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J E A N -J A C Q U E S R O U S S E A U

JULIE,
OR T H E N E W H E L O I S E
LETTERS O F T W O LOVERS W H O LIVE I N A SMALL T O W N AT T H E F O O T O F T H E ALPS

THE COLLECTED W X I T N G S OF ROUSSEAU v l6 o.

TRANSLATEDANDANNOTATEL) BY PHILIP STEWARTAND JEAN VACH ROGER D. MlASTERSAND CHRISTOPHER KELLX SERIESEDITORS

01997 by the Trustees of Dartnzouth Collge

DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PUBLISHED BY UNIVERSITYPRESS OF N E W E N G W l I HANOVERAND LONDON

Now that I have mentioned her, it has been decided, if you dont mind too much, that you shall come to see us on Monday. My mother will send her calche25 my Cousin; you shall go to her place at ten; she will bring to you; you shall spend the day with us, and we shall all return together the next day after dinner. I was at this point in my letter when it occurred to me that I did not have the same facility for delivering it to you as I do in town. I had first thought I would send one of your books back to you with Gustin the Gardeners son, and put on the book a paper covering, into which I would insert my letter. But, aside from the fact that it might not occur to y o u to look for it, it would be an unpardonable imprudence to expose our lives destiny to such accidents. I shall therefore be content simply to speci$ Mondays appointment in a note, and I shall hold on to the letter to give it to you myself. Besides, I should be a little concerned lest you gloss a little too extensively the secret of the bower.

LETTER X I V To Julie
What have you done, ah!what have you done, my Julie? You meant to reward me and you have undone me. I am drunk, or rather insane. My senses are impaired, all my faculties are deranged by that fatal kiss. You meant to alleviate my sufferings? Cruel woman, you make them sharper. It is poison I have culled from your lips; it festers, it sets my blood afire, it kills me, and your pity is the death of me. O immortal memory of that moment of illusion, of delirium and enchantment, never, never shalt thou fade in my soul, and so long as Julies charms are engraved therein, so long as this troubled heart furnishes me sentiments and sighs, thou shalt be the torture and happiness of my life! Alas! I was enjoying an apparent tranquillity; submissive to your supreme commands, I no longer murmured at a fate over which you deigned to preside. I had tamed the impetuous outbursts of an audacious imagination; I had put a veil over my glances and hobbled my heart; my desires dared only half express themselves, I was as content as I could be. I received your note, I flew to your Cousin; we went to Clarens, I saw you, and my breast throbbed; the sweet sound of your voice brought it rcnewed agitation; I approached you as if enraptured, and I sorely needed your cousins diversion to conceal my disarray from your mother. We strolled about the garden, we dined quietly, you surreptitiously gave me your letter which I dared not read in front of that redoubtable witness; the sun was beginning to go down, the three of us fled its last rays into the

Julie, or the New Heloise

wooc~s,and in my untroubled simplicity I did not even imagine a state

more blissful than mine. Upon approaching the bower I perceived, not without a secret emotion, your signals of complicity, your mutual smiles, and I saw the color of your cheeks take on a new flush. As we entered it, I had the surprise of seeing your cousin come up to me and in a playfully suppliant manner ask me for a kiss. Apprehending nothing of this enigma I kissed that charming friend, and as fetching, as saucy as she is, I never better perceived that sensations are only what the heart makes them. But what became of me a moment later, when I felt ..... my hand is shalung ...... a gentle tremor...... your rosy lips ........ Julies lips..... alighting on mine, pressing mine, and my body clasped in your arms? Nay, heavens fire is not more hot nor more sudden than that which instantly engulfed me. Every part of me came together under that delightful touch. Our burning lips breathed out fire with our sighs, and my heart was fainting away under the weight of ecstasy.... when all of a sudden I saw you turn pale, close your beautiful eyes, lean on your cousin, and fall in a swoon.26Thus alarm extinguished pleasure, and my happiness was no more than a flash. I scarcely know anything I have done since that fatal moment. The deep impression I have received can no longer fade away. A favor?..... it is a horrible torment.. ... No, keep your lusses, they are too much for me to bear.. .... they are too too penetrating, they pierce, they burn to the marrow., ... they would drive me raving mad. Just one, just one has thrown me into a distraction which I can never get over. I am no longer the same, and no longer see you the same. I no longer see you, as formerly, repressive and severe; but I feel and touch you constantly joined to my breast as you were for a moment. O Julie! whatever fate is portended by a transport I can no longer master, whatever treatment your rigor has in store for me, I can live no longer in my present state, and sense that I must ultimately expire at your feet ..... or in your arms.

LETTER X V From Julie

I t is important, my friend, that we separate for some time, and here is the first test of the obedience you have promised me. If I insist on it in the present circumstance, rest assured that I have very strong reasons for it: I would have to have, and you know it only too well, in order to resign myself to it; as for you, you require none other than my will.

