THE DESIGN OF THE ENGRAVINGS

Rousseau is not alone as an author in using engravings to illustrate his works, and we can begin to interpret his use of them in light of that tradition. Restricting ourselves to political thought, perhaps the most famous frontispiece is the striking image Hobbes commissioned for Leviathan in which he reconstructs of the traditional metaphor of the sovereign being the head of the body politic. As Skinner (Reference Skinner2008, 7–10) explains, Hobbes’ employment of frontispieces for Leviathan and his other works stemmed from a tradition of “emblem books” or emblemata popular among Renaissance humanists. These “emblem-books” included collections of illustrations, typically with accompanying texts such as poems or allegorical subjects that challenged readers to interpret or even decode the meaning of the illustration. When employed as frontispieces or other textual illustrations, these images are examples of what Genette (Reference Genette, Lewin and Macksey1997) has termed “paratexts” (specifically, “peritexts” in this case), that is, elements of a book such as title pages, dedications, prefaces, notes, etc., that “surround” the text and offer a “more pertinent reading” of it (1997, 2). Genette focuses on textual or verbal “paratexts,” but he notes (1997, 1, 7) that illustrations can also serve the same function and must likewise be interpreted dialogically in relation to the text.

As for Rousseau, he was an exacting author intimately involved in the production and distribution of his writings, and among his principal concerns were engravings. Producing these engravings was not an inexpensive endeavor,Footnote ² and he negotiated with his publishers to ensure their inclusion and assure the quality of their execution. His correspondence with his publishers and others shows that he took every bit as much care with the images that accompanied his texts as with the words themselves. His aim in including these illustrations can be seen in the “Subjects of the Engravings” that accompanies Julie: “Most of these Subjects are detailed so as to make them understood, much more so than they can be in the execution. . .. Therefore one can never enter into too much detail when one wants to present Subjects for Engraving, and is absolutely ignorant of the art. Moreover, it is easy to see that this had not been written for the Public; but in putting out the engravings separately, it seemed that this explanation [explication] ought to accompany them” (Reference Rousseau, Masters and Kelly1990–2011, 6: 621; see also Rousseau to Sophie d’Houdetot, December 14, 1757; Reference Rousseau and Leigh1965–91, 4: 408). The term “explication” refers to a genre included in many books of the period which decoded the allegories or clarified the subjects of illustrations (see Reference Rousseau, Masters and Kelly1990–2011, 6: 723, ed.n.12). In this regard, then, they also stem from the tradition of “emblem-books.” This usage is noteworthy for the present purposes because Rousseau uses this same term in Emile for the much briefer “Explanations of the Illustrations.” His explanations of the engravings for Julie are quite detailed, with a lengthy paragraph or more for each of the 12 engravings. Given what he states in the general remarks to the “Subjects of the Engravings,” these descriptions must have resembled his instructions to Gravelot, who designed them. We know that Rousseau sent instruction to the designer of the engravings for Emile, Charles Eisen, who had been responsible for the frontispiece of the Discourse on Inequality. While the original correspondence is no longer extant, the surviving letters to his publisher suggest that his instructions must have been similarly detailed.

The placement of the five engravings for Emile at the head of each of the five books into which it divided, with one important exception, suggests that Rousseau's intention was to have them serve as frontispieces. This suggestion is buttressed by his instruction to the publisher that they be placed facing the opening page of each book (see Rousseau Reference Rousseau and Leigh1965–91, 10: 222–23). The difference between Emile and Julie in this regard is instructive. There are two engravings for each of the six parts of the work, placing one near the beginning of each part and one near the end, thereby framing each part pictorially (see Labrosse Reference Labrosse1985). The novels’ engravings illustrate the action of the story, at least at the most obvious level. By contrast, the engravings for Emile do not depict the action of the work.Footnote ³ Rather, they are allegorical devices that refer to the philosophical content of the work, and thus akin to the frontispieces to the two Discourses.

Rousseau's intention to illustrate each of the five books of Emile with one engraving placed at its head was frustrated by the production of the work, leading him to make a partial change in plan. The original edition of Emile was published in four volumes, and he therefore had to choose how to break the five books into four volumes. At the head of the first published volume is an engraving of Thetis, which Rousseau explains in the “Explanations of the Illustrations” “relates to the first book and serves as frontispiece to the work,” that is to the work as a whole (36). The first volume contains the first two books of Emile, and so the engraving of Chiron appears part way through the first volume at the head of Book II. The second volume opens with the engraving of Hermes that adorns Book III. Book IV commences part way through the second volume and continues into the third volume, which has an engraving of Orpheus at its head. Rousseau specified the exact beginning of the third volume in a letter to his publisher: “‘Thirty years ago. . ..’” This is, of course, the beginning of the dramatic introduction to the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” and Rousseau instructed his publisher to place the engraving of Orpheus at this point as a frontispiece to the third volume (Rousseau Reference Rousseau and Leigh1965–91, 9: 223). In the “Explanations of the Illustrations” Rousseau therefore characterizes the engraving of Orpheus as “belonging” to Book IV” (36), thereby indicating that unlike the other engravings it does not represent the entire book and suggesting that it is an exception that proves the rule. His decision regarding the placement of this engraving has the effect of giving each published volume a frontispiece, with the disadvantage—at least for the interpreter—of leaving Book IV as a whole without an unambiguous frontispiece. Finally, the fourth published volume contains Book V and is illustrated with an engraving of Circe.

