Rousseau, Julie, or the New Heloise

There's a couple of things I found quite interesting reading in and around Rousseau's Julie, or the New Heloise.

Section I: Rousseau's milieu and its influence on later writers.

I see in Rousseau's emphasis on making the 'personal political' and the 'private public' what is seen later in the works of Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Gorky's emphasis on the life of the commoner. Rousseau has taken the life of relatively common people in Julie, Claire, and Saint-Preux and turned it into a complex melo-drama. In his opera, Le devin du viallge ("The Village Soothsayer"), Rousseau presents two otherwise ordinary people in love, Colin and Colette, and their inability to trust one another and raises it to a complex drama. The same can be said of the lives of Julie, Claire, and Saint-Preux: otherwise innocuous people whose pedestrian trials and tribulations revolving around love denied Rousseau raises into (700+ pages worth) of complex drama. This raising of the common to centre stage was not unknown before Rousseau did it, but Rousseau can be seen, because of his broad popularity and appeal as a turning point in raising the common to being a worthy subject of discussion.

Their private lives--until Rousseau a decidedly un-common topic--are made public. The shared, common, yet rarely discussed private tensions and conflicts of people were not seen as topic worthy of public discussion let alone consumption. It seemed to be a received wisdom that such topics simply were of little interest. Rousseau would change this. In Julie there is no great moral upheaval, great events, or renowned figures. There's only the lives of a few people and their conflicts; people who Rousseau's audience would be comprised watching their lives unfold before them. In this sense his characters are unifying: a group of everyman, and woman. It is also, at least in some respect, egalitarian in that, although the subjects in the opera were not people King Louis XV was likely to run into (perhaps over in his carriage...not that he'd stop), but the sensibilities that these characters struggled with would be one that king and queen--as well as miller's wife and miller--could identify with. That king and queen, miller's wife and miller, could all share in these 'private affairs' are shared--thus, by presenting characters as lowly as he does, Rousseau is levelling the playing field, as it were.

Rousseau, in making the private public, is also making the personal political. Readers do not have to look closely to see didactic messages in Rousseau's tale. The epistolary novel is, in fact, a roman a these: a novel with a thesis.

At the centre of the story the characters all struggle with being 'virtuous'. Julie, after her early tryst with Saint-Preux, struggles with being virtuous, but stands by virtue (to her detriment one could say) to her end. Julie, overall, keeps the corrupting forces of society at bay, unlike Saint-Preux who falls almost the minute he enters the city (or is liberated, depending on your point of view).

By exposing their personal lives, Rousseau is making political statements.

Before moving into the later writer's, I found it quite interesting that Rousseau--although he respected and appreciated the work of Moliere--viewd him as dealing with immoral sunjects. In this, I'm not so sure I agree with Rousseau as I see the work of Moliere, The Misanthrope, for example, and Rousseau's, Julie, as being quite similar in several key regards. Both authors present worlds that are everyday and common--even, perhaps, pedestrian; yet, these are also glimpses into the characters private and personal worlds. As such then, both are embarking on making the private public and, thus, the personal the political. Moliere simply did it before Rousseau using worlds, characters, and situations certainly more macabre and grotesque than Rousseau, but no less didactic.

Ralph Leigh, professor of French at Trinity, Cambridge notes the following and, in thinking of Leigh's words, I would ask that you read it twice: once thinking of his words as they certainly are reflective of Rousseau, but then a second times considering, for example, Moliere's, The Misanthrope, as I cannot see how the observations are equally applicable:

"Julie is first and foremost a novel: it is about human beings locked into a number of intractable situations, which drive them to the verge of nervous collapse, and, indeed, sometimes beyond. These situations involve five different people, most of them continually developing, expressing not only the immediacy of their reactions, but also constantly interpreting and reinterpreting their experiences (sometimes wrongly), sometimes contradicting one another, sometimes saying what they think and sometimes not, converted in the course of the work to values very different in many ways from those which they began."

