Rousseau bares his own life without flattery, from a stolen ribbon in his youth to his scandalous loves and quarrels, in a founding work of unguarded autobiographical confession.
Books that mention Confessions (10)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “When we have finished this, we are going to begin a translation about whales, and then some of the dullest scandals out of the second part of _Les Confessions_ we have marked for translation; somebody has told Heruvimov, that Rousseau was a kind of Radishchev.”
A Hero of Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov: “Rousseau's Confessions has precisely this defect--he read it to his friends.”
Babel Tower by A. S. Byatt: “Jude Mason testifies: 'He gave me Rousseau's Confessions. Rousseau couldn't reach orgasm without being whipped.'”
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky: “Heine says that a true autobiography is almost an impossibility... He considers that Rousseau certainly told lies about himself in his confessions, and even intentionally lied, out of vanity.”
The Naive and the Sentimental Novelist by Orhan Pamuk: “We recalled the passage in Book 11 of Rousseau's Confessions, where Rousseau complained about reactions to his novel Julie”
Vita Sexualis by Mori Ōgai: “Rousseau's Confessions is a book that holds back nothing, with remarkable frankness. When he forgot what he had been taught as a child, the pastor's daughter would catch him and spank him, and it felt so wonderful that he pretended not to know things so that she would spank him. [auto-translated]”
A Fool's Life by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: “Even Rousseau's Confessions was full of heroic lies. [auto-translated]”
Words of a Pygmy by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa: “Rousseau loved to confess. Yet the naked Rousseau cannot be found even in his Confessions. [auto-translated]”
A New Life by Shimazaki Tōson: “We are happy, aren't we? In Rousseau's Confessions, which you gave me, there is a passage saying that true happiness cannot be told, only felt, and that the less it can be put into words the more deeply it is felt. How true that is. [auto-translated]”