If the frontispieces to the two Discourses ask to be read as allegories of the entire work by both their subject matter and their status as frontispieces, several features of the engravings for Emile indicate that Rousseau had the same intention. First, and most obviously, there is the content of the illustrations themselves. Rousseau chose subjects from mythology that are already allegorical. This impression is confirmed in the first textual reference to the subject of the first engraving, where he terms the story of Achilles’ mother plunging him into the Styx an “allegory” drawn from a “fable” (47). His choice of mythological subjects makes the most obvious parallel for interpretation the frontispiece to the first Discourse depicting Prometheus bringing fire to mankind, which he also therein terms an “allegory” taken from a “fable” (Rousseau Reference Rousseau and Masters1964, 47 n.). The allegorical intention is underscored by the title of the “Explanations of the Engravings” (36), with the plural “explanations” (mistranslated by Bloom in the singular) indicating that these “explanations” are meant as allegorical hints, given especially the meaning of the term “explication” noted above.

Second, Rousseau further underscores the primary role of the engravings as allegorical frontispieces by specifying legends that refer to the subject of the image rather than to their action: Thetis, Chiron, Hermes, Orpheus, and Circe. He was adamant on this score, for in one of his instructions to his publisher he demanded that the first engraving be identified as “Thetis” instead of the engraver's initial “Thetis plunging Achilles into the river Styx” (Rousseau Reference Rousseau, Masters and Kelly1959–95, 10: 150–51). Only in the “Explanations of the Illustrations” does he summarize the action represented in the engravings, giving us a way to begin unpacking their significance. For example, he writes that the first engraving “represents Thetis plunging her son in the Styx to make him invulnerable” (36).

Finally, unlike the first Discourse, where he refers in the legend to the engraving to a specific point in the text and then likewise refers in the text to the frontispiece (see Rousseau Reference Rousseau and Masters1964, 30 and 47–8 and n.), in Emile he nowhere directly refers in the text to an engraving. For example, in the case cited above where he refers to the “allegory” of Thetis plunging her son into the Styx, he does not refer to the engraving even though it obviously represents the allegory. The engravings thus somehow at once stand alone and exist only in reference to the text: by their very nature they function as allegories. The way in which Rousseau presents the engravings as part of the text and yet separate from it creates a doubling of the allegory that requires interpreting the engraving in relation to the text and vice versa.

The reader is encouraged by Rousseau to compare text and engraving by the citations in the “Explanations of the Illustrations” to the page of the text where he refers to the subject of the engraving for each book. (Bloom mistakenly replaces these textual citations with references to the page numbers of the engravings themselves.) Textual references are also included on the engravings themselves, with the page number in the top right corner of the frame surrounding the picture. The “Explanations of the Illustrations” and these references to the text on the illustrations themselves are thus invitations to interpretation. With these preliminary considerations regarding the function of the engravings in mind, then, we can now turn to an interpretation of the engravings.

THETIS

The engraving that serves as a frontispiece for Book I, and for Emile as a whole, is entitled “Thetis” and depicts the sea nymph plunging her son, Achilles, in the river Styx.Footnote ⁴ Lest there be any question that the river in question is the Styx, in the background of the engraving is a barely perceptible Charon ferrying passengers to the underworld, a detail that also subtly underscores the issue of mortality. In the “Explanations of the Illustrations” Rousseau states: “The illustration, which relates to the first book and serves as frontispiece to the work, represents Thetis plunging her son in the Styx to make him invulnerable” (36). The only information provided in this explanation not obvious from looking at the engraving itself is Thetis’ intention: to render her son invulnerable. Note also that Rousseau's explanation does not mention Achilles by name, thus further indicating that the principal figure is Thetis. Indeed, one might have reasonably expected that a book bearing the title of its eponymous subject would have a frontispiece that allegorically represented Emile, Achilles for example, but this is not the case. Rousseau's intention in choosing this subject and including this particular explanation as the initial hint for interpretation therefore hinges on Thetis and her intention.

In choosing to make Thetis, and not Achilles, the principal subject of the frontispiece, Rousseau puts the focus less on the recipient of education than on the educator, in the broadest possible sense of the term. Indeed, all of the engravings for Emile depict educators. “Our first preceptor is our nurse” (42), he explains of the first steps in our education broadly conceived, and famously urges mothers to nurse their own children. Thetis is a mother, and Rousseau opens his work by saying that he is addressing mothers: “It is to you that I address myself, tender and foresighted mother. . .” (37). Mothers are nonetheless not the principal addressees of Emile, and, in fact, despite Rousseau's initial claim and his pleas in the beginning of the work to have mothers resume their traditional role, mothers soon disappear in Emile's education (see Zerilli Reference Zerilli1994, 40).

Rousseau's principal addressees in Emile are either “governors,” to whom he speaks teacher-to-teacher once he assumes the role of his imaginary pupil's imaginary governor, or “readers” more generally. Both governors and readers tend to come in for rough treatment from the author. “It will be believed that what is being read is less an educational treatise than a visionary's dreams about education,” he writes in the Preface, anticipating his reader's reaction: “What is to be done about it? It is on the basis not of others’ ideas that I write but on that of my own. I do not see as do other men. I have long been reproached for that. But is it up to me to provide myself with other eyes or to affect other ideas?” (34). Throughout the work Rousseau pauses to accuse the skeptical reader of not seeing correctly, of misunderstanding their pupils’ true nature and thereby human nature. For example: “I already see the startled reader judging this child by our children,” he writes immediately before making his programmatic statement concerning the natural goodness of man, the fundamental principle of his work and of his entire philosophical system (92). The addressee of the work—whether mothers, fathers, teachers, or, in sum, readers—must learn to change their perspective and to see through Rousseau's eyes (see Scott Reference Scott2012). Thetis therefore stands for the would-be educator or, at the most general level, the reader. The reader must put himself or herself in the place of Thetis and interrogate her intentions of rendering her son invulnerable through the lens provided by Rousseau's text.

