s tools in order to misplace them.

Returning from a Sunday walk with some companions, Rousseau found the city gates closing an hour before time. He ran to reach the bridge, but he was too late. Reluctant to be punished by the engraver, he suddenly decided to give up his apprenticeship.

Having left Geneva, Rousseau wandered aimlessly in the environs of the city, finally arriving at Confignon. There he was welcomed by the village curate, M. de Pontverre, who gave him a good meal and sent him on to Madame Louise de Warens at Annecy. Rousseau expected to find “a devout, forbidding old woman”; instead, he discovered “a face beaming with charms, fine blue eyes full of sweetness, a complexion whose whiteness dazzled the sight, the form of an enchanting neck.” He was sixteen, she was twenty-eight. She became something of a mother to him (he called her “Maman”) and something of a goddess, but within five years he was her lover, at her instigation. Her motive was to protect him and to initiate him into the mysteries of love. She explained what she intended and gave him eight days to think it over; her proposal was intellectually cool and morally motivated. Since Rousseau had long imagined the delights of making love to her, he spent the eight days enjoying thoughts more lively than ever; but when he finally found himself in her arms, he was miserable: “Was I happy? No: I felt I know not what invincible sadness which empoisoned my happiness: it seemed that I had committed an incest, and two or three times, pressing her eagerly in my arms, I deluged her bosom with my tears.”

Madame de Warens was at the same time involved with Claude Anet, a young peasant with a knowledge of herbs who had become one of her domestics. Before becoming intimate with Rousseau she had confessed to him that Anet was her lover, having been upset by Anet’s attempt to poison himself after a quarrel with her. Despite her generosity to the two young men, she was no wanton; her behavior was more a sign of friendship than of passion, and she was busy being an intelligent and gracious woman of the world.

Through her efforts Rousseau secured a position registering land for the king in the office at Chambery. His interest in music, however, led him to give more and more time to arranging concerts and giving music lessons; he gave up his job in the survey office. This was the turning point of his life, the decision that threw him into the society of his times and made possible his growing familiarity with the world of music and letters. His alliance with Madame de Warens continued, but the alliance was no longer of an intimate sort, for he had been supplanted by Winzenreid de Courtilles during their stay at Les Charmettes. Winzenreid came on the scene after the first idyllic summer, a period in his life that Rousseau describes as “the short happiness of my life.” He tells of rising with the sun, walking through the woods, over the hills, and along the valley; his delight in nature is evident, and his theories concerning natural man become comprehensible. On his arrival Winzenreid took over physical chores and was forever walking about with a hatchet or a pickax; for all practical purposes Rousseau’s close relationship with Madame de Warens was finished, even if a kind of filial affection on his part survived. He describes other adventures in love, and although some of them gave him extreme pleasure, he never found another “Maman.”

Rousseau, having invented a new musical notation, went to Paris hoping to convince others of its value. The system was dismissed as unoriginal and too difficult, but Rousseau had by that time been introduced to Parisian society and was known as a young philosopher as well as a writer of poetry and operas. He received an appointment as secretary to the French ambassador at Venice, but he and M. de Montaigu irritated each other and he left his post about a year later.

Returning to Paris, Rousseau became involved with the illustrious circle containing the encyclopedist Diderot, Friedrich Melchior Grimm, and Mme Louise d’Epinay. He later became involved in a bitter quarrel with all three, stemming from a remark in a play by Diderot, but Rousseau was reconciled with Diderot and continued the novel he was writing at the time, Julie: Ou, La Nouvelle Héloïse(1761; The New Héloïse). The account of the quarrel and the letters that marked its progress are among the liveliest parts of the Confessions.

As important an event as any in Rousseau’s life was his meeting with Thérèse Levasseur, a tailor between twenty-two and twenty-three years of age, with a “lively yet charming look.” Rousseau reports, “At first, amusement was my only object,” but in making love to her he found that he was happy and that she was a suitable successor to “Maman.” Despite the difficulties put in his way by her mother, and despite the fact that his attempts to improve her mind were useless, he was satisfied with her as his companion. She bore him five children who were sent to the foundling hospital against Thérèse’s will and to Rousseau’s subsequent regret.

Rousseau describes the moment on the road to Vincennes when the question proposed by the Academy of Dijon—“Has the progress of sciences and arts contributed to corrupt or purify morals?”—so struck him that he “seemed to behold another world.” The discourse that resulted from his inspired moment won him the prize and brought him fame. Yet it may be that here, as elsewhere in the Confessions, the actual circumstances have been considerably altered by a romantic and forgetful author.

The Confessions carries the account of Rousseau’s life to the point when, having been asked to leave Bern by the ecclesiastical authorities as a result of the uproar over Émile: Ou, De l’éducation (1762; Émile: Or, Education, 1911), he set off for England, where David Hume had offered him asylum.

Rousseau’s Confessions offers a personal account of the experiences of a great writer. The events that history notes are mentioned—his literary triumphs; his early conversion; his reconversion; his romance with Madame d’Houdetot; his quarrels with Voltaire, Diderot, and churchmen; his musical successes—but they are all transformed by the passionate perspective from which Rousseau, writing years after most of the events he describes, imagines his own past. Confessions leaves the reader with the intimate knowledge of a human being, full of faults and passions, but driven by ambition and ability to a significant position in the history of literature. Confessions has, since its publication, been a model for the artistic endeavor of the confession.

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