For Rousseau Swiss Lakes Evoked Happy Memories of Boat Trips And
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Rousseau’s LOVE FOR LAKES or Rousseau Swiss lakes evoked de Warens, and because of her, he located F happy memories of boat trips and Julie, or the New Heloise on its shores. In camaraderie, most famously during his this passage from Julie we experience brief, idyllic sojourn on St Peter’s Island Rousseau’s patriotism, especially his asso- in the Lake of Bienne in autumn 1765. ciation of Switzerland with freedom and Lake Geneva was the birthplace of Mme human dignity. In 1754 Rousseau made a Lake view six-day expedition around the lake with a party that included the Genevan geologist, Jean-André Deluc of Geneva (1727-1817). He therefore associated Lake Geneva with the sciences. Rousseau contemplating the Lake of Bienne at twilight Gouache on paper by G. L. Hartmann, 1796 “The nearer I got to Switzerland, the more emotion I felt. The instant when © Jean-Jacques Rousseau Museum, Montmorency, France / Laure Quérouil from the heights of the Jura I sighted Lake Geneva was an instant of ecstasy and ravishment. The sight of my country, of that country so cherished where torrents of Julie and Saint-Preux’s trip on the Lake of Geneva Oil on canvas by C. E. Le Prince, 1824 pleasures had flooded my heart; the air of the Alps so wholesome and pure; the sweet air © Jean-Jacques Rousseau Museum, Montmorency, France / Didier Fontan of the fatherland, more fragrant than the perfumes of the Orient; that rich and fertile land, that unique countryside, the most beautiful that ever met human eye; that charming abode like nothing I had found in circling the earth; the sight of a happy and free people; the mildness of the season, the calmness of the Clime; a thousand delightful memories that reawakened all the sentiments I had tasted; all these things threw me into transports I cannot describe, and seemed to restore to me all at once the enjoyment of my entire life.” (St Preux to Milord Edouard) Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché (trans.), “Julie, or the New Heloise” in The collected writings of Rousseau, vol. 6 [Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997], p. 344 THE FEELING FOR NATURE AND THE RAPID EXPANSION OF DESCRIPTIVE NATURAL HISTORY IN GENEVA ean-Jacques’s love of botany is among Léman and the Swiss mountains in Julie “J the causes of its subsequent devel- were the framework for the development opment in France” pointed out Augustin- of the pre-Romantic awareness from 1770 Pyramus de Candolle (1778-1841) in his onwards. In Geneva, the rapid expansion of Histoire de la botanique genevoise. The general the descriptive natural sciences (botany, zoo- movement to return to nature that was logy and geology) followed in line with that Lake view characteristic of the second half of the 18th movement. The founding scientists of the century was expressed as a return to rural young Natural History and Physics Society values, as a love for country walks and in 1791, such as Horace-Bénédict de Saus- botanical plant collecting. Even if they are sure (1740-1799) or Jean-Pierre-Etienne not pioneering, the writings of Rousseau, Vaucher (1763-1841), thus extolled the such as Emile or Julie, or the New Heloïse are virtues of these research subjects in keeping part of this movement: the settings of Lake with the beauty of their homeland. “By its very location, Geneva seems to have been made to inspire a taste for Natural History. Nature appears there in all its beauty: it displays an infinity of different natural endowments, a lake filled with clear, azure-colored water, a beautiful river which flows out of it, surrounded by charming hills that form the first stage of a mountainous amphitheatre, crowned by the Second view of Lake Geneva’s northern shore taken from the residence of M. Charles Bonnet at Genthod, one league north of Geneva majestic summits of the Alps; the Mont Blanc, which Etching by S. Malgo, 1781 © BGE - Geneva Library, Geneva Iconographic Collection rises above them all, covered in a mantle of eternal snow and ice down to its foot: the surprising contrast View of Mont Blanc with Geneva in the foreground of this winter scene with the beautiful greenery that Drawing and engraving by C. Hackert and J.-A. Linck, ca. 1781 Private Collection / © Loës Gallery SA, Geneva covers the hills and the lower mountains. This magnificent spectacle demands admiration and inspires the keenest desire to study and learn about these marvels.” Horace-Bénédict de Saussure Voyage dans les Alpes précédés d’un essai sur l’histoire naturelle des environs de Genève, vol. I [Neuchâtel: Samuel Fauche, 1779], pp. 1-2 (Alexandra Cook, trans.).