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Scene One rousseau & the cult of sincerity The most eloquent exponent of the desire to be simple, integrated , pure, virtuous, and sincere is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Letter to M. D’Alembert is a key document in eighteenth-century antitheatrical polemic. Allan Bloom, who translated and edited Rousseau’s letter for Agora Editions under the title of Politics and the Arts, identifies Rousseau with the Platonic tradition that Barish documents: “The only preparation for the writing of this book which we know Rousseau to have done is that he made a paraphrase of Book X of Plato’s Republic, and its influence on the text is evident.”3 Bloom follows Plato and Rousseau in insisting that such an imperative is best followed in a world without theaters. For Bloom does not merely translate Rousseau ’s letter; rather he defends it and urges that it “points to the possibility of an alternative to the moderns which remains philosophic” (xxiv): “The moderns had forgotten nature, and nature teaches that human life has two poles at tension with one another: the life of the mind and the life of the city; this tension is an irreconcilable one, rooted in man’s very existence, and it is the very core of Rousseau’s thought.” “Perhaps we moderns,” Bloom concludes his introduction to Rousseau’s letter, “have forgotten what the real problem of art is when we smile at the illiberal inconsistency which causes the poetphilosophers Plato and Rousseau to banish poets from their cities” (xxxviii). In the Letter to D’Alembert Rousseau describes a community of mountain people, “perhaps unique on earth,” in the vicinity of Neufchatel . In this utopia (utopian because there is no theater there) the farmers work hard and provide for themselves; but more important for Rousseau is the way they spend their leisure time. “In the winter especially, a time when the deep snows prevent easy communication, each, warmly closed up with his big family in his pretty and clean wooden house, which he himself has built, busies himself with enjoyable labors which drive boredom from his sanctuary and add to his well-being.” Never idle and never bored, they invent and make useful instruments and entertain one another with the singing of psalms. Rousseau invites his readers to suppose that a theater is then established for the benefit of these good people: “Let us further suppose that they get a taste for this theatre, and let us investigate what will be the results of its establishment.” He enumerates five “disadvantages”: “slackening of work,” “increase of expenses,” “decrease in trade,” “establishment of taxes” (to build roads and make up for trade deficits), “introduction of luxury.” Here women will strive to outshine one another in dress, the sumptuary laws will fall into disregard, and husbands will be ruined.4 A number of recent critics have pointed out that discussion of Rousseau’s Letter should avoid the temptation to see his argument as universal and recognize its concentration on the local problem of Voltaire’s plans to introduce theater into Geneva. Rousseau does indeed draw a distinction between major cities like London and Paris with well-established theaters and small cities like Geneva (here likened to the idealized community of mountain folk). Allan Bloom, according to James F. Hamilton, “has provided a reasonable defence of Rousseau ’s dramatic theory by bringing the question of censorship into historical perspective.” Hamilton argues that in Rousseau’s theory of the development of human societies the arts play a major role, which he calls “conspiratorial.” In the preface to Narcisse, he points out, Rousseau describes the way in which “the arts” corrupt societies: “They destroy virtue, but they leave behind the public image of virtue, which is always a beautiful thing. Politeness and discretion take virtue’s place, and the fear of appearing evil is replaced by the fear of appearing ridiculous .”5 More highly developed societies (like Paris or like Rousseau’s vision of Athens) have fully fallen victim to this infection of substitution . But simpler societies (like Geneva or like Rousseau’s vision of Sparta) have not yet completely succumbed. John Hope Mason likewise locates Rousseau’s distaste for theater within the context of Geneva as a republic, although he stresses Rousseau ’s reliance upon classical republicanism in his view of inevitable rousseau & the cult of sincerit y [ 71 72 ] scene one decline: “For all republican writers the passage from frugality to luxury was a fatal step; once it had occurred, the...

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