LETTER X X V I To Julie
How changed is my state in just a few days! What bitterness is mixed with the sweetness of coming closer to you! What sad reflections besiege me! What obstacles my fears make me foresee! O Julie, what a fed present from heaven is a sensible soul! H e who has received it must expect to know nothing but pain and suffering in this world. Lowly plaything ofthe air and seasons, his destiny will be regulated by sun o r fog, fair o r ovcrcast weather, and he will be satisfied or sad at the whim ofthe winds. Victim of prejudice, he will find in absurd maxims an invinciblc obstacle to the just wishes of his heart. Men will punish him for having upright scntimcnts o 1 1 every subject, and for judging by what is genuine rather than b y what is conventional. Alone he would suffice to his own misery, by giving himself over indiscreetly to the divine attractions of honesty and beauty, whereas the weighty chains of necessity attach him to ignominy. He will seek supreme felicity without remembering that he is a man: his heart and his reason will be endlessly at war, and unbounded desires will set i n store for him eternal deprivation. Such is the cruel situation into which I am plunged by the fate that crushes me,59and sentiments that raise me up, and your father who disdains me, and you who are the charm and torment of my life. Had it not been for you, fatal Beauty! I would never have felt this unbearable contrast of grandeur in my innermost soul and meniality in my fortune; I would have lived peaceably and died content, without deigning to notice what rank I had occupied on earth. But to have seen you and not be able to possess you, to worship you and be a mere man! to be loved and unable to be happy! to dwell in the same places and not be able to live in company! O Julie whom I cannot give up! O destiny that I cannot defeat! What awfd struggles you provoke in me, without my ever being able to surmount my desires or my impotence! What an odd and inconceivable effect! Ever since I have come closer to you, nothing but baleful thoughts turn over in my head. Perhaps my present abode contributes to this melancholy; it is dreary and dreadful; it suits all the better the state of my soul, and I would not so patiently live in a pleasanter one. A series of barren cliffs lines the coast, and surrounds my lodging, made still more dismal by winter. Ah! I can sense it, my Julie, if I had to give you up, there would be for me no other abode nor other season.

74

Julie, OY the New Heloise

With the violent transports that stir me I am incapable of remaining still; I run, I climb avidly, I head toward the cliffs; I roam all about the region with great strides, and find in every object the same horror that reigns within me. No greenery is left to be seen, the grass is yellow and withered, the trees are bare, the schard" and cold bise6' pile up snow and ice, and all of nature is dead to my eyes, like hope in my heart. Among the cliffs on this coast, I have found in a sheltered and solitary place a small esplanade whence one can distinctly see the happy town where you live. Imagine how avidly my eyes were directed toward that cherished site. The first day, I tried a thousand times to make out your residence; but the extreme distance made my efforts futile, and I realized that my imagination was deluding my weary eyes. I ran to the parish Priest to borrow a telescope with which I saw or thought I saw your house, and since that time I have spent whole days in that asylum watching the lucky walls that enclose the source of my life. In spite of the season I go there early in the morning and return only at night. Leaves and some dry sticks which I burn serve along with exercise to keep me from excessive exposure to the cold. I have taken such a fancy to this wild spot that I even carry ink and paper there with me, and am now writing this letter on a boulder which the ice has detached from the neighboring cliff. Here it is, my Julie, that your unhappy lover is enjoying to the fll perhaps the last pleasures he will taste in this world. It is from here that, through air and walls, he dares in secret to penetrate right into your room. Your charming features strike him again; your tender gaze revives his dying heart; he hears the sound of your sweet voice; he dares seek again in your arms the delirium he experienced in the bower. Vain phantom of a troubled soul that loses itself in its own desires! Soon forced to become myself again, I observe you at least in your innocent daily activities; I follow from afar the sundry occupations of your day, and picture them to myself in the times and places where I was sometimes their happy witness. I ever see you attending to cares that make you more estimable, and my heart melts with delight at the inexhaustible goodness of yours. Right now, I say to myself in the morning, she is emerging from a peacefl sleep, her complexion has the freshness of the rose, her soul basks in a sweet peace; she offers up to him from whom she received her existence a day that shall not be lost to virtue. Now she goes to visit her mother; the tender affections of her heart are poured out to those who gave her life, she relieves them in the minutiae of domestic cares, she perhaps intervenes for
*

Northcast wind.

pu^ One (Pl., II, 90-92)

