Skip to main content
Read page text
page 16
– DRAWN FROM LIFE – some barrier of custom,’ he opens an essay entitled ‘The Custom of Wearing Clothing’. The endless examples he gives of outlandishly different traditions in different times and climes are all quietly aimed at eroding the intimidating pressure of present custom. How to be free, then, and enjoy life in a world that demands so much of us? On his thirty-eighth birthday, six years after Étienne de la Boétie’s death and shortly after a near-death experience of his own following a collision on horseback, Montaigne had these words painted on a wall in his home: In the year of Christ 1571 . . . Michel de Montaigne, long ­weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out. Retirement. Shun obligation. Shun passion. Once you are in something, it is hard to get out. ‘I find that the remedy which works for me is, from the outset, to purchase my freedom at the cheapest price I can get . . . With very little effort I stop the first movement of my emotions, giving up whatever begins to weigh on me before it bears me off.’ In his house, all customary etiquette was waived; family members were not obliged to exchange tedious pleasantries. Murals of famous battles and ships in stormy seas reminded Montaigne of the dangers he had renounced. ­Meantime, he retired xiv
page 17
– Introduction – to the little tower where he kept his library; one great advantage of the relationships we have with books, he remarks, is that they aren’t upset when you put them down for a while. Alone in his room, he waited for the learned Virgins, the muses, to show him what to write. It would not be a grand treatise or an all­encompassing system of thought; for, alongside social obligation, ambition with its consequent fear of underachievement, was another dangerous enemy. One had to have courage to underachieve. Even philo­sophy, in excess, will ‘enslave our natural freedom’; even attacking custom could become an imprisoning hobby horse. Fortunately, friends in his younger days ‘judging rightly enough of my own strength that it was not capable of any great matters’ had encouraged him ‘to free myself from any such ambition, and to sit still’. So Montaigne sat still and wrote. Or rather he paced back and forth, or went out for walks, because when he sat too long the thoughts would not flow. Wrote what? ‘I would have preferred to publish my whimsies as letters,’ he said, ‘if I had had anyone to write to.’ Anyone, that is, on the same wavelength, like La Boétie. Why letters? Because they offered opportunities for intimacy, for acknowledging subjectivity, ­tying what was said to the mood of the moment. And of course for dialogue, which is the enemy of all dogmatism and a means of turning enquiry into pleasure. Admirers of Montaigne make large claims about the ­essay xv

Page Text

View plaintext

– DRAWN FROM LIFE –

some barrier of custom,’ he opens an essay entitled ‘The Custom of Wearing Clothing’. The endless examples he gives of outlandishly different traditions in different times and climes are all quietly aimed at eroding the intimidating pressure of present custom.

How to be free, then, and enjoy life in a world that demands so much of us? On his thirty-eighth birthday, six years after Étienne de la Boétie’s death and shortly after a near-death experience of his own following a collision on horseback, Montaigne had these words painted on a wall in his home:

In the year of Christ 1571 . . . Michel de Montaigne, long ­weary of the servitude of the court and of public employments, while still entire retired to the bosom of the learned Virgins, where in calm and freedom from all cares he will spend what little remains of his life now more than half run out.

Retirement. Shun obligation. Shun passion. Once you are in something, it is hard to get out. ‘I find that the remedy which works for me is, from the outset, to purchase my freedom at the cheapest price I can get . . . With very little effort I stop the first movement of my emotions, giving up whatever begins to weigh on me before it bears me off.’ In his house, all customary etiquette was waived; family members were not obliged to exchange tedious pleasantries. Murals of famous battles and ships in stormy seas reminded Montaigne of the dangers he had renounced. ­Meantime, he retired xiv

read next page

My Bookmarks

Buy this Book
Skip to main content