English translation of the French transcript, made with AI and not yet proofread — click a paragraph to jump to it. Show the French original
Robinson is not a return to nature 1:30 The island of poplars that also arrives on an island.
2:02 So Rousseau, the island, Robinson, the Robinsonades, the famous Robinsonades. What does Robinson do? What is he going to do on his island when he arrives, Robinson? Ah, if you finish your question like that, I'll start with the end of your question. Because there, we're not far from Marx. When Robinson arrives on his island, he contradicts the whole imagery we've built up around him. When I talk about Robinson to a young person now, they think it's the dream life.
2:32 The beautiful dream: the young person, stuffed full of the anti-humanist, pro-nature discourse that surrounds them, will tell themselves, if only I could be, right now, on a Pacific island etc., how happy I'd be if I didn't have to bother with exams, high school, and so on. And you, with your unsatisfying job hunts. Now, when you look at the text, the first hundred pages are Robinson's exhausting efforts. Not to live like a man of nature, but on the contrary, the efforts he makes to go into the boat, into the wreck of the ship on whose wreckage he ran aground on this island—he's shipwrecked—to tear out the maximum amount of technology he can get his hands on in order to survive on the island.
3:09 That ranges from tools, of course—saws, hammers, nails, etc. We're not told any details, but also theoretical tools. I'm thinking of the calendar, I'm thinking of the sextant. So, far from being some kind of romantic tale where he starts back at zero, there's no return to nature. Unlike in Paul et Virginie, not only is that not the case, but from the very start, he benefits, on his island, in a purely natural setting where he alone is master—we'll see later that with Friday there's a problem—from the very start he inherits the highest technology of the time, that is, English technology, English maritime technology.
An empty tomb, the poplar, breath, and the people 3:44 There you go, that's my observation, to answer your question. Now, let's be serious, and solemn, since we're on an island, and an island that bears a tomb, gravely so—even though I maintain that this tomb is probably one of the least funereal we've ever had occasion to visit, first of all because it has nothing of fetishism or morbidity about it, since it does not contain the actual remains of Rousseau. Because, as you know, as we know, it was a fine day of the Revolution—a fine night, actually—when the people of the Convention came to fetch the philosopher's ashes, to carry them off to the Pantheon by torchlight. So for once, we're dealing with a pure tomb.
4:26 A pure sema, as they say in Greek, tomb. And so a pure sema, a sign. It does nothing but signify the disappearance of the philosopher, without those remains actually being here at the naturalistic, real level. That's already interesting. There's nothing morbid about it, no relic-like, immediate, fetishistic aspect to coming here. These ashes are not here. So what's left? What are we coming to admire then? Lesueur's work, who made sculptures contemporary with Houdon, the bas-relief, or simply the beauty of the setting? Not only that—or rather, the beauty of the setting in relation to Rousseau's final message. And I come back to the island.
5:03 There is a boat—we can't see it because the weather is a bit dark—but there has been a boat for years and years lying at the bottom, about 60 cm below the surface of the water. A boat that used to allow people to come and maintain the place, to hold the ceremony—it's not even there anymore. As if every gangway had been cut. Rousseau is finally at peace, delivered from all his worries and all his troubles, in the literal sense of those who hounded him throughout his career. That's something one must never forget.
5:34 And so what is being diffused here is his message. I mean, I'm struck by the importance of the poplar. It's no accident that this particular tree is here. I'm refining the analysis, I'm sorry, but it's not to split hairs—it's because we're here. If we don't talk about it here, when will we talk about it? The poplar is a cousin of the aspen, that is, a tree whose leaves are always restless. At the slightest breath—sometimes even when you feel no breath at all—they move, because they have very subtle sensors for that, these leaves. Which means there's a metaphor here for the liability of speech, of breath.
6:09 Let's not forget that pneuma, breath, is indeed the origin of spirit. And that even in the Gospel, when they question Jesus about it—what is spirit?—he says, you hear the wind, you know neither where it comes from nor where it goes. There is a kinship, which Hegel sees very clearly, between spirit and freedom. So it is with things of the spirit. So indeed, the founding philosopher of freedom is here. And, second parallel, this tree's name is not chosen by chance—poplar, people.
Rimbaud's "Mouvement" and pleasure without privilege 6:39 And all these leaves. When Rimbaud says, I sometimes see in the sky visions of white nations rejoicing, the song of the heavens, the march of peoples, slaves, let us not curse life. In A Season in Hell, there is a kind of glimpse—not of tomorrows that sing, but of tomorrows that quiver like this, in the sunlight of the future. So we can measure the paradox a little, in making Rousseau, nonetheless, the avant-garde of modernity—that's a bit much, given that he constantly laments the wreckage brought about by these modernizations, compared to a rough, traditional, patriarchal, more fitting way of life.
7:18 There is a text by Rimbaud that rediscovers what Rousseau never allows to be separated: the three elements that concern us at present—the past, progress, the future, technology—which sums up a bit of everything we've been saying. It's a poem called 'Mouvement' in the Illuminations. People say it's complicated, hermetic, but I find it very clear. It begins with an almost futuristic setting. Rimbaud is a contemporary of the first great explosions, the first great industrial construction sites, etc. Several texts bear the mark of this—there are four illuminations called Ville, Villes, either singular or plural.