I don't think one would want to take a comparison between Rousseau and Moliere to far or to deep; however, I do think they had more in common than at least Rousseau seemed willing to admit. In topic, in milieu of the characters--and, I would add, in at least some extent, in the authors 'project'--they appear to have things in common, at worse, they clearly overlap (I think the same can be said between Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade, of which I'll say a bit about pater). I think this quote by Leigh could also be read in conjunction with the authors whose work I suggest is influenced by Rousseau.

It is in this common, private, and personal sense, then, that I see the work of later writers who would present common characters front and centre in ways shifting between the pitiable (highlighting injustices) in Dickens, to glorification in Tolstoy, to the cautionary in Dostoyevsky, and, finally, wallowing in the misery as Gorky would do.

In Dickens' Hard Times, I am reminded of the characters Stephen Blackpool and Rachael. Both characters live amongst the lowest of the low within in the world of Coke Town. Yet, the deep respect between the two of them demonstrates a camaraderie and a virtue that exceeds any of those from the higher social castes. Stephen won't, irrespective of any great need he may have for support, even allow himself to be seen too long with Rachael for fear of tarnishing her name. His admiration for her is unwavering:

"He looked at her with some disappointment in his face, but with a respectful and patient conviction that she must be right in whatever she did. The experession was not lost upon her; she laid her hand lightly on his arm a moment as if to thank him for it."

Although the Russians would delve into the world of the commoner in ways Rousseau probably could not--or would not--ever conceive does not, I believe, deny the approach of his influence upon their works. I do not think readers have to look too far into the likes of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Gorky to see the influence of Rousseau and his emphasis on the common--it may be, perhaps, only vetigial in their works, but I believe it there none-the-less.

Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, like Rousseau's Julie, loves one man, Count Vronsky,, but is constrained (for awhile) to remain with Alexei Karenin, out of virtue to social norms as well as her own indecision. Although Anna does decide on the affair with Vronsky, we may see in her decision the fate that may have awaited Julie and Saint-Pereux if the had decided to elope. In the end, like Julie (and foretelling Edna Pontillier yet to come in our readings), Anna's only real release is in death. Perhaps in Anna we see the unification of two separate people--Claire and Julie--into one..?

In Dostoyevsky's,  The Idiot, we meet Prince Lev Myshkin who find himself in the middle between two women--one kept and one virtuous. In his innocence and goodness ends in disaster and in the ironic position of him finding sanity inside the walls of a sanitarium. In his character we can perhaps see what a single-minded adherence to virtue can end in.

Finally, there's Maxin Gorky's, The Lower Depths. I see similarity him and Rousseau not so much in their characters per se, rather in the private and personal struggles each of the characters engages in, and struggles that are otherwise very common. Perhaps what these two authors share most commonly is their desire for an 'ethics of authenticity', or what Gorky would hold as a primacy of harsh truths over comforting lies. I think where Rousseau may, in this sense have balked is in taking such authenticity to its natural ends: self-destruction.

Certainly, in comparing these writers to Rousseau one would best not look for exact matches, rather the hints--the vestiges--of an approach that began with Rousseau and who follow a similar path, but blaze it into very different--if not radically different--territories.

Section II: Sharing at least some common ground with the Marquis de Sade.

I found two overlapping areas between Rousseau and the Marquis de Sade. On the one hand, there's the shared political conviction regarding the problem of property ownership.



Rousseau, in his Discourse On Inequality (1754), states that the "first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'This is mine,' and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody."


Although he was writing some 43 years after Rousseau (and was known to have read Rousseau), in his novel, Juliette, de Sade states that when "[t]racing the right of property back to its source, one infallibly arrives at usurpation. However, theft is only punished because it violates the right of property; but this right is itself nothing in origin but theft."

There is also the interesting--perhaps better stated as morbidly interesting--connection between Rousseau's self-confessed pleasure (Confessions, 1782) and interest in what de Sade would, in his writings, coin sado-masochism. Whether or not Rousseau's probable need to have Therese help him with his *gulp* ivory catheter (don't lie guys: every one of your flinched when you heard that!?!) could/can be seen as a possible fetish remains to be seen...figuratively speaking, of course!

In looking at the overlap between Rousseau and de Sade one must realize that the comparison is only superficial. As much as Voltaire heckled Rousseau's writings as being pretentious and pompous, de Sade went much further and completely inverted the character of Julie in his novel, Justine; and, further inverting the idea of goodness 'winning' in his novel, Juliette (much as Moliere's Alceste and Célimène do).