The passage that corresponds to the frontispiece depicting Thetis, as indicated by the page references included both in the “Explanations of the Illustrations” and on the engraving itself, offers what at first seems to be a straightforward interpretation of the engraving, an interpretation that nonetheless proves unsatisfactory upon further reflection. The context in which this passage occurs regards the concern for the physical vulnerability of children, especially by mothers. Whereas some mothers neglect their children, for example by not breastfeeding them, others carry their concern to excess, increasing the vulnerability of their child by preventing him from feeling his weakness and by hoping to exempt him from the laws of nature by keeping “hard blows away from him.” At this point, Rousseau suddenly introduces Thetis: “Thetis, to make her son invulnerable, plunged him, according to the fable, in the water of the Styx. This allegory is a lovely one, and it is clear. The cruel mothers of whom I speak do otherwise: by dint of plunging their children in softness, they prepare them for suffering; they open their pores to ills of every sort to which they will not fail to be prey when grown” (47). Note that, like the “Explanations of the Illustrations,” this textual reference does not mention the more famous individual depicted in the engraving: Achilles. Once again, it is Thetis and her intention that are at issue.

Rousseau claims that this allegory is “clear,” but how clear is it? By contrasting Thetis to the “cruel mothers” who show excessive care for their children, he at first glance seems to approve of Thetis’ intention to render her son invulnerable. In keeping with this, two paragraphs later he recommends: “Harden their bodies against the intemperance of season, climates, elements; against hunger, thirst, fatigue. Steep them in the water of the Styx” (47). This advice might make sense if the child's physical vulnerability were all that were at stake. But it is not. After first introducing Thetis, Rousseau immediately turns to the issue of psychological vulnerability, that is, the health of the soul with regard to the passions. The issues of physical and psychological vulnerability are connected through the question of human mortality, and these new concerns complicate the initial, positive interpretation of Thetis’ intention to render her son invulnerable. Indeed, the attentive reader should in fact already have realized that the initial interpretation is insufficient, for just a few pages earlier Rousseau warned: “One thinks only of preserving one's child. That is not enough. One ought to teach him to preserve himself as a man, to bear the blows of fate. . .. You may very well take precautions against his dying. He will nevertheless have to die. And though his death were not the product of your efforts, still these efforts would be ill conceived. It is less a question of keeping him from dying than of making him live” (42). This language about teaching a child to “bear the blows of fate” foreshadows the language he uses immediately before introducing Thetis as an apparently positive alternative to mothers who show excessive concern for a child by keeping “hard blows away from him” (47). Thetis’ intention in rendering her son invulnerable is precisely to render him immune from death, or at least as immune as her hold on his foot allows.

The initial interpretation of the engraving is further complicated just a few pages later when Rousseau makes another reference to the fable depicted in the engraving in relation to the subject of medicine. In one of his characteristic diatribes against the “lying art” of medicine, he warns that the effects of medicine on the body are less important than those they have on the mind because it introduces us prematurely to the terrors of death. In order to illustrate his point, he adduces the example of Achilles: “It is the knowledge of dangers that makes us fear them; he who believed himself invulnerable would fear nothing. By dint of arming Achilles against peril, the poet takes from him the merit of valor; every other man in his place would have been an Achilles at the same price” (55). By rendering Achilles invulnerable, Thetis (or “the poet”) deprives him of the virtues appropriate for mortal human beings. Rather than instructing his reader to alter his pupil by taking hold of him by the heel and dipping him in the Styx, Rousseau counsels: “Do you, then, want him to keep his original form? Preserve it from the instant he comes into the world. As soon as he is born, take hold of him [emparez-vous de lui] and leave him no more before he is a man” (48; emphasis supplied). As the “poet” of his own work, as both author and tutor, Rousseau will not attempt to render Emile invulnerable. As Deneen (Reference Deneen2000, 135) states: “Rousseau's choice of a model here is most perplexing, given that it stands directly in contradiction to the central meaning of his lesson. Thus, his claim that the meaning of the allegory “is clear” is wholly misleading, even deceptive” (see also see Michel Reference Michel2003, 529, 539; Mall Reference Mall2002, 18). In sum, the allegory of Thetis is hardly “clear” in relation to Rousseau's text.

The first mention of Achilles invites the reader to compare the epic hero with Emile. Rousseau himself seems to ask us to do so by introducing his imaginary pupil (51) in between the initial textual reference to Thetis (47) and the subsequent reference to Achilles (55). In fact, this comparison is already suggested by the fact that the frontispiece depicting Thetis plunging her son in the Styx is placed directly across from the title page of the work. In addition to the title itself, the title page includes an epigraph: “We are sick with evils that can be cured; and nature, having brought us forth sound, itself helps us if we wish to be improved” (31). This epigraph is drawn from Seneca's On Anger (De Ira 2.13).Footnote ⁵ It is no accident that anger is the principal characteristic of Achilles, whose anger is not even satiated, much less cured. Emile is no Achilles (see Deneen Reference Deneen2000).

The epigraph Rousseau chooses for Emile reminds us not only of the chief characteristic of the unnamed infant depicted on the frontispiece, but it also claims that the disease can be cured, or rather that it is unnatural in the first place. Anger is not natural to human beings, according to Rousseau, and neither are the concern with glory and the knowledge of death that create the psychological vulnerability to which pride, anger, and despair are responses. The knowledge of death is not natural and is one of the first acquisitions we make in society, Rousseau tells us in the Discourse on Inequality (Reference Rousseau and Masters1964, 116). He reminds us of this argument in Emile immediately after mentioning Achilles: “Naturally man knows how to suffer with constancy and dies in peace. It is doctors with their prescriptions, philosophers with their precepts, priests with their exhortations, who debase his heart and make him unlearn how to die” (55; see Plato, Phaedo 64a). Likewise, in an apparent allusion to Thetis’ intention as depicted in the frontispiece, Rousseau asks: “Can you conceive of some true happiness possible for any being outside of its constitution? And is not wanting to exempt man from all the ills of his species equally to make him quit his constitution?” Such a being cannot be contented, and his demands make him angry: “How could I conceive that a child thus dominated by anger and devoured by the most irascible passions might ever be happy?” (87). Physical vulnerability is less at issue in Emile than the psychological condition of a being with unnatural acquisitions which are in tension with its natural endowments.

