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MARSHALL BERMAN
one another, Julie is racked with guilt; she considers rejecting the
man she loves, and marrying instead the noble lord her father is try–
ing to force on her. But Saint-Preux insists that her guilt is
mis–
placed: their love springs not from immorality, but from a new
morality, in which fidelity becomes the highest virtue, a political as
well as sexual issue. Lovers must be steadfastly, monogamously de–
voted to one another, in the same way, and for the same reasons,
that the true citizen must
be
faithfully devoted to his community.
Moreover, for lovers and citizens alike, fidelity will be valuable only
if
it
is freely given, given out of "the soul of a free man," given by
a person who has the power to withhold
it.
For modern men and
women, in the modern metropolis, at a time when a bourgeois econ–
omy and society is just coming to life - in other words, in a world
of infinite options - fidelity takes on a unique, irreplaceable human
value. Ironically, however, the same social conditions that make free
personal commitment possible seem at the same time to make it im–
possible. This contradiction is what makes Saint-Preux and Rous–
seau feel that modernity has got to go.
"Everyone," says Saint-Preux, "constantly places himself in con–
tradiction with himself . . . and this opposition doesn't bother any–
one" - because self-contradiction is what makes this world go
round. But indeed
if
"nothing is shocking, because everyone is ac–
customed to everything," doesn't it follow that "everything is absurd"?
Amid all these quick changes, what is worth hanging onto?
If
any–
thing (or anyone) that is here today can be gone tomorrow, what
standards can we legitimately use to decide what is right? For that
matter, in the great city, do words like legitimate and right have any
meaning at all? All the old moral touchstones seem to crumble
in
this new world. "Of
an
the things that strike me, none of them holds
my heart, but the totality disturbs my heart, and dislocates my feel–
ings, to the point that
I forget what I am and whom I belong to."
The modern city enables the self to expand its activity enormously;
but where is the self to find a center, a core that will hold its iden–
tity together? The endless parade of possibilities which modernity
presents disturbs the heart, dislocates the feelings, and forces the in–
dividual to
choose,
to
decide,
every day, every night, not only where
he or she is going to go, whom he or she is going to belong to, but
what he or she
is
going to be.