Section III: My kingdom for...viagra..?

As a final note, I think it is interesting, building on my comparing de Sade and Rousseau,when we note that Rousseau probably had significant problems with his kidneys and urinary system. In turn, it is quite likely that, given this condition, he would suffer at least sporadic bouts of sexual dysfunction. If we add to this Rousseaus conviction as presenting himself as text, and considering one of the two sub-titles to Julie is the New Heloise, I think it quite reasonable to see at least some of Rousseau's identification with this romanticized duo as not simply focusing on Heloise, but on himself as a Abelard. Abelard would, of course, have to find some solace in the Platonic love with Heloise after, to quote Austin Powers, his 'twigs and berries' were so unceremoniously lopped off (like the catheter doesn't make a guy flinch!?!), I think it equally reasonable to see--between Rousseau's predilection to sado-masochism in conjunction with his possible dysfunction (and, if not dysfunction, the fact that he would be quite vulnerable if it was, indeed, Therese who administered his catheters)--Rousseau as identifying figuratively with Abelard's literal castration.


Section IV: Final note

I think one of Rousseau's most interesting works is his Letter to M. d'Alembert (1758). I say interesting because it seems to highlight one, of the many, paradoxes that is reading (if not being) Jean Jacques Rousseau. In this letter Rousseau is disagreeing with d'Alembert regarding the opening and use of a theatre in Geneva. For a man so stepped in Salon culture, a writer, a musician, and a playwright (if we consider opera's writing aspect loosely for a moment) that he would describe the "artificial emotions" a danger that theatre represents. And, as such, that would, in turn, corrupt the minds and morality of that society.

Perhaps this shouldn't come as much of a surprise at it first seems, however. It is important to remember that even in the preface to his own novel, Rousseau states that he is critical of literature in general.

Like his characters, their situations, and the milieu's he chose to present them in, we need remember Leigh's comments that Rousseau's, Julie, is about "human beings locked into...intractable situations" that see these characters "interpreting and reinterpreting their experiences (sometimes wrongly)" [emphasis added]. If Rousseau the person was trying his best to re-present himself in and as a text, then such interpretations and reinterpretations of himself should neither be seen as contradictory nor surprising...

Descartes

In Progress [By this I mean I have notes and ongoing thoughts on a Word document that I've not finished and/or edited to my satisfaction...just in case a certain someone is raising an eyebrow in regards to what 'In Progress' means. I can, if need be, put these rough versions up however...just let me know]

Lear & Machiavelli

In Progress

Dante and Bunyan: Two (More) Guides to Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse

At first glance, it may seem flippant—if not outright ridiculous—to compare the world’s created by Dante and Bunyan to those of the zombie apocalypse. However, provided we move beyond the ‘hack and slash’, fangoria-style zombie stories (or those of more dubious content like the cannibal zombie sub-genre), those not faint of heart will find more going on here than meets the morbid eye. Upon closer inspection of the better zombie stories audiences come to find that the human themes, the conflicts,  and relationships—as well as the motivations behind the telling of these stories—continues a very long tradition of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature. 

Some of the zombie stories I would suggest as warranting closer inspection include the films: Night of the Living Dead (George Romero) and 28 Days Later (Danny Boyle--Warning: opening scene is graphic), and even Shaun of the Dead (Simon Pegg & Wright); the television series: The Walking Dead (Frank Darabont); the graphic novel: The Walking Dead (Robert Kirkman), upon which the television series is based; and, the novels:  The Rising (Brian Keene); Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection (Don Roff); Pontypool Changes Everything (Tony Burgess), later made into a film; and, even the more light-hearted, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (Seth Graeme-Smith). Amongst the most recent and, I’d argue, amongst the best is World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Max Brooks),  which arose out of The Zombie Survival Guide (Max Brooks) and evolved into The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, an excellent retrofit of zombie attacks throughout history—from the Stone Age, to Rome, and feudal Japan. The original book is being released as a film sometime in 2012, and is almost single-handedly responsible for the recent resurgence of this genre.

