Pedro Cuiça © Centro Desportivo Nacional do Jamor
It was Rousseau who elevated walking into a
true mode of philosophical reflection and introspective self-discovery that
could liberate the oppressed self from the detrimental influences of corrupt
society. Because for Rosseau society is governed by the debilitating norms of
courteous behaviour, he advocates solitary walking as a way of recuperating an
authentic connection with one’s innermost self. In Book Nine of the Confessions (1782) he states : ‘je
ne puis méditer qu’en marchant ; sitôt que je m’arrête, je ne pense plus,
et ma tête ne va qu’avec mes pieds’ (I can meditate only when walking ; as
soon as I stop I can no longer think, for my mind moves only when my feet do).
And in the Second Walk of The Rêveries du
promeneur solitaire (Reveries of a Solitary Walker, 1782) he observes :
‘Ces heures de solitude et de méditation sont les seules de la journée où je
sois pleinement moi et à moi sans diversion, sans obstacle, et où je puisse
véritablement dire être ce que la nature a voulu’ (These hours of solitude and
meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself, without
distraction and hindrance, and when I can truly say that I am what nature
intended me to be). The experience of an authentic self also prepares the
ground for the detailed observation of the intricacies of nature : in the
Fifth Walk Rosseau recounts how he went botanising on the Swisss island of St
Pierre equipped with his magnifying glass and a copy of Linnaeus’ Systema naturae. Besides its therapeutic
goal, walking in nature was for Rosseau and his contemporaries an indispensable
mode of geographical, botanical and geological exploration of the natural
world.
[FUCHS, 2016 : 202]
REFERÊNCIA BIBLIOGRÁFICA
FUCHS, Anne. Modernist perambulations through time and space : From Enlightened walking to crawling, stalking, modelling and street-walking. Journal of the British Academy, 2016, v. 4, pp.
197-219.
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