7:49 But here, it's clearly a hydroelectric construction site. You only have to look at what follows. It begins like this, it's very short. 'The gulf at the sternpost'—simpler put, the gulf at the sternpost—'the enormous rushing pass of the current carries off the travelers surrounded by the whirlwinds of the Val and the Strom.' A little Germanic word, current, Strom. Stream, the currents of the Val and the Strom. They are the conquerors of the world, so we might say the scientists of the future, seeking personal chemical fortune.
8:22 Sport and comfort travel with them. There's a kind of hymn to the future. And they carry on this vessel, which resembles a little Noah's Ark, you'll see what follows, in diluvian light—the flood—on this vessel, they carry the education of races, classes, and animals. In diluvian light, on terrible evenings of study. There's a magnificent tribute. I'll skip a bit of the middle of the poem. And at the end, it says, 'amid the most surprising atmospheric accidents'—here we are—'a young couple withdraws onto the ark.'
8:52 We're not in the future—this has existed forever. There's this question, is it ancient savagery that we forgive? No dispensation. 'And sings and takes its stand.' Full stop. All three are there. Rousseau is not against pleasure, against enjoyment. But he doesn't want pleasure to be a class privilege. It's no accident that the libertines whose praises are sung to us through the neo-Nietzscheans, the Onfrays, on down to Sollers, who hold the high ground, are all people who had the droit de cuissage in their day, after all. Whether it's the Count in The Marriage of Figaro—because that really is the subject of The Marriage of Figaro, the droit de cuissage—whether it's Casanova, whether it's the Marquis de Sade, these are people who ruled by the sword, strictly speaking, socially, we mustn't forget.
9:41 And whereas with Rousseau, and thanks to Rousseau, a new generation of couples and of love appears—I'll go far into the psyche, as Goussard would say. I'm thinking of the character of Suzanne in The Marriage of Figaro—Les Noces is Mozart's. In The Marriage of Figaro, which is the first work where the soubrettes become heroines in their own right. Soubrettes, before, were confidantes, just there to talk back a little to the lord, to try to balance his excesses a bit, no more. And in the foreground now, these new couples, these new forms of love that belong neither to the beasts who clear the soil nor to the aristocracy, but to these new middle classes on the rise.
Reading Sylvie: the temple of philosophy 10:18 And so we are their heirs, broadly speaking. That's fundamental. So all of this is summed up in the figure of the island. Why? Because here we are. And I come back to my Nerval—I'd like to conclude with him, because no one has thought this place through the way Nerval has. Because he spent part of his childhood here. It bears mentioning—Mortefontaine, 4 km from here—so Rousseau's tomb, the Ermenonville park, are references familiar to him. When he arrives—I'll start from a story that apparently has nothing political or philosophical about it, an almost purely autobiographical story.
10:52 Today we would read Sylvie, which is supposed to recount a youthful love affair that ended badly. And so I take the detour of the detour, I go by way of autofiction to arrive at the political matters we were discussing. Since he arrives a bit early and everyone is asleep because of the ball, everyone tired out from the ball, having not slept all night, and since Sylvie is asleep, he decides, to pass the time, to make a little detour from Loisy, which is 4 km from here, taking her back to town, crossing the forest, he arrives here. He arrives at the temple. 'And when I saw the waters of the lake shining through the branches of the willows and hazel trees, I fully recognized a place where my uncle, on his walks, had led me many a time. It is the temple of philosophy, which its founder did not have the good fortune to finish,' etc.
11:42 And there's a somewhat light reflection on this temple—I want to quote it because we'll see that it takes the opposite stance from naturalism. Today, it's a poet speaking, we're not in praxis, it's a poet. He says, yes, this temple is falling, like so many others. The ivy invades the broken steps. Men, forgotten or weary, will turn away from these approaches. But the thirst for knowledge will remain eternal. Sorry, excuse me, let me start again.
12:15 This edifice is already nothing but a ruin. The ivy festoons it gracefully, the bramble invades the broken steps. There, as a child, I saw festivals where young girls dressed in white came to receive prizes for study and wisdom. There was a kind of life in the manner of La Nouvelle Héloïse beginning to take shape within the grounds of the estate. Where are the rosebushes that used to surround the hill? That's the age of Elegy. The eglantine, the raspberry bush, now hide the last plants reverting to a wild state. And the laurels—have they been cut down, as the song says, of the young girls who no longer want to go to the woods? No, these shrubs of sweet Italy perished under our misty sky.
12:45 Fortunately, Virgil's privet still blooms, as if to bear out the master's words inscribed above the door: to know the causes of things, rerum cognoscere causas. And there he adds, yes, this temple is falling, like so many others. Nature is trying to reclaim the ground that art had contested with it. There is a choice made by Nerval and by the poet, in favor of art over nature after all. We are far from today's counter-revolution, and one cannot say that Nerval is in favor of disfiguring the landscapes around us with industry—it's the opposite.
13:16 So this domain is sacred to him; nature will reclaim the ground it once contested, but the thirst for knowledge will remain eternal, the driving force of all strength and all activity. That's the reflection that stirs him. And there he turns toward the island and says, here are the poplars and the island. 'O sage, you had given us the milk of the strong, and we were too weak for it to do us any good. We have forgotten your lessons, which our fathers knew'—and yet not that many generations passed between the French Revolution and Nerval. We have forgotten your lessons, which our fathers already knew—I was speaking of Hegel banished from the screen, already Rousseau was banished—'and we have lost the echo of your word'—sorry, we have lost the meaning of your word, the last echo of ancient wisdom, the evident link between The Social Contract and Plato's Republic.
