Author: S. D. Chrostowska

Cites

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1)
  • IN: Permission (2013) Fiction, NULL
    EPIGRAPH: N. Here's your manuscript. I have read it all the way through. R. All the way through? I see: you expect few will do the same? N. Vel duo, vel nemo. R. Turpe et miserabile. But I want a straightforward judgment. N. I dare not. R. You have dared everything with that single word. Explain yourself. N. My judgment depends on the answer you are going to give me. Is this respondence real, or is it a fiction? R. I don't see that it matters. To say whether a Book is good or bad, how does it matter how much it came to be written? N. But surely it's no more than a fiction? R. Suppose it is. N. In that case, I've never seen such a bad piece of work. These Letters are no Letters; this Novel is no Novel; the characters are people from the other world. R. Your judgment is harsh; the Public's is bound to be even harsher. Without calling it unjust, I would like to tell you in turn the way I see these Letters... In seclusion, one has other ways ot seeing and feeling than in involvement with the world; the passions differently modified also have different expressions; the imagination, constantly encountering the same objects, is more vividly affected by them. That small number of images keeps returning, mixes with all these notions, and lends them the odd and repetitious turn one notices inthe conversation of Solitary Folk. Does it then follow that their language is highly forceful? Not at all; it is merely extraordinary. It is only in the world that one learns to speak forcefully ... Passion, overflowing, expresses itself more effusively than forcefully. It does not even think of being persuasive; it does not suspect that anyone may question it. Let me return to our letters. If you read them as the work of an Author who wishes to please, or who has pretensions of writing, they are detestable. But take them for what they are, and judge them according to their kind.
    FROM: Second Preface to Julie, Or the New Heloise, (None), NULL, France