The shift from the first to the second textual reference to the subject of the frontispiece of Book I, and of Emile as a whole, signals a change in emphasis from physical invulnerability to psychological vulnerability, and this shift is further confirmed by a final textual reference to the subject near the end of the work as a whole. This reference comes in the context of the tutor Jean-Jacques warning Emile of his vulnerability now that he has fallen in love with Sophie. “‘When you entered the age of reason, I protected you from men's opinions. When your heart became sensitive, I preserved you from the empire of the passions. If I had been able to prolong this inner calm to the end of your life, I would have secured my work, and you would always be as happy as a man can be. But, dear Emile, it is in vain that I have dipped your soul in the Styx; I was not able to make it everywhere invulnerable’” (443). Note that the tutor has plunged Emile's soul, not his body, into the river Styx. Since this third reference occurs shortly after the textual reference to the subject of the engraving for Book V, depicting Circe, we shall return to this issue. For now we can say that the three references to Thetis plunging her son into the river Styx might be characterized as tests of the reader's progress in understanding the work.

CHIRON

Psychological vulnerability in Rousseau's understanding comes most importantly from the conflict between nature and society. “Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man,” Rousseau begins Book I, and then compares a child to a shrub that grows up in the middle of the highway and asks his “tender and foresighted mother” to keep the nascent shrub away from the highway (37–38). But the human highway is here to stay. Natural man having vanished, nature cannot simply take its course and an education that manages the conflict between nature and society is necessary. The education Rousseau envisions requires a philosophical understanding of human nature and its development in society, an education provided by Emile. The composite beast of philosopher-tutor therefore replaces the mother in the narrative. The change once again parallels the allegory Rousseau has chosen for the frontispiece, for Thetis gives the centaur Chiron charge of her son's education. The principal subject of the engraving for Book II remains a tutor, and once again it is the tutor's intentions with regard to his pupil that are central to interpreting the allegory.

The subject of the engraving at the head of Book II, Rousseau states in the “Explanations of the Illustrations,” “represents Chiron training the little Achilles in running” (36). Rousseau carries the story of Achilles through the entire first volume of the published work, both Books I and II being contained in the first volume. The wise centaur Chiron has served as a representation of the educator, and Rousseau would have been familiar with the fable from many sources. The specific version of the fable portrayed in the engraving is not derived from Homer, where the references to the “most righteous of the centaurs” is to his skill in medicine and his teaching of that art to Asclepius and to Achilles (Iliad IV.219, XI.832). In other classical sources Chiron acquires further credentials, and he is represented as teaching music, hunting, and other arts to Achilles and others. Finally, the metaphorical possibilities of a teacher who is half-god, half-animal were not lost on authors who used Chiron for exemplary purposes. Notably, Machiavelli claims that ancient writers covertly taught princes to use both the man and the beast through the example of Chiron. Rousseau's appeals to Chiron's nature as half-god, half-beast, but in his case what is important is the philosophic knowledge of human nature and development required for the proper education of a naturally asocial and good animal in the bosom of society. Previous thinkers and educators have failed precisely because they lacked such knowledge. They do not recognize the contradictions between “man” and “citizen” that produce a being who is neither good for himself nor for others (39–41).

While the frontispiece of Book II recalls traditional depictions of Chiron and Achilles, the differences in Rousseau's version point to his philosophical departure from his predecessors. In most versions, the centaur and his young charge are depicted hunting, Achilles often astride his semi-equine tutor, one or both of them with bow and arrow in hand. By contrast, in Rousseau's version Chiron and Achilles are not hunting. Further, Achilles is afoot and we are informed in the description of the engravings that he is being trained in running. In the engraving in Emile they are engaged in hunting of a certain sort, for Chiron is accepting a hare from Achilles, which Achilles seems to have chased and caught and which still appears to be living. In (re)turn, Achilles is receiving an apple from Chiron. If a representation of hunting, it is a decidedly bloodless one. Sword, shield, and helmet lie on the ground; Rousseau has at least partially disarmed the centaur. The mythical sources warn us of the unruly nature of centaurs, and the image of the centauromachia decorated numerous ancient artifacts, including the Parthenon, with the most famous remnants of that very scene being among the Elgin marbles. If hunting is an appropriate pursuit for little Achilles, Rousseau's young charge pursues fruit and other sweets.

The primarily therapeutic role of the educator as represented by Chiron is clear in the textual reference to the engraving in Book II. As in the case of Thetis, Rousseau's emphasis is on a psychological rather than a physical treatment. His reference to Chiron and Achilles in Book II comes within a story about another child imbedded within his Aemilian romance. “There was an indolent and lazy child who was to be trained in running,” he begins his once-upon-a-time story, continuing to say that this noble lad did not like to run or engage in any other exercise even though he was destined for a military career. “To make of such a gentleman a light-footed Achilles, the skill of Chiron himself would have hardly sufficed” (141). Although Rousseau begins his story by suggesting the child's need for physical exercise, the details of the story of the young knight already point to the true purpose of teaching him to run: to cure his pride. Through an elaborate scheme, elaborately described, Rousseau gets his young charge to compete with other children with cake for a prize. He converts the pride of the lad into generosity, with an added lesson in the advantages of the inequality he enjoys as the one who gets to choose the route he will run, both in the race and, Rousseau implies, in life (143). Rousseau here plays the role of Chiron and teaches his future warrior to run in a way that redirects his nascent pride. Once again, his stress is less on the physical training in running than preventing psychological ills. As the epigraph to Emile says, our ills can be cured, and the medical skill traditionally ascribed to Chiron is appropriate for Rousseau's image.

