416
MARSHALL BERMAN
sufficient: it seeks nothing outside itself. Its economy has no luxury,
but no poverty either; it is free from the economic extremes that tear
the modem city apart; it produces a modest but real "abundance for
all." Valaisian society is not classless, but it eliminates the inequities of
feudal stratification. There is plenty of freedom here, but unlike the
dreadful freedom of the metropolis, it leads to no trouble. The chil–
dren seem to accept freely their parents' institutions and forms of
life - forms and institutions which have brought them a freedom
which they cherish deeply and use sparingly. The basic psychic fact
about the Valaisians, which enables them to live at once freely and
traditionally, is that their needs and desires are structurally limited.
They work until certain basic needs are fulfilled, and then they stop;
as a result, they have ample leisure, and look upon their work as a
pleasure.
Rousseau has shown us here the deep affinity between the ideal
of romantic love and that of radical democracy. He has created the
vision of a world - "a new world," high in the mountains, remote,
serene, unknown or ignored by the world below, free from time and
change - in which these two dreams, the personal and the political,
can be fulfilled. Rousseau's vision prefigures the one moving so many
of our young people today - up in the mountains, out in the desert,
away in the undeveloped Third World, they can feel free from the
pressures of modem life. And many of Saint-Preux's successors–
many of my students - have done just this, dropping out of the
modem world and into old yet "new" ones. And yet Saint-Preux
himself doesn't. Why? Because he gradually realizes that something
is
wrong with the idyllic picture.
What is wrong becomes visible in the kind of sexual experience
it generates. Up here, too, Saint-Preux is free and alone, surrounded
by attractive women, committed to another woman who is far away.
Saint-Preux is in the most provocative situation we could imagine,
yet he is not in the least provoked. What is lacking, Saint... 'Preux
comes to realize, is in fact
avidity,
that power that animates the
metropolis. In the Upper Valais, nothing leads anywhere, thought
and action are totally disassociated from one another - this is what
makes social life so free of tension. The happiness that men pursue
up here is a "peaceful tranquility" which comes to them "not
through the enjoyment of pleasure, but rather through exemption
