Jean-Jacques was just as much of a loner as little Marcel.

Jean-Jacques was just as much of a loner as little Marcel. 👥 That is not the only thing they have in common, and it seems to me that one could draw parallels between certain passages from the “Confessions” or the “Rêveries of a Solitary Walker” 🪞🚶🏻‍♂️with some fine passages from Proust. 🛌✍🏻

Aren’t these few lines, written by Julie to her cousin Claire, a fine example of Proustian style? And please forgive me for the anachronism: they remind me of “The Fugitive”. 🥺

“Every day we lose something that was dear to us, and we never replace it. Thus we die little by little, until, loving at last only ourselves, we have ceased to feel and to live before we cease to exist. But a sensitive heart defends itself with all its might against this premature death; when the cold begins at the extremities, it gathers all its natural warmth around itself; the more it loses, the more it clings to what remains; and it holds on, so to speak, to the last object through the bonds of all the others.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Julie, or the New Heloise”, GF, pp. 479–480

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