RIDEING
Rejected Manuscripts
HELEN ADAMS KELLER
How She Learned to Speak
JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU
(1712-1778)
THE MAN TO WHOM EXPRESSION WAS TRAVAIL
From the "Confessions of Rousseau."
It is strange to hear that those critics who spoke of Rousseau's
"incomparable gift of expression," of his "easy, natural style," were
ludicrously incorrect in their allusions. From his "Confessions" we
learn that he had no gift of clear, fluent expression; that he was by
nature so incoherent that he could not creditably carry on an ordinary
conversation; and that the ideas which stirred Europe, although
spontaneously conceived, were brought forth and set before the world
only after their progenitor had suffered the real pangs of labor.
But after all it is the same old story over again. Great things are
rarely said or done easily.
Two things very opposite unite in me, and in a manner which I cannot
myself conceive. My disposition is extremely ardent, my passions
lively and impetuous, yet my ideas are produced slowly, with great
embarrassment and after much afterthought. It might be said my heart
and understanding do not belong to the same individual.
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