7 s

an imprudent servant, she perhaps exhorts him in secret, she perhaps asks for a favor for another. At some other time; she attends without displeasure to the labors of her sex, she embellishes her soul with usefd knowledge, she adds to her exquisite taste the pleasures of the fine arts, and those of dance to her natural litheness. Sometimes I see elegant and simple finery, adorning charms that do not require it; here I see her consult a venerable pastor over the silent suffering of an indigent family, there, succor or console the sad widow and the abandoned orphan. At times she charms an honest circle offriends with her sound and modest words; at others, laughing along with friends of her sex she steers their bantering youth back toward a proper moral tone. For a few instants, ah forgive me! I dare see )TOU occupy yourself with me; I see your tearfl eyes scanning onc of my Letters; I read by their sweet languor that the lines you trace are being addressed to your fortunate lover, I see that it is of him you are speaking to your cousin with such tender emotion. O Julie! O Julie! And should we not be united? and should we not while away our days together? and could we be separated forever? No, let that horrid thought never present itself to my mind! In an instant it changes all my tearfulness into a fury; rage drives me from cave to cave; groans and cries burst from me despite myself; I roar like an angry lioness6'; I am capable of anything, except giving you up, and there is nothing, no nothing I would not do to possess you or die. This is where I was in my letter, and I was awaiting only for a sure opportunity to send it to you, when I received from Sion the last one you had written me there. How the sadness that permeates it has conjured my own! What a striking example I saw there of what you said to me about the harmony of our souls in widely separated places!62Your affliction I admit is more patient, mine is more impetuous; but the same sentiment has to take on the coloration of the characters who experience it, and it is quite natural for the greatest losses to cause the greatest suffkrings. Did I say losses? Oh! who could bear them? No, recognize it finally, my Julie, an eternal edict from heaven destined us for each other; that is the first law we must heed; the primary concern in life is to unite oneself with that person who can make it blissful for us. I see to my lament that you are losing yourself in your hopeless schemes; you want to break down insurmountable barriers and are neglecting the only possible means; your enthusiasm for honesty deprives you of reason, and your virtue has turned to delirium. Ah! if you could remain forever as young and brilliant as now, I would ask Heaven only to assure me you were everlastingly happy, to see you each year of my life just once, just one time; and spend the rest of my days

76

Julie,

OY the N w Heloise e

watching your abode from afar, worshipping you among these cliffs. But alas! behold the speed of that sphere that is never at rest; it flies and time flees, the opportunity slips away, your beauty, even your beauty will have its end, it must decline and perish one day like a flower that falls without being picked63;and I all the while, I lament, I suffer, my youth is being consumed in tears, and withers in sorrow. Remember, remember, Julie, that already we can count whole years lost for pleasure. Remember that they will never return; that the same is true of those we have left if we let them too get away. O blinded lover! you seek an illusory happiness for a time when we shall be no more; you look to a distant future, and you do not perceive that we are continually wasting away, and that our sods, exhausted by love and pain, are melting away and running off like water. Awake, there is still time, awake, my Julie, from this fatal error. Put aside your schemes and be happy. Come, O my sod, into your friends arms and reunite the two halves of our being: come and in the face of heaven, guide i n our flight and witness to our vows, swear we will live and die for each other. It is not you, I know, whom I need reassure against the fear of indigence. Let us be happy and poor, ah what riches we will then possess! But let us not affront humanity by believing that there will remain no asylum in the whole earth for two unfortunate Lovers. I have good arms, I am strong; the bread earned by my labor will seem more delicious to you than the fare of feasts. Can a meal prepared by love ever lack savor?Ah, tender and dear lover, were we never to be happy but a single day, do you mean to depart this short life without having tasted happiness? I have only one more word for you, O Julie! you know the ancient use of the cliffof Leucadia, the last refuge of so many unhappy lovers.& This place resembles it in many ways. The mountainside is steep, the water deep, and I am in despair.

LETTER X X V I I From Claire

My grief leaves me scarcely the strength to write to you. Your woes and mine arc consummate: the sweet Julie is at deaths door and has perhaps not two days to live. The strain of sending you away already impaired her health. The first conversation she had on your account with her father was a further blow: other, more recent worries have added to her agitation^,^^ and your latest letter did the rest. It moved her so violently that after spending a night in frightfill struggles, yesterday she fell into a burning

