Today is the birthday of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Genevan writer and philosopher. His writings The Social Contract and Discourse on Inequality were heavily influential in the European Enlightment, as well as various independence movements in the Western Hemisphere.

Born in 1712, Jean-Jacques’s mother died of fever just nine days after his birth. His father’s sister moved in and helped raise Jean-Jacques and his older brother. 

The Rousseaus lived in an upper-class neighborhood, the house bought with money from Jean-Jacques mother’s side. But at age five their father sold the house and moved into a more middle class neighborhood of craftsmen. His father was a watchmaker by trade and fit into the neighborhood better. Being around such hardworking and skilled individuals left a lasting impression on the young Jean-Jacques. 

Also leaving a lasting effect was his father’s indulgence in evening readings. Rather than bore his boys with Biblical or philosophical texts, Rousseau senior indulged them in entertaining reads filled with adventures and sword fighting and strange lands. When the boys of the family were reading a particularly enthralling story, even Jean-Jacques’s father couldn’t say no to the pleas to continue. Sometimes it wasn’t until birds were chirping outside that Jean-Jacques father would finally realize they had read through the night. According to Jean-Jacques autobiography, his father seeing the approaching dawn would chide, “come, come – let us go to bed; I am more a child than thou art.”

If his childhood was idyllic, his teen years would be turbulent. His father left Geneva to escape legal troubles and married a new wife and did not return. Jean-Jacques’s care fell to his mother’s brother who promptly send his own son and Jean-Jacques to board at a vicar’s home in the country. 

An apprenticeship with a physically abusive boss led Rousseau to flee the countryside. He headed for Geneva to find his relations. Upon arriving to the city at night, he found the gates closed as it was past curfew. He meandered over to Savoy, the next town over, where a Catholic priest and noblewoman took him in on the grounds that he would convert to Catholicism. Desperate and grateful for their kindness, he did so. 

The rest of his teen years he worked at various jobs – secretary, tutor, servant - to make ends meet and was often supported with room and board by the noblewoman who had taken him in, Françoise-Louise de Warens. 

The two became lovers when Rousseau turned twenty, although she was 15 years his senior. The relationship had its benefits: as a noblewoman she had an extensive library and mixed with ‘people of letters.’ Rousseau applied himself more seriously to the study of philosophy and mathematics while fending off his tendency toward hypochondria. 

Finally, in 1754, Rousseau would publish his Discourse on Inequality which postulates that in civil society, private property is the basis of all inequality. In 1762 he would publish The Social Contract, which expanded on some of the ideas in Discourse. But the work that really got him in hot water was Emile, or On Education for which arrest warrants were issued and copies of it were burned. He was accused of blasphemy for the book’s musings and thoughts on religion. 

He lived as a fugitive for two years until things died down and he found that writers from all over Europe would be happy to meet him. He was able to enjoy the remainder of his 66 years in relative comfort, and good company, including that of his beloved domestic partner Thérèse Levasseur. He would write works up until his death by stroke.  

Today’s poem is by birthday poet John Boyle O'Reilly. I didn’t have time to do him justice today--maybe next year. Today’s poem is titled “At School.”

 

John Boyle O’Reilly

 

The bees are in the meadow

And the swallows in the sky;

The cattle in the shadow

Watch the river running by.

The wheat is hardly stirring;

The heavy ox-team lags;

The dragon-fly is whirring

Through the yellow-blossomed flag.

And down beside the river,

Where the trees lean o'er the pool,

Where the shadows reach the quiver

A boy has come to school.

His teachers are the swallow

And the river and the trees;

His lessons are the shallows

And the flowers and the bees.