In this entry, for simplicity’s sake, I’ll be referring predominantly to Danny Boyle’s, 28 Days Later in discussing Dante’s, Inferno, and Bunyan’s, Pilgrim’s Progress (part one).

These stories—spread over hundreds of years—share common themes and devices. At their core they all share a concern—a pre-occupation—with the state of the world the creators existed in with an eye as to what lay in-store for humanity given our species’ frailties. All three are allegories as the deeper meanings within the stories reflect world’s beyond the texts themselves. As such, their messages speak to the moral, political, and/or social issues surrounding them. The stories often act as extended metaphors (conceits) carrying and evolving otherwise didactic lessons in more figurative than literal ways. Equally, many of the characters are symbolic, or are personifications of these more abstract ideas.

Where Dante and Bunyan represent societies more bound to religion and religious institutions, and where the ‘end times’ are singularly in the hands of God; Boyle, without excluding these realms, includes our secular institutions. Here the destructive power, for example, of nuclear weapons places  apocalyptic destruction within humanity’s hands. To the ‘original sin’ of our ancestors that assured our destruction (or salvation), Boyle has added hubris, hubris that began with Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein.

The world’s Dante and Bunyan navigated were, as Hobbes would reflect, “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Leviathan; Chap. 13, para. 9). It is within such a world that Dante’s and Bunyan’s allegorical narratives arose and, thus, are unsurprisingly a reflection of. During such times it should not be surprising to find that the faithful (or ‘chosen’) would come to the conclusion that humanity was doomed, and the world they existed in was evil. It should come as no less surprising that many would have held that the ‘end times’ were nigh; that God’s judgment--his wrath--would be visited upon the sinful, while rewarding the faithful and ushering in the ‘rapture’ would be both a comforting and a vindicating belief to hold. Who wouldn't, then, look earnestly for those ‘signs of the times’ heralding the ‘second coming’ (apocalypse) and ushering in the time of ‘The Great Tribulation’. The chosen would rise and everyone else would get their just deserts.

As fulfilling and comforting as this belief might seem to the faithful, it is reasonable to assume that as time marched on and the signs of the approaching apocalypse petered out leaving only run-of-the-mill plagues, wars, and natural disasters as always, that somewhere during the wait even the faithful would begin wondering (and worrying) as to who, exactly, were the ‘chosen’..? Dante's allegorical ‘circles of hell’--filled with his celebrity denizens-- and Christian’s journey encountering a myriad of human foibles and frailties, would reasonably provide some solace.

Certainly we wouldn’t be well served to take too literally the eschatology motivating Dante and Bunyan and simply shift it upon Boyle; however, as the saying goes, ‘the more things change, the more they stay the same.’ In Boyle’s world—our world—humanity has created massively destructive technologies, yet, in the face of such destructive forces of our own design,  we've come to unquestioningly accept policies like ‘mutually assured destruction' (M.A.D.). Worse, we believe that, in so doing, we're actually participating in the confrontation of these forces--adequately and reasonably--in fact, what we're doing is insane. So, where the ‘faithful’ of Dante and Bunyan's world looked around and wondered what it was, exactly, that had gotten into everyone else that left them so blind to the ‘signs’, we would today find the well-informed citizens who looks closely at such ‘solutions’ and finds him or her-self wondering the same thing. Whether it is God’s wrath or our own brinkmanship that results in the apocalypse, the one thing that those in-the-know can rest assured of is that Hobbes’ observation is very likely to come to pass.

In such times, faced with such suffering, degradation, turmoil, and insanity (what else can anyone call such hypocrisy of thought), what people seek is ‘hope’; a reason they can cling to so as to endure the suffering: because there's something better to come.

Dante is goes through hell so as to be made frightfully aware of what comes to the unfaithful. He is then shown paradiso so as to see the rewards that await those who endure this world's tribulations accordingly. In so doing he is given (and giving) hope. Christian is confronted by characters who represent the foibles, follies, and sins of the faithless (the un-chosen) and witnesses to what ends they come to. He is shown the reward for enduring his journey will see his being amongst the 'chosen' entering the ‘Celestial City’--with, of course, the help of his friend, Hopeful. 

