Die Assimilation der Hymenophyllaceen

Rousseau's Occasional Autobiographies

“…Or more eco nomically still, Rousseau might have contented himself with having his name and title coupled on the Discourses title page, where they were guaranteed relief both by the initially anonymous publication of his First Discourse "Par un Citoyen de Geneve" (3:1) and by the norm of more numerous and highfalutin "mentions honorifiques dont les personnages importants faisaient suivre leur noms" on title pages (3:1285). 33 His doing neither has resulted not simply in a regrettable, qualitative dif ference like that between his epistle and the Genevans' letters, but in so exaggerated a quantitative disproportion of expended to received ver biage as to invite laughter. Either the dedicatory enterprise itself was ridiculously excessive, or its one-word pay-off ("Citoyen") was trag icomically paltry.…”

“…N begs therefore to be treated as the protagonist in some not entirelyfictional roman a clef. It is left to the reader to spell out the mot of this new enigme and to surmise, "a partir des ressemblances qu'il [ou elle] croit deviner," 33 an identity that Rousseau has chosen not to affirm. Precisely because the pole of autobiography has been so squarely planted in its midst, the "Entretien suppose" gravitates toward that pole, its prog ress arrested somewhere in the middle ground of "autobiographical fic tion."…”

“…Out of unwillingness to let the Genevan Conseil censor his Dedication to the Second Discourse, Rousseau wrote: "Mon expe rience m'a done fait prendre la ferme resolution d'etre desormais mon unique Censeur." 33 And Rousseau did, at times, admit to frustration with the system's inevitable inconsistencies: "Monsieur de Malesherbes m'e leve des scrupules sur les sentimens de Julie et de Saint-Preux qu'il n'a point eleves sur les miens propres dans mon discours sur l'inegalite ni meme dans ma lettre a M r d'Alembert." 34 Convinced that Malesherbes's proposals for "retranchemens" in Julie added up to a "mutilation .…”

“…32 It is, arguably, the essence of art to embellish or, as Gessner puts it in his preface to La Mort d'Abel, to inventory "la nature" for the "multitude d'images dont il orne artistement son objet cheri." 33 And the Rousseau who "confesses" to doing nothing more or other than embellish gains the right to call himself the quintessential artist. His modesty, like Gessner's, attests indirectly and somewhat prematurely to the narrow specialization in matters aesthetic that was the fate just beginning to be reserved for literature by the incipient rise of modern science.…”

“…Rousseau's unrelenting pursuit of unmediated identity is rightly famous for such feats of legerdemain; Jean Starobinski rephrases the rule of "transparence" or non-mediation in asking: "Ou sont les miroirs autour de Jean-Jacques?" 33 Exceptionally, however, the self-portraitist's mirror does finally materialize in the 32…”