Skip to main content
Read page text
page 10
– DRAWN FROM LIFE – could have switched the titles of all his essays around for all the difference it would have made; the content was always the same. ‘Montaigne is a fog,’ pronounced T. S. Eliot, ‘a gas, a fluid, insidious element. He does not reason, he insinuates.’ Montaigne ‘has truly increased the joy of living on this earth,’ enthuses Nietzsche. He was ‘the freest and mightiest of souls’. How disorienting. Perhaps our puzzlement approaching Montaigne is that while on the one hand we immediately feel drawn into a relationship and recognise the warmth of an intimate voice, something we tend to equate with modernity, on the other we have no idea where that voice is going or why. What is this all about? And what could be less modern than stringing together dozens, scores, literally hundreds of quotations from the authors of Roman antiquity? (Mihi sic usus est: tibi, ut opus est facto, face, he cites the playwright Terence, shortly after giving us Horace’s mermaid – ‘This has been my way; as for you, do whatever you find appropriate’). Montaigne seems familiar, sometimes too familiar – he appears to know and understand our inner lives – yet remains quite exotic, as if he inhabited a parallel world whose basic coordinates were obscure to us. Whenever a new acquaintance is both bewitching and bewildering, it’s as well to check out their background. How does or did this behaviour fit in with the society that produced it? Was it normal perhaps? Or at least in evident opposition to the norms of the time? viii
page 11
– Introduction – Michel Eyquem de Montaigne was born in 1533 on his family’s estate Chateau de Montaigne, some thirty-five miles east of Bordeaux, and his infancy was anything but normal. First surviving child of wealthy parents, he was installed with a peasant family for the first three years of his life, because he must get to know the common people, then brought home, but given a German tutor who didn’t know French and was instructed to speak to him only in Latin. Everybody who spoke to the boy was to speak in Latin, never French, until he was six. It was to be his mother tongue. After which he was dispatched to a posh college in Bordeaux to study law. In short, Montaigne was the product of an educational experiment at a time when those who could afford such things had become fascinated by the possibilities of social and psychological engineering. Like all educational experiments it produced something, or someone, quite different from what was intended. Diligent and industrious, with a steadfast dedication to public duty displayed both as a soldier in Italy and as Mayor of Bordeaux, Montaigne’s father was dismayed to find his son disorganised, impractical and inclined to take things easy. A first will, later revoked, gave control of the family estate to his wife – something quite unusual at the time – for fear the boy, then a teenager, wouldn’t perform. For his part Michel was dismayed to see his father worn out by his commitment to civic duties and later ix

Page Text

View plaintext

– DRAWN FROM LIFE –

could have switched the titles of all his essays around for all the difference it would have made; the content was always the same. ‘Montaigne is a fog,’ pronounced T. S. Eliot, ‘a gas, a fluid, insidious element. He does not reason, he insinuates.’ Montaigne ‘has truly increased the joy of living on this earth,’ enthuses Nietzsche. He was ‘the freest and mightiest of souls’.

How disorienting. Perhaps our puzzlement approaching Montaigne is that while on the one hand we immediately feel drawn into a relationship and recognise the warmth of an intimate voice, something we tend to equate with modernity, on the other we have no idea where that voice is going or why. What is this all about? And what could be less modern than stringing together dozens, scores, literally hundreds of quotations from the authors of Roman antiquity? (Mihi sic usus est: tibi, ut opus est facto, face, he cites the playwright Terence, shortly after giving us Horace’s mermaid – ‘This has been my way; as for you, do whatever you find appropriate’). Montaigne seems familiar, sometimes too familiar – he appears to know and understand our inner lives – yet remains quite exotic, as if he inhabited a parallel world whose basic coordinates were obscure to us.

Whenever a new acquaintance is both bewitching and bewildering, it’s as well to check out their background. How does or did this behaviour fit in with the society that produced it? Was it normal perhaps? Or at least in evident opposition to the norms of the time?

viii

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content