Equally so, Boyle’s protagonist, Jim (Cillian Murphy) is faced with despair, hopelessness, callousness, forlornness, and cruelty as he meets other characters on his journey and as he tries to make sense of this post-apocalyptic world. Along this trail, Jim is confronted with tragedy, great suffering, senseless violence, and—in the ‘safe-haven’ of Maj. Henry West (Christopher Eccleston)—is confronted with a world perhaps even more insane than a world filled with zombies. Yet, through this all Jim consciously chooses to be optimistic even though at times such a stance risks his life; Jim chooses to hold to hope. And, in so doing, he influences the ‘worthy’ others to emulate and/or to follow him to a better place. Through his actions, in all he faces, and all those he influences, Jim transcends beyond hope (optimism) as a character trait. It is in this sense that we can see Jim as being more than the epitome of hope, rather as the personification of it. [The idea of Jim as the personification of 'hope', and as 28 Days Later as an allegory, is not my own, but my wife's insight. An insight that gave me a whole new appreciation of the zombie genre--thanks Allana.]

In the 20^th century and beyond the idea that God will like the cavalry to right the wrongs and save our skins is as overly simplistic a solution as it is unsatisfying a narrative. This isn’t simply the atheists’ view—although I am an atheist—it reflects a world where people have set higher expectations as to what constitutes satisfying answers and meaningful narratives to answer life’s larger questions. In today’s world we’re simply more credulous. Of course, there will be those who would argue that today's world is a world where most people inhabit the space somewhere between pessimism and outright cynicism.

I disagree with such an attitude.

Furthermore, I would hold that, at its core, such attitudes rest upon overly emotional and nostalgic perspectives, perspectives that choose to look backwards in the belief that, back 'there'--somewhere-- was once the ‘good old days’; or, perhaps, fail to realize (or admit) that the attributes they'd heap upon others they do so simply because these 'others' refuse to see it their way…more likely, it is a combination of both attitudes.


Either way, I hold that such attitudes as these belie an unwillingness--perhaps out of fear--to confront the ills of the world. Such people would dress their apathy and their withdrawal-from-the-world as being the received wisdom or as righteousness. Both perspectives are, in the end, pitiful excuses to hold in today’s world—this being said, we must not use the knowledge and awareness we have today as a mean of judging or understanding the past that Dante or Bunyan inhabited (to do so is to commit an ‘anachronism’).

Within many of the zombie apocalypse narratives you will find characters discussing God’s will, God's wrath, or whether or not it is the case that "God’s away on business." This does not represent a contradiction to all I've said. In fact, zombie stories would not be worthy of the deeper analysis I suggest they are if they were not to recognize the complexity of how humans react when confronted with such apocalyptic scenarios. In such situations there are going to be people who come to grace as well as those who will turn from it. However, the predominance of this narrative of faith (of salvation) is left as one amongst many, and is rarely answered in any clear manner (except, of course, for the recent Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins). The more representative and authentic  post-apocalyptic stories—irrespective of the mechanism of our species’ demise—are meaningful because they refuse to digress into simplistic deux ex machina solutions. In an era where the vast majority of the world’s population sat idly by while 11 million ‘undesirables’ (Jews, homosexuals, mentally handicapped, Romany gypsies, criminals, and communists) were herded up, tortured, denied their existence, and eventually murdered such apathy cannot—and should not—be entertained.

It is the same when we seek culprits to blame. It may have suited the world of Dante to hold Satan responsible, just as it suited Bunyan to rest blame on the shoulders of Beezelbub; however, for the same reasons we cannot accept the deus ex machina that is the salvation of our species from destruction, neither can we seek to blame demons or the devils for our failings. As the cartoon character, Pogo, so astutely observed: “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”


Perhaps we’ve simply outgrown such reductionist answers. This is not to suggest that faith in God is to be utterly discarded or ridiculed (although I hold no stock in such beliefs); rather, that in using God as an excuse for our inaction, or the Devil as the root of our evils, we're avoiding the reality that we're the architects of our own demise, and in recognizing this, perhaps of our own salvation.


