Voltaire ended an old era, while Rousseau ushered in a new era.
- Goethe
The French genius Jean-Jacques Rousseau was by no means a normal man to be liked by the masses.
This intellectual giant, which exists in the romantic current in history textbooks, is also one of the most grotesque and strange flowers in the garden of Western culture.
He was embarrassed and embattled before his death, but after his death, he became famous and admired by the world. Professor Zhao Lin, a famous national teacher, gave him an evaluation in "The Soul of Romance: Jean-Jacques Rousseau":
Rousseau is a link between the sublime and the despicable, the virtuous and the wicked, and he spent his life wandering between these two extremes, jumping from one breakpoint to another. He settled in the abyss of filth, but he always looked up at the clear blue sky above his head.
Professor Zhao Lin reproduced Rousseau's agitated and wild emotional world and devious ideological style in a prose tone, wrote Rousseau's amorous, bumpy and brilliant life with deep affection, and conducted in-depth analysis of Rousseau's bumpy life, mental journey, theoretical contradictions, romantic feelings, etc., vividly showing a pure romantic soul.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="39" >1, a nightmarish life, but a shocking flower</h1>
I want to expose the true face of a person to the world, and this person is me.
— The first part of Rousseau's Confessions
To see through "The Soul of Romance: Jean-Jacques Rousseau" and understand Rousseau's brilliant and bumpy life, you first need to clear the timeline.
On June 28, 1712, Rousseau was born in a family of watchmakers in Geneva, Switzerland, where his mother died prematurely due to difficult childbirth, and his brother ran away from home to gain the favor of his father.
Until Rousseau's father left Geneva because of false accusations, Rousseau had to be sent to the Baussé countryside, which also marked Rousseau's pursuit of a beautiful natural life.
Unexpectedly, however, this short, carefree childhood turned out to be Rousseau's few moments of relaxation and precious memories. Since then, he has begun a hard life that is destined to be a life of upheaval and displacement.
In 1725, at the age of 13, Rousseau first followed Mr. Maslon's lawyer secretary, and then switched to du Camman, a parts engraver, who did not learn the serious skills, but learned greed, concealment, lying, theft and various despicable acts.
In 1728, the young Rousseau began to wander alone, and met the gentle and kind lady Of Warren in Annecy, which had a decisive impact on the fate of his life.
For the next three years, Rousseau wandered between italian, Swiss, and French cities.
In 1742, at the age of 30, Rousseau decided to leave his comfort zone and go to Paris to start an independent life. He enthusiastically carried his original simple notation, which was not accepted by the public.
The impoverished Rousseau had to move to the secluded Hotel Saint-Quentin and successfully met the maid, Delles Le Vasser, and unexpectedly, this encounter was a lifetime.
It has to be mentioned that no matter what situation he is in, Rousseau has always insisted on reading and thinking.
In 1749, Rousseau became famous for his essay "Whether the Progress of Science and Art Contributes to the Customs of Dunhua" at the Dijon Business School, which also opened the prelude to Rousseau's cynical and fierce social criticism.
In 1753, the Dijon School of Business again published the essay "The Origin of Human Inequality", in which Rousseau scanned the crowd with a prophetic gaze and called for truth. However, his shocking ideas were exactly the opposite of the theories preached by the church, and he was even ridiculed by Voltaire, and from then on, the two turned against each other.
In 1756, Rousseau bid farewell to the hustle and bustle of Paris, lived in seclusion in the Montmorency Forest, immersed in the tranquility and peace of nature, and spent more than a year of idyllic and leisurely pastoral life.
In 1758, Rousseau and Diderot broke openly, hovering in poverty, sickness, and melancholy.
In 1762, Less than 20 days after its publication, Rousseau's cherished Emile was publicly burned down in front of the palace building of the Palace of Justice in Paris, and Rousseau was also wanted, fleeing from Paris, Geneva, Bern, and England.
In 1768, at the age of 56, Rousseau and Wasser finally married after many years of living together.
In May 1778, Voltaire died. Rousseau died on July 2, 1778.
This "capitalized man" who has devoted his life to the pursuit of truth, leaving behind such ideological masterpieces as "The Theory of the Social Contract", "On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality", and "Emile", was denounced as a madman by the frivolous and vain French elite before his death, and was slandered and persecuted, but after his death, he received unprecedented great glory, and was praised as "the ideological pioneer of the French Revolution in the 18th century" and "one of the representative figures of the Enlightenment".
A simple schematic of "Rousseau's Life"
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="46" >2, pure love experience, ingenious efforts and protests</h1>
It is an indisputable fact that love, like all other passions, has only reached the level of fanaticism in society that often brings disasters to man.
—Rousseau, On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality
In addition to his great ideas known all over the world, Rousseau also had his magical love experience, which mainly consisted of 4 experiences:
In his youth he was madly unrequited with Miss De Filsson, in his youth he had a haunting love affair with Madame Warren in Annecy, in middle age he had a platonic holy love affair with Madame Udeto, and in his lifelong attachment to Dellees le Vasser.
Rousseau's love experience has a significant feature: the object of love is older than him, and there are both sexual colors and a desire for maternal caresses in love.
All this is related to Rousseau's mother, who had never seen a gentle mother and had heard too much about her in his father's memories, so the "mother" had always lived in his imagination.
In this unique nostalgia, Rousseau constantly idealized the image of his mother, and infinitely longed for this kind of maternal love that had never been appreciated. Especially when ambiguous with Madame Warren, Rousseau would affectionately call her "Mother", full of attachment between mother and child and entanglement between lovers.
Relatively speaking, the love between Rousseau and Vasser is relatively flat, but the companionship and care that are inseparable are more sincere, which is precisely the sincere respect and heartfelt human true feelings that the impetuous high society lacks. This may also be an important factor in Rousseau's choice to marry Vasser.
This silent cry is Rousseau's unremitting effort to confront this generally depraved state, and it is also a creative protest against the universally depraved love life of high society.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="59" >3, Rousseau's romanticism blooms in the beauty of nature and the flower of emotion</h1>
Man is born free, but he is always in chains. - Rousseau, The Social Contract
Advocating rustic nature and celebrating sincere emotions is the tone of Rousseau's aesthetic thought. This aesthetic idea of Rousseau is both a naturalistic aesthetic and a romantic aesthetic.
At first, when he lived in Geneva, Rousseau developed a love of knowledge and a noble yearning; after coming to the countryside of Baussé, he began to walk into the world of nature, showing his feelings for nature and cherishing freedom.
And Rousseau has never hidden his "ambition", in his romantic pioneering work "New Eloise", he wrote about the charming natural scenery, so that nature, emotion, morality and the three are coordinated and mutually exciting, reaching a climax at the end of the story, touching the hearts of all romantics since the end of the 18th century.
Rousseau, who lived a life of upheaval and displacement, longed for love to pursue love, returned to nature, and advocated himself, was both a sage and a fighter.
He was spurned before he was born, but he was worshipped after death. He has ideas that transcend the times, but also weaknesses in human nature, all of which happen to show his sincerity to his soul.
All the humiliations of Rousseau in the world have been tasted, his flesh is crushed in the mud, but his spirit is high above the whole depraved real life, looking up at the stars in the abyss, becoming the hope of a universally desperate world.