PARTISAN REVIEW
411
The New Eloise,
in which Saint-Preux, the young, sensitive, intellec–
tual hero, who is stifled by the rigid class prejudices and emotional
deadness of his native petit-bourgeois provincial society, comes to
Paris, in search of a place to which he and hii love, Julie, can flee,
a social structure into which individualistic and romantic people can
be integrated, can build and live a life. Rousseau's treatment of the
trip
is
perhaps the first modern instance of what has since become an
archetypical modern theme, both in art and in life: the Young Man
from the Provinces Comes to the City.
As
Lionel Trilling points out,
Rousseau himself - "a shiftless boy from Geneva, a starveling and
a lackey, who becomes the admiration of the French aristocracy,
and is permitted by Europe to manipulate its assumptions in every
department of life" -
is
"the father of all Young Men from the Pro–
vinces, including the one from Corsica." Confrontation with the
great city, exposure of the self to its promises and perils, is an ulti–
mate test of who a person is, of all that he or she can
be.
Saint-Preux
is
immediately thrilled by the energy and vitality of
Paris, the "great spectacles," the "enormous diversity of things," the
"many attractions which offer so many charms to the newcomer."
The most striking thing about life here is its
fluidity.
He feels himself
"thrown into a torrent" that overruns all social barriers, and gen–
erates an unprecedented social mobility. Everyone
is
approachable
and accessible; thought and speech in this city lead to
action;
there
is a seemingly infinite range of opportunity. "Nothing
is
shocking,
for everyone is accustomed to everything...." No society has ever
been more "full of original men," because none has ever opened
up so much social space for individuality to develop.
Why should anyone want to bum down a place like this, in
which all human potentialities can be fulfilled? This potentiality itself
turns out to be the city's greatest pitfall. In an age when individuality
has become freer and more important than ever, Rousseau sees noth–
ing more precious, more valuable, than the wholehearted
commit–
ment
of one individual to another. Personal commitment, for him,
is
what gives romantic love a moral dignity. Indeed, by virtue of its
power to generate commitment, romantic love acquires a political
dignity as well: the romantic couple is the primary community, the
nucleus of the social contract. Earily in
The New Eloise,
after the
young lovers have secretly slept together, and pledged themselves to
