Rousseau "confessions"

Starts with intro about how he is great for offering this confession and that even god should feel that it is true. However we are meant to doubt this since no man can be entirely the condemned, judge and jury. He goes on to talk of how his parents met and how he was born in a poor family and with his birth came his mother's death. He started to read at an early age with his father and started with the romances that his mother loved. This started his love affair with Romanticism, but as they ran out of books they moved on to other religious and classic literature and history. He takes great pains to write out his transgressions on all topics mundane and serious. The most serious at this point is simply having been born and taking all the time and love from his father, which left little for his brother who grew up to be a libertine. 241
Father almost sent to prison gains banishment and so R is raised by uncle and stayed with cousin almost same age. became a very happy part of his childhood and he only wanted to do good for others, but says that he was not vain. 243 It appears that at the age of 8 he and his nurse miss lambercier age 30 had sexual relations of some sort and this was a great change in him. he didn't seek out other pleasures until he was an adult because everything reminded him of his nurse and he was sated with his memories. This stands as the most difficult part of his confessions and everything should come easier after. 245 He began to talk to girls and carry on romances with them, fight with his cousin against the kids in the town. Then he began to work as an apprentice in an engravers, but was given no liberty. He states that because the work was not bad, but the man was bad he too learned to lie and cheat and sites this as the moment when he became a degenerate. 253 he hates money because to use it means that you must exchange it and be cheated in the bargain. 257 When he became bored with his work because of the lack of freedom to do what he wanted even though he did as much as he could away from the eyes of his master he started to read again. 259 He states that his life was shaped by the master to whom he had to work. If chance had placed him with a better master he would have been contended to live his life as an engraver and probably been wealthy doing it, but alas he was not and so he suffered and lived a far more interesting life because of it. 262
BOOK II
He set off on foot away from the engraver and the town and somehow gained food and ended up in the salon of Madam de Warrens who told him to continue to do good works and to set off for Turin. 268 He had intended to take up a position as a minister and went there to be taught the ways of Catholocism. 270 However, he was not convinced he wanted to become a Catholic and tried to convert them to Protestantism. 271 In this he failed and they sent him into the streets after 2months. 273 He wandered until a pretty woman took him in. He fell something like in love with her and wanted to her with all his heart and body, but she found a place for him as a footman of an aristocrat. His trouble with women he states is that he loved them too well and this hindered his success. 276 When the woman died with whom he worked he stole a ribbon and was caught but lied and said another maid had given it to him. They were both sacked and his guilt from this is part of why he writes the story. there is no telling where she ended up, but perhaps not well since she was pretty and young. 281
BOOK III
He is given a position in a house as a footman, but is not treated like one and is given an education since he already knows a bit of somethings. He is also in a house that works for the King. He is abut 16 at this time. 283 He meets one of his old friends from the ministry, Bacle, and they take on the idea of going back to Geneva. R quits his favorable position with an insult and goes back to Geneva. He and Bacle separate. 287 He goes back to Madam de Warren and loves her like a mother, but sometimes he loves her like a woman. Because of his love for her he was chaste to loving anyone else and had no other relations. R ends up at the seminary to learn latin from the connections of the Madam. 294 He had no way to learn with a teacher and was forced to quit it, but was given a spot as a music student. 295 R was not a good music student and the teacher was drunk and he was sacked. R was sent to help him carry his stuff to Lyon. When they got there the music teacher had an epileptic fit and R ran away from the obligation and help the teacher needed. This is the third main confession he makes. 298 He sets out again for Madam De Warren, but she has left for Paris. R cannot think of anything happy that doesn't involve being near her. 298
BOOK IV
The music teacher lost his belongings and with it the work he had done since he was young and the ability to work to support himself in old age. R sets up with none of his acquaintances, but went to one of Madam's friends places. He was then set up to accompany one of their daughters to another town. They even slept in the same bed. 301 He is now 20, yet nothing happens between them. He is stuck in the town after his delivery and has no money. 303 R starts to live on a lie that he is a singer and a music teacher. 304 R moves towns and picks up with a wandering archimandrate from Jeruselum with whom he joins on a return trip to Jeruselum as his interpreter. 306 R is well received by some and taken in and so he quits the archimandrate. R is sent to Paris to do work and as he wishes to find Madam. He is as happy as he has ever been. 308 R quits paris when he finds that she had left as well. His imagination for what Paris should ahve been was too great and he was greatly dissapointed with Paris. He left on foot for Geneva or turin and found a friend of Madam's. She eventually wrote him. 312 She set him up under the employ of the king and had to work for the first real time in his life, but earned his pay. 314
BOOK V
He is now 21 years old. R soon gives up his government job and takes up music full time. he is still not very good, but all around him are bad. 320 R becomes enamoured with the stupid beauty of one of his students, but her mother loves him and see not his affair. R then comes into relations with Madam despite her relations with her footman Anet. 325 R passed 3 or 4 years this way until they moved. 330
BOOK VI
R takes ill, then reads a lot to is psychological worsening. He goes after his inheritance and finds little. 335 R goes to a cure, but finds only doctors that take money. 341 R comes back to Madam, but she now has another youth and R doesn't want to share Madam. She sets him up as a tutor with a wealthy family and he takes to it more or less. 346 It doesn't work out, so he goes back to Madam and his books. R takes up music again and comes up with a way to read that uses numbers and is bent on going to Paris to present it to the academy. 349
BOOK VII
He presented his treatise on music, but it was not taken well and so he worked on it alone. R was taken in by another woman and he became her pet for a while and made friends of others. 358 R takes on the office of attendant to the ambassador and does some gov. work. 364 He and a friend decide that they will buy a girl of 12 until she is old enough to be their concubine. They both end up loving her like a father, but the scandal gets out and he loses his job with the ambassador. 368 R focuses on his opera having no other occupation. he plays it to some people and at least one of these wants it played before the king. 374 Nothing happened with it and it was given up. he renewed his friendship with Diderot, but he was put in prison. 381
BOOK VIII
Diderot is out and R tries to help him. 383 R reads about the morality of man and how art might be involved in it and says that this treatise, which prompted him to write on the same subject ruined him. 384 He has an affair. 386 Theresa has her third child by R and they are all destitute and he leaves them to a public education. 387 He had 5 kids in all and they all went to the orphanage. 388 He writes and is well recieved 391. He takes on all of society and talks about dress. 394 He goes before the king after his first performance of his play and music. He is expected to get a stipend. 396 He refuses the stipend, but Diderot think he should take it to help others. 397 R writes with voltaire. 399
BOOK IX
He moves to the country and writes about the joys of being there although he was pulled back to the city. He also writes about the need to work, not create. 400 He retreats to the country for good and lives under the patronage of Madam d'Epinay. 404 R quits the house and moves into another supplied by a friend. R believes himself to be with few friends and is unhappy. 411
BOOK X
He is set against by some of his friends that feel that he has abandoned them and so he set himself to be a recluse, but is drawn back into the scene again. 412
BOOK XI
His book Eloise came out to some success, the best in Paris which he censured more than other places. 416 He talks of ailments and books published and that is about all. He is asked to serve again the parliament, but did it rudely and suffered. 419
BOOK XII
R writes of being hounded out of town and almost killed and being treated poorly because of what he wrote.