Back to Montaigne! Having refreshed myself with Golden Age crime, I’ve had the chance to let Sarah Bakewell’s excellent book settle in my mind; and it really was a most thought-provoking work. As I mentioned, I’ve intended to read Montaigne for some time, and I have a lovely little selection of his essays in a beautiful volume from Notting Hill Editions. It’s entitled “Drawn from Life” and is introduced by Tim Parks (who’s previously made an appearance on the Ramblings, back when I reviewed his “Pen in Hand” last year). The translations are by the wonderfully-named M.A. Screech (who gets an honourable mention in Bakewell’s book, so I feel happy trusting his work); and the book collects 13 essays over 185 pages (which is a fraction of what the man actually wrote!)

The subjects of the essays range far and wide, over Fear, Cannibals, Smells, Clothing, Drunkenness and Cowardice, to highlight a few; but the fact is, Montaigne *never* sticks to a subject. He’s a man who likes to digress, and digress he does, at the drop of a hat. So he’ll start off at one point, tell you a tale of someone else, take a diversion to another story, tell you how he feels about something else, and so on. Does he get to the point? *Is* there a point? That’s perhaps debatable, or maybe that *is* the point – that there’s no point, and Montaigne is just representing the unstructured nature of human thought (he was certainly very keen to never commit himself to a single, rigid point of view!)

Portrait of Montaigne (public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

However, what’s particularly revelatory when it comes to Montaigne’s essays is that they’re basically about himself; a very modern concept and perhaps one which has made him dip in and out of favour over the centuries (something which Bakewell covers in her book). However, it means that no subject is taboo, from high philosophical musings to the pain in his prick (as he describes it) when he has to pass kidney stones (ouch)!! This makes his writings very relatable and very entertaining; and may well have a lot to do with the fact that he’s often taken to be a good guide to life.

It’s absolutely fascinating following the meanderings of Montaigne’s mind, and this little selection of his essays is a wonderful introduction to him. Rather than go on a lot, I’ll instead treat you to some quotes from his writings below and encourage you to explore further. Montaigne still seems a relevant and entertaining thinker, and maybe when I finally retire I can sit down with a complete volume of his essays and make my way slowly through them!

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Man is indeed an object miraculously vain, various and wavering. It is difficult to found a judgement on him which is steady and uniform. (from We Reach the Same End by Discrepant Means)

It is not sensible that artifice should be reverenced more than Nature, our great and powerful Mother. We have so overloaded the richness and beauty of her products by our own ingenuity that we have smothered her entirely. Yet wherever her pure light does shine, she wondrously shames our vain and frivolous enterprises… (from On The Cannibals)

A man’s worth and reputation lie in the mind and in the will: his true honour is found there. Bravery does not consist in firm arms and legs but in firm minds and souls: it is not a matter of what our horse or our weapons are worth but of what we are. (from On the Cannibals)

Our normal fashion is to follow the inclinations of our appetite, left and right, up and down, as the winds of occasion bear us along. What we want is only in our thought for the instant that we want it: we are like that creature which takes on the colour of wherever you put it. What we decided just now we will change very soon; and soon afterward we come back to where we were: it is all motion and inconstancy… (from On the Inconstancy of Our Actions)

What a stupid nation we are. We are not content with letting the world know of our vices and follies by repute, we go to foreign nations in order to show them to them by our presence! Put three Frenchmen in the Libyan desert and they will not be together for a month without provoking and clawing each other… (from On Cowardice, the Mother of Cruelty)