In his fifth
walk in Reveries of a Solitary Walker, Rousseau has removed himself to the
sparsely inhabited island of St. Peter's on Lake Bienne. His neighbors in M´tiers had angrily
responded to his democratic ideas in his Letters from the Mountains, so
Rousseau decided it was time to relocate to a new locale.
His relationship to
happy memories while on the island are complex. The chief charm of his setting is not the
memories it engenders but the opportunity it offers to live in the beauty of the present moment
and away from sad recollections. He states that he enjoys being:
detached from the rest of the world, where nothing but smiling objects presented
themselves, where no painful remembrances were recalled
He also notes that the most memorable moments in life are too sharp and intense (filled
with "delirium and passion"), too removed from the quietude of everyday life, to
provide him with the kind of solace he seeks:
the periods
of sweetest enjoyment, and most lively pleasure, are not those whose remembrance wins and
delights me most. These moments of delirium and passion, however charming they might be, appear
from their vivacity itself, but as points thinly scattered along the line of life, being too
detached and rapid to constitute any permanent idea of felicity.
Instead, he wants to connect with the half-forgotten moments of ordinary happiness that
he can experience by living in the present. He very much loves the nature that surrounds him on
the island and finds joy in losing himself in it. He likes not so much to remember as to walk
around or float lying on the bottom of rowboat as it drifts and rocks on the lake, enjoying a
mix of the present moment with what he calls "reveries" or
daydreams.
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