But who is this young Achilles? Note that the engraving itself involves the topic of exchange or substitution: an exchange or substitution of an apple for a hare. Rousseau's textual reference to the engraving therefore appropriately involves a quiet substitution of one pupil for another. At first glance, the engraving of Chiron and Achilles seems to illustrate an episode in the book, if metaphorically, and the textual reference to the engraving seems to underscore the direct nature of the allegory. The young boy described is not Emile, and our eponymous hero does not require such a lesson in either running or in pride. Rousseau is coy in his narrative device, for just after comparing the players in his drama to Chiron and Achilles, he says: “Here is how I went about it—I, that is to say, the man who speaks in this example” (141). Is “the man who speaks” the Rousseau recalling an experience he had or someone else? The identity of the student is then complicated some pages later: “Emile does not regard the cake I put on the stone as the prize for having run well. He knows only that the sole means of having this cake is to get there sooner than someone else” (151). Finally, returning to training his young charge in running, matters are yet further complicated in Book V, where Rousseau treats the cake race as though it were Emile in the earlier story: “Apropos of cakes, I speak to Emile of his former races” (436).

What to do with this mixture of metaphor and narrative devices? Putting aside the possibility that Rousseau's metaphors are simply mixed, two comments are in order. First, evidence that Rousseau is purposefully alternating among pupils can be adduced, among other places, from a similar but more explicit instance in Book III. In one of the more elaborate set pieces in Emile, a tearful Emile and his tutor are lost in the forest north of Montmorency, unable to find their way to town for lunch, and among other things Jean-Jacques has Emile consult his watch (181). A few pages later, Rousseau reveals the deception or partial substitution of pupils: “In assuming he has a watch as well as making him cry, I gave myself a common Emile, to be useful and to make myself understood (187–8). Interestingly, the reference to Hermes (184) occurs in between the story and Rousseau's revelation about the deception in the story, a point to which we shall return. At any rate, these two examples of a substitution of pupils are among many others in Emile that serve to challenge and educate the reader (see Scott Reference Scott2012).

Second, the depiction of Chiron in the frontispiece may provide a clue to Rousseau's intentions in this particular case. In the mythical versions of the story, Chiron teaches Achilles hunting as preparation for the epic warrior; in Rousseau's version, Chiron is disarmed and Achilles accepts an apple for his running. Rousseau plays a variation on the theme of Chiron and Achilles in a tamer key. Achilles is not at all known for his generosity or humanity, but what links the two stories of running in Emile is generosity. The young knight of Book II shares his cakes with the vanquished through a generosity born of redirected pride. In turn, Emile in Book V also apportions his pastry, but through a generosity based on a properly regulated pity. The one required a cure, and the education of the other prevented the disease in the first place. Whatever the differences in their educations, though, both the young boy and Emile are different from Achilles. An apple is an appropriate alimentary reward for a new Achilles. Recall in this light that in Book II, shortly after the story where he refers to the subject of the engraving, Rousseau includes a long quotation from Plutarch on Pythagorean vegetarianism, by far the longest quotation in the entire work, which he claims is “foreign” to his work but which points to the crucial role of pity in his understanding of human nature and development (154–5). The bloodthirsty pride and anger of Achilles must be prevented, as with Emile, or cured, as with Rousseau's haughty one-time pupil.Footnote ⁶

HERMES

The engraving at the head of the second volume and the beginning of Book III represents Hermes engraving the elements of the sciences on a column. Once again we have a tutor for the principal figure in the engraving, but unlike the images depicting Thetis and Chiron, Hermes does not have a specific pupil, although there are onlookers (perhaps a teacher and student?). The absence of a specific pupil turns out to be significant for interpreting the engraving in relation to the text, for Rousseau explains that Emile will not learn the sciences from books or other graven images. Nor will Emile learn the sciences from an astrolabe or the other complicated machinery scattered on the ground at Hermes’ feet, a detail that parallels the sword and shield lying unused at Chiron's feet. Hermes’ lessons are not appropriate for Emile, and hence no specific pupil is depicted in the engraving. Given especially that the engraving depicts engraving or writing, there is however an implied pupil: the reader of the book, a pupil who emphatically does require Rousseau's instruction.

While the figure depicted is clearly the winged messenger god, the mythological source of the scene does not involve the Greek god. The source is both earlier and later than classical Hellenic literature, having its roots in the Egyptian myth of Thoth or Theuth and only becoming identified with Hermes (or Hermes Trismegistus) in the later hermetic tradition. The story Rousseau chooses to illustrate Book III of Emile involves the same Promethean story seen in the frontispiece to the first Discourse. As noted above, despite Rousseau's claim in a note to the text of the Discourse that the allegory of the frontispiece is “easily seen” (Rousseau Reference Rousseau and Masters1964, 47–8n.), it is in fact complex (see also Letter to Lecat; Reference Rousseau, Masters and Kelly1990–2011, 2: 179). The same concern with speaking to different audience in different ways, through both text and image, that occupies Rousseau in the frontispiece of the Discourse can be seen in the parallel engraving of Hermes for Book III of Emile.

The textual reference in Book III to the engraving of Hermes enunciates some of the same suspicion of the sciences and arts as Rousseau's earlier prize essay. He writes: “I hate books. They teach one to talk only about what one does not know. It is said that Hermes engraved the elements of the sciences on columns in order to shelter his discoveries from a flood. If he had left a good imprint of them in man's head, they would have been preserved by tradition. Well-prepared minds are the surest monuments on which to engrave human knowledge” (184). Emile will not learn the sciences or arts from books, but from experience. As Michel (Reference Michel2003, 529) notes: “In the case of Hermes . . . Rousseau is closer to a counter-example, despite the connection established by the teaching of the sciences.” Rather than constituting a contradiction, however, the misapplied example of Hermes poses a challenge to the reader.

