Julie, or, The new Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps PDF
Preview Julie, or, The new Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps
Julie, Or, The New Heloise : Letters of Two title: Lovers Who Live in a Small Town At the Foot of the Alps Works Rousseau, Jean-Jacques.; Stewart, Philip.; author: Vachâe, Jean. publisher: University Press of New England isbn10 | asin: 0874518253 print isbn13: 9780874518252 ebook isbn13: 9780585231617 language: English subject publication date: 1997 lcc: PQ2034.A3 1990 vol. 6eb ddc: 848/.509 s subject: Page iii Julie, or the New Heloise Letters of Two Lovers who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF ROUSSEAU Vol.6 Jean-Jacques Rousseau Translated and Annotated by Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, Series Editors Dartmouth College Published by University Press of New England Hanover and London Page iv DARTMOUTH COLLEGE Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755 (c) 1997 by the Trustees of Dartmouth College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1 CIP data appear at the end of the book This publication has received support from Pro Helvetia and the Florence Gould Foundation. Page v CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Introduction ix Note on the Translation xxvii Notes on the Text and Engravings xxxi Julie, or the New Heloise 1 Preface 3 Preface of the New Heloise or Conversation about 5 Novels between the Editor and a Man of Letters Part One 25 Part Two 155 Part Three 252 Part Four 327 Part Five 429 Part Six 523 Appendixes I. The Loves of Milord Edward Bomston 613 II. Subjects of the Engravings 621 III. Narrative Chronology 629 IV. Glossary 631 V. Table of the Letters and Their Contents 634 VI. Bibliography 649 Editions in French 649 Editions in English 650 Studies in English 650 Editors' Notes 653 Index 725 Page vii ILLUSTRATIONS Original half-title of Julie xxiii Original title pages of Julie xxv Map of the Vaud Country and surrounding Region 23 1. Love's first kiss 53 2. The heroism of valor 134 3. Ah, young Man! to your Benefactor! 179 4. Shame and remorse avenge love profaned 243 5. The inoculation of love 273 6. Paternal force 287 7. The confidence of beautiful souls 346 8. Monuments of bygone love 426 9. Morning in the English manner 458 10. Whither wilst thou flee? The Phantom is in thine 504 heart 11. Claire, Claire! Children sing at night when they are 528 afraid 12. [Untitled] 605 Page ix INTRODUCTION After the tragic passions that characterized the novels of Mme de Lafayette in the late seventeenth century and Antoine Prévost in the 1730s and 1740s, many of the most prominent works in France by the mid-eighteenth century were quintessentially Parisian, featuring wit and elegance. In them love typically took the form of successive, often furtive affairs. Rousseau's novel, unlike those of much-read contemporaries such as Marivaux, Duclos, and Crébillon, had its source in an intense need for genuine sentiment and a profound conviction that there exist natural values yet uncorrupted in some remote places. Sentiment was already the newest vogue in the theatre, with the success of comédie larmoyante (tearful comedy) in the 1740s, soon leading to "serious comedy" or "bourgeois tragedy" in the late 1750s; but Rousseau had no confidence in the efficacy of a brief spate of superficial emotion produced in such an artificial and morally compromised place as the theatre: this he makes quite clear in the Letter to M. d'Alembert. The idea of spinning a long novel around such ostensibly unlikely material was doubtless inspired in large part by Richardson, but the feelings and opinions are Rousseau's own and derive from those elaborated in his early works. And what he did with them was going to affect profoundly the esthetic sensibilities of generations to come, besides reinforcing his social and political theories in ways that would permanently frame discourse about individuality, social organization, political power, and social control. As he relates in his Confessions, Rousseau had planned to write a systematic treatise (which he eventually abandoned) called La Morale sensitive, ou le matérialisme du Sage, 1 in which he would have worked out the relationships between physical environment, feeling, and morality. It never took focus, which is not surprising because materialism was fundamentally inimical to Rousseau, and much of its unfulfilled energy may well have gone into Julie. Nevertheless, at the outset Julie was not essentially an intellectual undertaking although it was certainly an ideological one. It was born of love and emotion; the characters and setting came before the plot, which gradually took shape as they wrote to each other (Collected Writings, V. 361-362). Their purity of soul was of a piece with the idyllic nature of the Swiss landscape. Virtue itself is not a gift of nature: it requires will, it is a kind of Page x heroism that overcomes obstacles; but one can be unspoiled in places where city vice has not yet penetrated, and thus be inclined to love virtue. A small group of characters is animated by a mutual assurance that they possess like values and cannot go wrong placing full faith in each other. In many ways the key to this underlying conviction is simplicity: just as unadorned melody is the clearest expression of the soul, rustic ways, uncluttered thoughts, honest morality, and pure sentiments all imply each other. These are the real subject of Julie, and this explains why Rousseau takes such pains in his prefaces to explain what kind of reader he can hope to move; for he insisted his novel was to be read, as it was written, with the heart. When he began Julie Rousseau was already well known for his two Discourses and musical works; during its writing he became even more so for his Letter to M. d'Alembert. The existence of this paradoxical and unorthodox novel by a man known for denouncing worldly culture was much bruited about in the two years separating its essential completion from its release in February of 1761. Rousseau evokes in his Confessions the keen air of expectancy with which it was awaited: "All of Paris was impatient to see this novel; the booksellers of the rue St. Jacques and at the Palais Royal were besieged by people who were asking for news about it." 2 It was snatched up and read avidly; one anecdote told by Rousseau helps to capture a general need this book seemed to answer: It was published at the beginning of Carnival. The peddler brought it to Madame the Princesse de Talmont one day when there was a ball at the Opera.3 After supping she had herself dressed to go to it, and she began to read the new Novel while awaiting the time. At midnight she ordered them to get the horses ready and continued to read. They came to tell her that her horses were ready; she gave no answer. Seeing that she was losing track of time, her servants came to notify her that it was two o'clock. There
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