Juan Arnau is a prolific writer; It has already collected nearly thirty books in twenty years and is a major chapter on Buddhism, Hinduism, Vedic literature and cosmology, medicine and Indian culture in general. We also owe him several translations directly from Sanskrit into Spanish. He recently gave us the work we have been discussing: Rousseau or Maiden in the Grass: an essay between literature and philosophy? A synthesis of Geneva’s brilliant biographical moments? Or is it a distillation of Rousseau’s personality to obtain his herbal essence that can penetrate the sensitive mind?
This is not the first time the Benares Hindu University-educated man has turned his gaze towards the West; He also did this in Spinoza, Berkeley and Leibniz, a very important trilogy of philosophical works he considered from fiction: perhaps this is because Arnau contrasted himself with Eastern mysticism, which was determined to show these two aspects of thought, namely the collective illusions of rational thought, and Western logic, which argued the opposite. finds himself properly engaged in the task of comparison.
In 2005, he became a finalist for the Anagrama Essay Award together with Rendir elsento. Philosophy and translation (2008). Here, he deals with the problem of translation, which is a problem that concerns modern philosophy due to the untranslatability component that languages show among themselves – as we see in Benjamin and Wittgenstein. But he also delves into one of his favorite topics, meaning before syntax and semantics, is accustomed to studying Hindu meditation and the inclinations of desire, and is interested in cognitive processes such as perception, memory and imagination. Relatedly, you can read his work The History of Imagination (2020), which was a finalist for the 2019 Espasa Essay Prize. He was also a 2015 National Essay Award finalist for his role as a popularizer of philosophy. Portable Handbook of Philosophy (2014).
Now let’s move on to our book. Why does the title mysteriously describe Rousseau through a plant, “maiden herb”? Every reader will have to figure out why, it is not obvious: of course it is not conceptually closed, but because it contains a metaphorically open meaning. On page 27 we are given a clue, Madame de Warens’ exclamation: “Look at the virgin grass still blooming”, but the myopic young lover can hardly appreciate this and regrets it, although this experience shows him a path to follow. , his future devotion to botany, his passion for music, and the taste of the company of protective and sensitive female companionship in the solitude he sought.
The title seems to tell us the mood in which it was written. This is neither Rousseau’s systematically presented thought nor a perfectly articulated biography. Yes, we see a selection of the basic ideas covered and realize that the plot of the thirteen chapters is created through biography. However, it is clear that the key is to approach that soul that does not think in the usual enlightenment patterns, whose rationality is a mysterious intertwining of egalitarian and individualist feelings with liberal and romantic vitalist logic. The emotionalism evident in the pedagogy of Emilio or the New Heloise, together with the overarching historical logic of the Discourse on inequality between men, are all encapsulated in the futuristic universalist ethos of his Social Contract.
But let’s not get confused, because Arnau is trying to save a portrait that points simultaneously to two faces of Rousseau, rather than tracing one or another concept: Janus Illustrated. In short, the most important profile is their emotional reactions and the paths they open. And there we weave the complex personality of someone who put her five children into foster care the moment they were born, in theory to save them from a bad family environment, and who also wrote wonderful pages in the book. in favor of an educated childhood, in the most perfect freedom.
A character both admired and despised: he was different – he came from a modest class and was invited into the salons of the enlightened aristocracy – he dressed differently (his Armenian coat creaking with the elegance of the lights), behaved differently (he preferred the misanthropic life of the countryside to the cultural chaos of Paris) and was different He thought: he did not believe that civilization was progress, quite the opposite. Women understood him much better than men. Maybe because you wrote The New Heloise, which was an ideal model of feminine virtues at that time? And worse, it was difficult for this disgruntled temperament to maintain distinguished friendships such as those of Diderot or Hume. With a kind character, he invites him to his home on the British island, but the Genevan’s harsh temperament drives them away. Diderot valued him and asked him for his Encyclopedia, but strange frictions also arose. However, it was admittedly that he did not get along very well with Voltaire after he wrote, “No one has ever taken such pains to return us to the condition of animals,” satirizing the genuine demand for a return to the life of Nature.
With this controversial personality in his hand, Arnau paints us an impressionistic picture in bright colors, so humanized that his gentle features mix with his contradictions and limitations, combining both the accumulation of his personal flaws and all his genius in the same existence. In literary works, it results in a group that threatens to disintegrate but is stuck in a strange hypocrisy, and with it the transcendence of his work.