Discussion Group: Confession's of J.J. Rousseau

[Buh4Bee]

I'm not finished with Book IV yet, but I still can only say I continue to grow to love Rousseau more and more. I'm sure not every reader feels this way about him and this is a matter of personal taste, however, I think he is fabulous.

Rousseau stated:
"for it is impossible for man,
and difficult even for nature herself, to surpass the riches of my
imagination."

This is what Rousseau thinks when he walks into the filth of Paris after he has carried with him an aggrandized vision of the mythical city. Meaning that his imagination of Paris is a better place to be than the Paris of reality.
I am charmed by the activity of his richness of his inner world that so often disappoints him when faced with reality. I wonder if he ever matures out of this coping mechanism?

[alexar]

I just found out I'm expecting my first baby.

Wonderful news! Congratulations!

After a long time trying and then something mysteriously happened around the last day of my school year.

Wonder what that could have been? ...

[Buh4Bee]

Alexar, the world is a great mystery and all I can say is I'm sure you had a course in the birds and bees. My bees just kept going in the wrong direction. Haha!

[Buh4Bee]

So I continue my soliloquy and finished Book IV. Rousseau has emerged as a young adult, about 20. It is nice to see his own self-awareness of his own immaturity.

"These long details of my early youth must have appeared trifling, and I
am sorry for it: though born a man, in a variety of instances, I was long
a child, and am so yet in many particulars."

Rousseau states this at the end of Book IV.

Rousseau returns to Madame Warrens who really is a mother/protector to him. She continues to take care of Rousseau as she sees it is her duty under the church.
"This, sir, is the poor young man I mentioned;
deign to protect him as long as he deserves it."

She gets hims a good job as a secretary to a surveyor. As their relationship unfolds there is nothing more there than an unusual friendship. Very sweet!

[Buh4Bee]

Book V- Rousseau and Madame Warrens have an affair. "Oh my Gawd! Can you believe this?"

Rousseau starts to mature and moves into a small house with the Madame at the end of the book. She's a real live Madame Bovary, an adulteress, and she loves Rousseau.

One should return to the text and see his reaction to the affair. He equates it to incest with his momma. Yuck! She's in her forties and Rousseau is early thirties. He is a virgin, I presume. He describes how she has aged, but in his eyes she is still the same, as when he first met her.

He details her instruction about intercourse as through discourse and encouragement. Personally, this is the point when I question the honesty of his recounting the real situation. There must be some truth to the inaccuracies of the Confessions. One would think, after all those years of pent up desire, he'd be an animal. This however, is not a genteel way to describe such condescensions, and Rousseau was very genteel and romantic.

So far this is the worst book for me. It's long and difficult to read. I found it hard to be sympathetic to any one character or side with Rousseau's warped or romantic notions of Madame Warrens or that of his world in general.

However, Rousseau is finally growing up, but I think he has an immature side that he will never out grow. Is that so wrong? I don't think so.