Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Montmorency, France - Blue Plaques on Waymarking.com

[FR] En février-mars 1758, le philosophe rédige la Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles. A la fin de l’année, il travaille à son Emile. A partir de 1759, il s’attèle à la rédaction du Contrat social.

Le 15 avril 1759, le maréchal de Luxembourg rend visite au Citoyen de Genève et l’invite à emménager au Petit château - situé dans son domaine de Montmorency - durant les travaux de réfection que le propriétaire du petit Mont-Louis est sur le point d’entreprendre.

En août 1759 « sitôt que la petite maison du Mont-Louis fut prête », Rousseau regagne son logis, tout en conservant la clé du Petit Château dont il continue à jouir à son gré.

En janvier 1761, la Nouvelle Héloïse est publiée et remporte immédiatement un immense succès. L’année suivante, deux autres ouvrages sont édités : le Contrat social en avril et, en mai, Emile ou de l’éducation.

Le 8 juin 1762, le Parlement de Paris condamne l’Emile à être lacéré et brûlé en place publique, et promulgue le lendemain un décret de prise de corps contre son auteur. Averti dans la nuit par un domestique des Luxembourg, Rousseau se rend au château du Maréchal qui prend en main l’organisation de sa fuite.

Dans l’après-midi du 9 juin, le philosophe quitte définitivement Montmorency pour se rendre à Yverdon, dans le canton de Vaud, première étape d’un long exil. Jean-Jacques Rousseau ne reviendra jamais à Montmorency et son errance prendra fin en 1778 à Ermenonville où il décède le 2 juillet, à l’âge de 66 ans.

[EN] Here is where he wrote some of his most successful and influential books, including the novel Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse (1761).

In the back of the garden is Rousseau’s dungeon, the little house where he went to write without being disturbed.

Rousseau claimed that he was in poor health during his entire stay in Montmorency.

“I lived in Montmorency for over four years without ever having had a single day of good health. Although the air is excellent, the water is bad, and it may very well be one of the causes that contributed to worsen my usual ailments. In the late autumn of 1761 I fell quite ill, and I spent the entire winter in pain almost constantly. The physical pain, augmented by a thousand forms of anxiety, made me all the more sensitive to my suffering."
(Confessions, XI)

Nevertheless, he completed several important books during these years, including The Social Contract and Émile ou de l’éducation.

Rousseau’s original furniture has been lost (except for one fireplace grate) but since Rousseau himself had made a detailed inventory of everything in the house, the museum curators were able to acquire antique furniture from the eighteenth century that exactly matched his descriptions.

He lived here with his ‘housekeeper’ Thérèse Levasseur, whom he had met years before when she was a waitress in a pub. In this phase of his life she really was only his housekeeper, though they had been lovers for many years. She had even borne him several children, all of which they had given away to orphanages — a fact that caused great damage to Rousseau’s reputation when it was publicly revealed by his arch-enemy Voltaire in 1764.

Rousseau’s stay in Montmorency came to an abrupt end in 1762, when the Parliament of Paris ordered his book Émile ou de l’éducation to be banned and publicly burned, for religious reasons, and issued an arrest warrant for its author. With the help of an influential friend, Rousseau left Montmorency on the afternoon of June 9, 1762, and fled to Yverdon, Switzerland.

Blue Plaque managing agency: Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication Individual Recognized: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Physical Address: 5 Rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau Montmorency, France Web Address: [Web Link]

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