EMILE

by Jean-Jacques Rousseau ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 1979

During this century there has been only one previous translation of this oftcited, little-read treatise on education, and people have not been exactly beating at the gates for another. This version by Allan Bloom (previously responsible for a well-received translation of Plato's Republic) is one of the few literary events which merit the word ""revelation."" It is based on the defensible principle that the translator of such a text should ""recognize that there is much in it he cannot understand"" and, when necessary, ""prefer a dull ambiguity to a brilliant resolution."" Bloom, however, carries this preference to unnecessary lengths. The result is clumsy and often exasperating by contrast with the mercurial yet lucid flow of Rousseau's own prose. But the shock of encounter with this intellect has lost none of its force in the last 218 years. Bloom's English is unpretentious and free of jargon; his introduction and notes strike a good balance between the scholarly and the unobtrusive, leaving no doubt that Rousseau and not Bloom is the hero of the occasion. ""Nature wants children to be children before being men,"" declares Jean-Jacques, and proceeds to analyze the possibilities of childhood with a kind of tough-minded empathy matched by few writers on education in this or any age. Learning, he argues, includes the entire corpus of acquired behavior and response, and the part of ""human science"" attained without conscious thought by all people is vast in comparison with that ""particular to the learned."" With rare good sense he points out that very small children can only learn resentment and subterfuge from premature exposure to contests of will; it is virtually wicked to let them confront unnecessary frustration before they have the intellectual and emotional resources to deal with it, As for actual study, what we need is not handy shortcuts to the mastery of the sciences but ""someone to provide us with a method for learning them with effort."" Edmund Burke once grudgingly acknowledged that his great contemporary ""saw things in bold and uncommon lights""--and this new translation brings much of that light into the open.

Pub Date: June 8, 1979

ISBN: 1604249811

Page Count: -

Publisher: Basic Books

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1979

Categories: NONFICTION