Different lessons are appropriate for different students. As noted above, the textual reference to Hermes in Book III comes in between the deceptive story of the tutor Jean-Jacques and Emile lost in the forest north of Montmorency (180–81) and Rousseau's revelation of the deception that he has substituted a “common” Emile for the “true” one in order to better instruct a would-be tutor or, at the most general level, his reader (187–88). It is therefore no accident that immediately after the story about Montmorency Rousseau regales his reader with a recollection of his own mistaken lesson given to a child. The chemistry lesson involved explaining how ink was made, and when the bored student did not see the utility of the experiment, the hapless Jean-Jacques tried another experiment showing how to test whether wine was adulterated with lead, a lesson whose utility was also lost on the child because he did not have any conception of death (182–83). With these misapplied lessons in place, Rousseau turns his declaration about his detestation of books and the reference to Hermes engraving the elements of the sciences on columns (184). The misapplied lesson and the diatribe about books are related: after all, books are printed with ink. The question therefore becomes for whom books are useful, and in what way.

Just after the textual reference to the engraving, Rousseau's pupil receives his one product of the typographer's art: Robinson Crusoe. Defoe's work depicts a condition of something like a natural man with a developed mind and as yet undeveloped passions, for the need for Friday—or other companionship—has not arisen so far. Rousseau's condemnation of books comes in a book, and his pedagogical treatise should be read in the same light (see Schaeffer Reference Schaeffer2002). The book Emile serves Rousseau's readers in the same way that Robinson Crusoe serves Emile: as the basis on which they are to appraise their own state. Emile is appropriate for Rousseau's readers, but not for Emile himself.

Rousseau's condemnation of Hermes’ gift of writing in Emile is patterned after Socrates’ critique of writing in Plato's Phaedrus, also a written work. Having discussed the art of rhetoric with Phaedrus, Socrates turns near the end of the dialogue to the art of writing and relates a myth to illustrate the insufficiency of the art. The god Theuth came to Egypt with the arts and presented them to Thamos. Thamos asked him about the use of each of the arts. When Theuth came to writing, extolling its virtue as an art to improve memory, Thamos objected: “For this will provide forgetfulness in the souls of those who have learned it, through neglect of memory, seeing that, through trust in writing, the recollect from outside with alien markings, not reminding themselves from inside, by themselves. You have therefore found a drug not for memory, but for reminding. You are supplying the opinion of wisdom to the students, not truth” (Phaedrus 274c–275b [1998, 85–6]). Socrates then goes on with his own argument concerning the defects of writing, complaining that it is indiscriminately available both to appropriate and inappropriate audiences and that it cannot answer the reader, whereas living speech is able to answer, and to answer appropriately given the specific addressee. Such is Plato's answer to Socrates’ critique of writing by composing dialogues. Rousseau's response to the Platonic original involves both the myth and Socrates’ reinterpretation of it.

Several parallels between the Socratic myth and Rousseau's treatment of the sciences and arts in Book III of Emile are also evident. To begin with, the tutor teaches Emile to play the role of Thamos. “What is that good for? This is now the sacred word, the decisive word between him and me in all the actions of our life. . .. He who is taught as his most important lesson to want to know nothing but what is useful interrogates like Socrates” (179). The quest for utility inspires Emile in his imitation of Robinson Crusoe. The absence of obvious utility is also central to the cautionary tale Rousseau tells about teaching a child about ink and adulterated wine. Emile will be shown the things at their true value and not at how other people appraise them. Once again, Rousseau's education is designed to prevent vanity in Emile, or, in his other examples of less well-governed children, to cure or redirect the passion.

If the “Citizen of Geneva” in the first Discourse is Prometheus bringing fire but also warning of its abuse, then Rousseau is also Hermes in the engraving for Book III of Emile. As tutor he engraves the elements of the sciences on Emile's mind and as author of the very book he is writing he warns of the dangers of books. As in the Discourse, Rousseau addresses multiple audiences. I have already indicated one method Rousseau uses in his work: including multiple students as examples for his pedagogical methods, and the cake race is one such example. While inattentive readers are seduced by Rousseau into believing that it is Emile that is being educated at all times, a closer look reveals different students with different temperaments who receive different lessons. Rousseau thereby answers Socrates’ critique of writing even as he engraves his teaching into an imperishable product of the typographer's dangerous art.

ORPHEUS

As noted at the outset, the engraving of “Orpheus teaching men the worship of the gods” (36) poses certain difficulties for interpretation compared to the illustrations of the other books of Emile. As noted earlier, the placement of this engraving was at least to some degree necessitated by the practical problem of apportioning the five books of Emile into four published volumes. The circumstantial evidence therefore suggests the idea to illustrate Book IV with Orpheus was a late decision dictated in large part by necessity.Footnote ⁷ “Belonging” to Book IV but apparently not representing it as a whole, Orpheus seems to be less a metaphoric summary of Book IV than a representation of a portion of that book, namely the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” At any rate, with Orpheus we have yet another tutor portrayed in the engraving, as with Hermes, an unspecified student, once again raising the question of for whom Orpheus’—or the Savoyard Vicar’s—teaching is appropriate.

The textual reference in Book IV to the engraving of Orpheus comes in the intermission to the “Profession” itself with the young Jean-Jacques Rousseau proclaiming: “The good priest had spoken with vehemence. He was moved, and so was I. I believed I was hearing the divine Orpheus sing the first hymns and teaching men the worship of the gods” (294). The emphasis in this description on the emotive effect of the Vicar's speech is central to interpreting both the engraving and the “Profession” itself. The contrast between emotive effect and rational content is evident in the continuation of the passage: “Nevertheless I saw a multitude of objections to make to him. I did not make any of them, because they were less solid than disconcerting, and persuasiveness was on his side” (294). Recall that the legislator of the Social Contract (II.7) cannot reason with the people, so he must “persuade without convincing” by proclaiming the gods as the authors of the laws (Reference Rousseau and Masters1978, 69; see Kelly Reference Kelly1987). The “divine Orpheus” sings, and so persuasively that the animals are charmed, as the engraving shows. The religious teaching of the “Profession” is at least partially directed to the emotional, to the animal, in us.

