Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes the Daydreams of the solitary walker during her last Parisian stay, between the autumn 1776 and the month of April 1778. They know their first edition in 1782.

The statute of this text raises real difficulties: seemingly, the Daydreams of the solitary walker complete the cycle of the autobiographical accounts; but they describe also the abandonment of the resources of this kind. Which is indeed the occasion of the Daydreams of the solitary walker?

“My imagination already less sharp does not ignite more as formerly with the contemplation of the object which animates it, I get less is delirious of the daydream; there is more reminiscence than of creation in than it produces from now on”.

However the role of the reminiscence is not at all to restore in their truth the episodes of a past whose Rousseau seems from now on to take leave. It must well rather authorize an expansion which takes the form of a strictly current existential intensification:

“With the attraction of an abstract and monotonous daydream I unite charming images which vivify it. Their objects often escaped my directions in my ecstasies, and maintaining my daydream more is deep plus it paints them highly to me. I am often more in the middle of them that when I was there really”.

The reminiscence which nourishes the Daydreams of the solitary walker serves the deepening of the present, and not the exercise of an unhappy conscience exhausted by the remorses, which sought to be justified in the autobiographical texts.