The psychiatrists Stanley Milgram and Phillip Zimbardo hoped to better understand human evil (for there is no other kind of evil) by investigating the root causes of such atrocities as the Holocaust. When they found themselves glimpsing into that evil as something not rooted externally from us, but rather as part of us, they had the courage to accept this--no God or Devil here.


I would suggest that contemporary zombie narratives refuse to provide simple or homogenous solutions because it is common knowledge that the roots of evil are rooted in all of us. Modern audiences are aware of the fact that all that awaits the next attrocity is neither a demon nor a devil, but the right social circumstances to unfold and unleash this capacity from within us.. 

So we must search within ourselves for the answers and the reasons for surviving because simple survival is not reason enough. We need reasons; we need hope. In episode 3 (season 2), "Save the Last One," of The Walking Dead, Lori and Rick's son, Carl, is shot in an accident. In one powerful scene Carl's mother Lori challenges Rick to answer her as to why it wouldn't be better for Carl is they simply let him die peacefully and not have to continue to face what, at least as far as Lori sees it, amounts to little more than existing day-by-day on the raw edge of survival. Again, what meaning simple existence? Rick cannot provide an answer, and God is silent...

In 28 Days Later, the zombies of Jim’s world reflect some of the more negative qualities and characteristics of our species. In this world people literally eat one another alive and turn one another into their own depraved and deprived likenesses. The virus that ‘infects’ humanity is perhaps the only obvious symbol in the film: it is simply called ‘Rage’. Humanity is infected by its own hubris. On the one hand, are the scientists playing god and who rationalize away the suffering they cause other creatures as being for the greater good; While, on the other hand, the righteous and zealous animal rights/eco-activist's disregard the warnings of the scientist that the animals they wish to 'liberate' are infected. The activists justifying their actions as also representing the ‘greater good’. They invade the laboratory and, in the process of 'freeing' the animals, are infected, thus releasing the virus into the world and ushering in the apocalypse. In the end there is hubris and blame aplenty to go around, but only humanity is to blame. 

It is into this infected world that Jim awakens from his dream-like comma caused by an accident. He has no idea what has happened, or why it has occurred. He simply seeks to survive. Jim— a 20^th century ‘everyman’—rises to face the challenges presented to him. Although Jim faces zombies, it is perhaps the uninfected humans who’s ‘pragmatism’ has reduced them to the level of the Gestapo
that represents the greatest dangers. In the process, he learns that to simply survive is not enough. He realizes that he must find meaning for surviving and, so, delves into the depths of his humanity to confront—and defeat—despair and hopelessness. It is through this Jim's self-sufficient inward adventure, quite unlike the more didactic and two-dimensional journeys of Dante and Christian, that he emerges to transcend ‘this’ world and ascend to an allegoric status, and one which we can both believe and identify with.

It is in this sense, and for these reasons, that I would dare to compare such ‘great works of literature’ as Dante and Bunyan to that of Boyle (Brooks, Romero, et al). Such stories present and force us to engage in the world in whatever its state--not to withdraw from it. We're required to question why we would wish to continue to exist--not simply to emerge from the other side. Just as Rick, from The Walking Dead, eventually finds and can provide an answer that gives Lori reasons to see why Carl should survive, Jim, from 28 Days Later, can present reasons as to what meaning there is in this existence?


Without disparaging these works, although we may be able to enter into Dante's and Christian's narratives, I would argue that to do so is more an academic pursuit than one most audiences can identify directly with. I would, then, also hold that Jim is a better Virgil to us than either Dante or Christian.


One significant difference between our world and those of Dante and Bunyan is that, at least to some extent, we’ve harnessed our hubris. We've come to realize that the causes--as well as the solutions--are to be found inside of us: we need not seek salvation externally nor wait idly by until it comes to us; hoping for such salvation is no 'hope' at all. Our narratives—however perennial to the human condition—require more complex, dynamic, varied, and ambiguous narratives as well as solutions…That is, if solutions are forthcoming at all.

 Today, more than any time in our past, we are more accepting of ambiguity, if we simply don't demand it Therefore, our allegories must reflect this ambiguity if they're to be both believable and meaningful to us.