660

Notes t o Pudes 38-54

14. master is the preceptor. The 15. On the meanings of maxims, see glossary, appendix IV 16. Metastasio, Il tempi0 dellEternit.
17. This is the passage in Rousseaus note: Si cum hac exceptione detur sapientia, ut illam inclusam teneam nec enuntiem, ericiam, Seneca, Epistle W, quoted by Montaigne (Essays, III, 9 ) ; it is translated by Donald Frame as: If wisdom were given me on this condition, that I keep it hidden and muttered, I should reject it (754). Rousseau may be citing from memory; in any case he gives a perverse cast to Senecas meaning, which is that friendship requires one to share knowledge. I 8. Ct: Emile: When understanding appropriates things before depositing them in memory, what it draws from memory later belongs to it; whereas, by overburdening memory without the participation of understanding, one runs the risk of never withdrawing anything from memory suitable for the understanding (Book III, Pliiade, IV, 486-487; Bloom, 207). 19. We are richer than we think, but we are trained to borrow and beg; we are taught to use the resources of others more than our own. Montaigne, Essays, III, 12; Frame, 794). 20. An allusion to Julies mention of physics lessons in letter I, XI . 21. The tradition reflected here is that of history as a moral science; in Rousseaus writings the archetype of the good historian who rises to the challenge ofgood subject matter is Plutarch. 22. Petrarch, Tasso, Metastasio are all Italian poets of the sixteenth century. The masters of French theater are those who will be discussed in part II: Corneille, Racine, Molire, Prosper Crbillon, Voltaire, etc. 23. His phrase (liwes damour) probably means love stories or romances in general. 24. ecause Solomon asked for wisdom and not riches, God gave him both (I Kings 3:11-14). 25. A light carriage with folding top. 26. Loves first klss is the subject of the first illustration prescribed by Rousseau; cf. appendix II. 27. acres: acrid, bitter, tart; this expression was much derided by some of Rousseaus critics, particularly Voltaire in his Lemes sur La nouvelle Hhise ou Aloisia de JeanJacques Rousseau (1761), attributed to the Marquis de Ximenez; the text is reproduced in Jacques van den Heuvel, ed., Voltaire, Mlanges (Paris: Gallimard Plkiade, 1961),pp. 395-409. 28. The Valais is today a canton of Switzerland lying to the east of Lake Leman (Lake Geneva); Rousseau once considered writing its history. 2 9 . The Pays de Vaud (mentioned in the note) is on the north side of Lake Leman, adjoining the Valais on the east; its capital is Lausanne. 30. Capital of the Valais, on the Rhone upstream of Lake Leman. 31. For Rousseau fatherland (patrie) denotes a politically free community of fell o w citizens rather than simply a territory; in the context of this novel, it might be a canton. Julie is alluding to her lovers lack of political status in Vevey; nothing ever specifies precisely where hispatrie lies, although it is later stated that he is Swiss.

Notes to PaBes 72-91

663

58. That is, on the French side of Lake Leman (then Savoie) opposite Vevev. 59. Le sort gui maccable, a possible echo of Phdres confession to Oenone,

which begins: Quand m sauras mon crime et le SOTT gui maccable, Je nen mourrai pas moins, jen mourrai plus coupable. (Racine, Phdre, I, 3 ) 60. These terms are specific to the Lake Leman region: schard is the northwest wind, bise wind from the north. 61. This cry of rage in the wilderness suggests the ambiance of gothic themes such as those popularized at just this period (1760-1761) by poems attributed to the mythic Ossian by James McPherson; a sampling of these was published in French translation as early as 1760 by Turgot in Le Journal tvander. 62. See letter I, XI . 63. The comparison of fading beauty to that of a flower is a conceit of poetry i n the cave diem tradition, and is particularly reminiscent of Ronsards sonnet Mignonne, allons voir si la rose,which concludes: Cueillez, cueillez votre jeunesse: Comme cette fleur, la vieillesse Fera ternir votre beaut (Pluck, pluck your youth: / As with this flower, old age / Will make your beauty fade). 64. Leucadias Rock, the cliff or Lovers Leap in the Ionian Sea from which Sappho was supposed to have leapt to her death. 65. This detail and numerous others will be further explained much later, in retrospective, in letter III, XVIII. 66. For the term transport, see glossary. 67. This reasoning works on an implicit syllogism: to conceal things from me is to conceal them from yourself, since my existence is contained within yours. 68. The basic idea here is more Catholic than Protestant, namely that the merits of a saint can be transferred to the benefit of a sinner on earth. 69. Metastasio, Il Cira riconosciuto, III, 12. 70. Author unknown. 71. Probably he realizes the nature of the enigma to which she has alluded, but respects her desire not to call it by name. 72. La Savoie was under the rule of the kmg of Sardinia. 73. Sacconex, a Protestant, commanded the troops from Berne that won the battle ofWilgerghen (25 July 1712)in this war between Protestant and Catholic cantons. 74. It might be the Gazette de France, although there were other newspapers namedJazettes, and the word can well be used generically. 75. Guillaume de Lamberti or Lamberty was the author ofMmoirespour servir lhistoire duXVTllesicle (1724-1740). 76. Orbe is the name of a city in the Pays de Vaud. 77. The question was what form of tribute Don Carlos should render to the pope for investiture following his conquest of Naples in the spring of1734: althis lusion provides a critical reference in the novels chronology. 78. A small German-spealungcity (Solothurn) north of Berne. 79. Argus: a god with a hundred eyes, whom Hera set to watching over Io.