Rousseau

Use in the book

The song occurs within a precisely situated bodily scene rather than a discussion of Rousseau’s thought. In a small Paris garden Guérin has put his arm around a lilac trunk and sings quietly. The tune, his posture, the calm evening, and his habitual gathering of the day’s sadness work together to deepen a sense of inward poverty. The wording does not isolate music as the sole cause. Above him, as it were, lies the inaccessible world of thought and poetry that others his age can reach. The lilac’s movement and rustle then seem to answer with consolation, making the plant both support and listener. Rousseau’s melody provides a shared cultural form within this intensely private encounter. It would overreach the evidence to turn the scene into an assertion that Guérin accepts a Rousseauian philosophical system or consciously imitates a particular prose episode. What the paragraph supports is the felt efficacy of a known song, whose melancholy joins evening, imagination, and the material contact with a tree.

Places to read

1. 7 May 1834 · ¶2Guérin names the song’s incipit and initials, then traces its joint effect with posture, evening calm, and habitual sadness.

Translation in this edition

Translator note 11 expands J. J. as Jean-Jacques Rousseau and gives the title Air de trois notes, using the BnF manuscript catalogue and its reference to the 1781 collection. Guérin’s paragraph itself gives only incipit and initials.