To whom is the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar” directed and for whom would it be an appropriate lesson? Rousseau frames the “Profession” with an elaborate dramatic setting that supposedly occurred some thirty years earlier and involved a young boy encountering a kindly vicar. Although Rousseau suggests that the boy is himself (264), this suggestion is itself complicated by the fact that he claims that he is transcribing what “the author of the paper” has written and offering it as a set of potentially “useful reflections” (260). At any rate, he describes the young auditor of the Vicar's profession of faith as having precociously awakened pride and sexual desire (see 261–63) and he also indicates that the “Profession” would be useful to a similarly corrupted public (see 295 and n., 313–14 n.). What about Emile? Is the “Profession” appropriate for an uncorrupted “natural man in society”? Rousseau is cagey about whether his pupil has heard anything resembling the Vicar's speech (see 313–14). He has once again engaged in a substitution of pupils, this time his supposedly younger self for his imaginary pupil, who reenters the narrative just after the “Profession.” Finally, to return to the engraving of Orpheus, as with Hermes we have a teacher without a specific pupil, which would seem to indicate that Emile is not the intended recipient of Orpheus’ lessons. Also as with Hermes, we have a number of onlookers (or, rather, auditors) who might require such lessons. In this sense, then, the engraving of Orpheus that “belongs” to Book IV is an apt choice not just for the “Profession,” but for that book as a whole, for it represents the relationship of speaker and audience, persuasive speech, and those for whom such persuasion is appropriate.

Once again, as with the engraving of Hermes, we can gain insight concerning the proper audience of the “Profession” from the Platonic source regarding the question of different lessons being appropriate for different audiences. “One of the things that makes preaching most useless is that it is done indiscriminately to everyone without distinction or selectivity,” Rousseau writes just after the “Profession”: “How can one think that the same sermon is suitable to so many auditors of such diverse dispositions, so different in mind, humor, age, sex, station, and opinion? There are perhaps not even two auditors for whom what one says to all is suitable” (319). The echo of the Phaedrus is unmistakable. Just a few pages later, then, the tutor Jean-Jacques finally reveals himself to be the godlike creator of Emile (323). His description of the setting for this speech to his pupil parallels the scene chosen by the Vicar for revealing himself to the young Jean-Jacques, the scene of the rising sun seen from a hill in which “nature displaying all its magnificence to our eyes in order to present them with the text for our conversation” (266). The tutor Jean-Jacques explains how he will speak “about the subject in which I want to instruct him,” a coy preamble to be sure: “I shall begin by moving his imagination. I shall choose the time, the place, and the objects most favorable to the impression I want to make. I shall, so to speak, call all of nature as a witness to our conversations” (323). Thus setting the scene and revealing himself to the young Emile, Rousseau comments: “It is in this way that you get a young man to listen to you and that you engrave the memory of what you say to him in the depths of his heart” (323). Another echo of Plato. But what is the elusive “subject in which I want to instruct him” here? Aside from revealing himself to Emile, Jean-Jacques turns to the subject of sex, for the time is ripe for such a discussion given Emile's budding passions. The parallels between the dramatic setting of the “Profession” and the speech Jean-Jacques makes to Emile suggest that they are different lessons suitable for different pupils. It seems that romantic love is for Emile an appropriate substitute for the teaching presented in the “Profession.”

If Jean-Jacques plays Orpheus to Emile, he sings persuasively not of the gods, but of love. No women are depicted among the auditors in the engraving of Orpheus (who in myth dies by being torn apart from frenzied women). If sexual longing is the downfall of the Savoyard Vicar (262), and a danger to his auditor, the young Jean-Jacques, an idealized female is introduced to complete Emile's education. Rather than stifling the imagination, the tutor will guide it: “I shall make him moderate by making him fall in love” (327). Rousseau thus introduces the imaginary figure of the object of Emile's affections, whom he calls “Sophie” (329). Emile and his tutor then set off in search of such a companion, who will become Emile's final preceptor. Hence the engraving of Circe and Ulysses that introduces Book V.

CIRCE

The engraving of Circe at the head of Book V appears to represent Sophie, to whose charge the tutor Jean-Jacques entrusts Emile after their marriage: “‘Today I abdicate the authority you confided to me, and Sophie is your governor from now on’” (479). As with the educators depicted in the previous engravings, Circe is divine or semidivine. Romantic love of an ideal woman has sublimated or perhaps transfigured Emile's passions, preventing him from being transformed through sexual desire into an animal, like Ulysses’ swinish companions. Rousseau summarizes the engraving in the “Explanations of the Engravings”: it “represents Circe giving herself to Ulysses, whom she was not able to transform” (36). Emile seems to be represented by Ulysses, and the tutor's management of Emile's passions also elevates him to be someone who, if not quite divine, is heroic. Emile thus becomes an exemplar of human nature and virtue that replaces the classical exemplars represented by Achilles as well as Ulysses (see Deneen Reference Deneen2000). Nonetheless, as with the first engraving featuring Thetis, Rousseau's explication emphasizes not Ulysses’ action or intention, but rather Circe’s: giving herself to Ulysses because she was not able to transform him. Likewise, as noted above, Sophie is described in the text as Emile's final “governor,” and so the key for interpreting the engraving lies in assessing Sophie's intention with regard to Emile.

The story represented in the engraving is drawn from Homer's Odyssey (X.281 ff.).Footnote ⁸ Hermes plays a role in this story, for it is the messenger god who equips Odysseus with the moly that enables him to withstand Circe's charm, and the herb is clearly in Ulysses’ left hand in the engraving. Rousseau thereby connects Book III to Book V. Rousseau, too, is interested in guarding his pupil against the temptations of the passions, and the moly he provides in his role as Hermes is the application of the teaching in his book regarding the natural and artificial passions. In this light, given that his aim is to persuade his reader of the natural goodness of man, especially against the Scriptural account, it is critical to consider an alternative frame he provides for Book V. Namely, he introduces the book by writing: “Now we have come to the last act in the drama of youth, but we are not yet at the dénouement. It is not good for man to be alone. Emile is a man. We have promised him a companion. She has to be given to him. That companion is Sophie” (357). Rousseau echoes the Scriptural account of Adam being given a companion, but aims to introduce Sophie without a Fall. Yet if Sophie is in some sense “given” to Emile in the course of the romantic narrative, the explication of the engraving emphasizes that it is she who gives herself to him. Let us therefore turn to the engraving with Sophie's actions and intentions in mind.

