Product Description

Widely regarded as the first modern autobiography, The Confessions is an astonishing work of acute psychological insight. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) argued passionately against the inequality he believed to be intrinsic to civilized society. In his Confessions he relives the first fifty-three years of his radical life with vivid immediacy - from his earliest years, where we can see the source of his belief in the innocence of childhood, through the development of his philosophical and political ideas, his struggle against the French authorities and exile from France following the publication of Émile. Depicting a life of adventure, persecution, paranoia, and brilliant achievement, The Confessions is a landmark work by one of the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, which was a direct influence upon the work of Proust, Goethe and Tolstoy among others.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #80127 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-28
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 608 pages

About the Author
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. Abandoned by his father at the age of ten, he left the city in 1728 and from then on wandered Europe, searching for happiness. In 1732 he settled for eight years at Les Charmettes, remembered in his book Confessions. In 1741 he moved to Paris where he met Diderot, in the meantime fathering five children, all of whom he abandoned. His corwning achievement is his work of political philosophy, The Social Contract, which was published in 1762. He died in 1778. J.M. Cohen, a Cambridge graduate, was the author of many Penguin translations, including versions of Cervantes, Rabelais and Montaigne. He died in 1989.

Customer Reviews

A genius laid bare
The Confessions is acclaimed as the first recognisable autobiography. Early on I was impressed by his honesty and the depth of his analysis of his early sexual life : Freud would owe him credit. An essentially middle-class struggle to find a trade, respect, and income, the ultimate failure of which - mainly through his inability to learn and adapt -- led him to make some independent and of course original thoughts. With his autobiography, you can see his other works came about. As a proud outsider who came to be as prickly and proud as a porcupine, why wouldn't he have been thought about the degrading affect of money and status (Origins of Inequality, and The Social Contract) . As an eternal trier and at times embarrassing failure, why wouldn't he eventually contribute something musical (Le Devin du Village). That's the beauty of this detailed work: it's the man laid out bare, and it's his genius explained. He was awkward, uncomfortable, and this more than his pride stood him outside of society. His life with the simple Therese; he needed her company, he valued her steady presence over the polygamous Mme Warens he so once worshipped. He gave his children away because (we suspect from the book) he didn't want the child in the hands of Theresa's in-laws. His life is awe-inspiringly tragic due to the proud man at once wanting acceptance (love) from his peers, and then almost simultaneously pulling away from society as a way of protecting himself from their opinions.

Rousseau's painfully honest account of his life.
This book is another by Rousseau that shows his diversity as a thinker and imagination as writer, as with 'Confessions' he practically invented the autobiographic genre.

Unlike most subsequent autobiographers, Rousseau's principle aim is to lay bare his failings and vices without attempting to apologise to the reader for his often surprising revelations; as he often repeats, God will be the judge.

Ultimately, this is a melancholy tale about a man desperately seeking a peaceful, solitary life but unable to escape the demands and injustices of society. The final passages reveal Rousseau to be a tragic character, hounded by critics and apparently unwanted by the public, but stubbornly clinging to his priciples.

The first real autobiography
The introduction to this book, and Rousseau's own introduction at the start of the book, talk this up as the first 'warts and all' autobiography. It certainly is brutally honest, especially in the first half, where he talks about his sexual development and his attractions (often unrequited) to various women, and about how for him sometimes the mere touching of a woman's glove could wrap him up in fantasies for weeks.

Rousseau the man is a troubled soul, one without (so he claims) a trace of malice in his body, and who is constantly tormented by his need to do things of his own accord. Artistically, he talks of his inability to work to deadline or to task, and, along the same lines, of his aversion to monetary gain. The later parts of the book deal with the problems that his artistic intergrity lead him into - how Grimm and Diderot (amongst others) found his stances intolerable, and how he was attacked and hounded from one place to another until he eventually ends up in England at the end of the book. How much of what he says about these attacks on his character is true is a matter of opinion. As we see from earlier parts of the book, he is a man who often swills past events over in his mind, and as many novelists of the current generation have dwelt upon, the workings of memory often do very little to aid the conveyance of truth. Still, this is arguably the most interesting side of Rousseau's character, if not the most interesting part of the book.

Beyond the psychological level of this graphic peek into a man's soul, 'The Confessions' provides us with a wealth of interesting historical information, and a real insight into the etiquette and developments of the period - most notably during his time as an ambassador in Italy.

This is a real epic book, and although it's said to have been written quite colloquially, I found it quite a slog. Maybe this was a combination of the translation and Rousseau's pedantic character, or perhaps the lack of variation in his style of story-telling. Although it took me a while, I'm more than glad that I persisted, and am looking forward to reading more by this distinguished character in literary history.