Circe may give herself to Ulysses in part because she was unable to transform him, but Rousseau's version of the story in the engraving either expurgates or obscures one important element of the original story: the brandished sword. In the Odyssey Hermes counsels the hero to rush toward the sorceress with his sword as though he would kill her. He does as instructed, and the fearful Circe drops and grasps his knees in supplication (X.293–301, 321–324). As with the engraving of Chiron and Achilles, Rousseau's version is considerably tamer. Ulysses holds a sword in his right hand, but he seems to be leaning on it as though it were a cane, more an old man than a fierce warrior. Ulysses’ seemingly unstable stance if anything suggests vulnerability rather than ferocity. Circe has dropped her wand and potion, and is thus disarmed like Chiron in the engraving for Book II, but she is certainly not clasping Ulysses’ knees in supplication. In fact, she is slightly above the stooped Ulysses, suggesting that they are equals or even that she is his superior. Her gesture seems welcoming, and perhaps beckoning him to bed as in the story of Circe and Ulysses. How close the engraving is to Rousseau's intentions we cannot know, but the gentler representation is at any rate consistent with his other deviations from classical sources.

The textual reference in Book V to Circe comes immediately after the running races that connect the action back to Book II (“Apropos of cakes. . .” [436]). In this same context, and just before the reference to Circe, Sophie visits Emile working in a carpenter's shop. Rousseau commences this episode by stating, “This is man” (437), an echo of Ecce homo that suggests Emile replaces yet another formidable traditional exemplar. Sophie's mother is piqued that Emile would not leave the shop as she requested, and Sophie upbraids her, saying that he stayed out of duty and from a true respect for her. Rousseau comments: “She did not want a lover who knew no law other than hers. She wants to reign over a man whom she has not disfigured. It is thus that Circe, having debased Ulysses’ companions, disdains them and gives herself only to him whom she was unable to change” (439). Immediately after this statement our author relates how, after Emile and Jean-Jacques are late for an evening appointment due to helping an injured man, an initially worried and angry Sophie finally gives herself to Emile as her husband, having learned that he has not been so transformed by his love for her as to forget the duties of humanity (441). And forthwith Sophie, too, becomes an exemplar: “This is woman” (442).

As noted above, it is Circe's or Sophie's actions and intentions to which Rousseau points us for interpreting the engraving for Book V. Immediately prior to the textual reference to the engraving of Circe Rousseau writes: “She has that noble pride based on merit which is conscious of itself, esteems itself, and wants to be honored as it honors itself. She would disdain a heart which did not feel the full value of her heart, which did not love her for her virtues as much as, and more than, for her charms, and which did not prefer its own duty to her and her to everything else. . .” (439). Much scholarship on Rousseau's view of the education and role of women sees Sophie as inferior or educated to be inferior, perhaps because of the threat that women or sexual desire pose to men (e.g., Okin Reference Okin1979; Weiss Reference Weiss1993; Zerilli Reference Zerilli1994). In this vein, Parker (Reference Parker1987, 207–8) reads Circe and Ulysses as “the classical emblem of a powerful and threatening female” who must be tamed or dominated, and suggests that Sophie is likewise dominated by Emile. What Rousseau states about Sophie's character and her intention in giving herself to Emile at least complicates such an interpretation. Sophie is described, at least to a certain degree, as Emile's equal and even, insofar as she is his “governor,” as his superior. In the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, in an apologetic note Rousseau explains: “I am very far from thinking this ascendancy of women is in itself an evil. . .. Men will always be what is pleasing to women; therefore if you want them to become great and virtuous, teach women what greatness of soul and virtue are” (Rousseau Reference Rousseau and Masters1964, 52–3 n.). If the key to interpreting the engraving of Circe lies in understanding her actions and intentions, and thus Sophie’s, then it appears that Sophie gives herself to Emile because she has learned what greatness of soul and virtue are and esteems them in Emile, whom she has not been able to transform.

As for Emile, the fact that he has not been transformed by Sophie is emphasized several times, including just before this sequence of stories containing the reference to Circe: “On the days when he does not see her, he is not idle and sedentary. On those days he is Emile again. He has not been transformed at all” (435). Protected by the moly of his tutor, Emile is not transformed by the sexual passion. But he is still vulnerable because he is now dependent on Sophie's love. Jean-Jacques warns Emile of his dependence in a speech just after Sophie has given herself to him that commences not with the spectacle of a sunrise, but instead with a sadistic query: “‘What would you do if you were informed that Sophie is dead?’” (442). Emile's reaction demonstrates that he is indeed vulnerable. Within his reply to Emile, Jean-Jacques refers to the subject of the engraving for Book I and for Emile as a whole in a passage quoted above: “But dear Emile, it is in vain that I have dipped your soul in the Styx; I was not able to make it everywhere invulnerable” (443). Rousseau thus brings us full circle.

Emile's education is designed to guard him from the psychological maladies of anger, fear of death, and other passions that might destroy his wholeness and his happiness, but perhaps the most dangerous passion is the sexual passion. While Emile may be unperturbed by his own mortality, having fallen in love with Sophie makes him vulnerable. Emile's passion for Sophie makes him dependent on her, and his attachment renders him vulnerable, for the soul cannot be made entirely invulnerable. Despite the apparently happy ending of the romance of Emile and Sophie, we have an intimation of our hero's Achilles’ heel. Thetis, we should recall, loses her son for he also cannot be rendered invulnerable.