Arriving at the d"Escars home, Montaigne found his friend in pain. La Boetie told him that he had caught a chill after being outside all day, but it looked worse than that. Both men may already have thought of the possibility of plague, which was then spreading in this area and in Bordeaux, as well as in Agenais, which La Boetie had recently visited for work. If La Boetie had not already caught the plague there was a danger that he might develop it now, in his weakened state. Montaigne advised him to move to a less infected region, and to stay with his own sister and brother-in-law, the Lestonnacs. But La Boetie did not feel well enough to travel. In reality, it was too late: he almost certainly already had the plague.
Montaigne left, but the next morning La Boetie"s wife sent for him, saying that her husband was getting worse. Montaigne returned and, at La Boetie"s request, spent the night there: "He asked me, with more affection and insistence than ever about anything else, to be with him as much as I could. This touched me considerably." He stayed the following night too. La Boetie"s condition continued to worsen. On Sat.u.r.day, he admitted that his illness was contagious and unpleasant-a hint that he now realized it was the plague. He again asked Montaigne to stay, but not for more than brief periods, so that he would be at less risk. Montaigne did not obey this second part. "I did not leave him again," he wrote.
On Sunday La Boetie was overcome with weakness and suffered hallucinations. When the crisis pa.s.sed, he said "that he had seemed to be in some great confusion of all things and had seen nothing but a thick cloud and a dense fog in which everything was pell-mell and without order." Montaigne rea.s.sured him: "Death has nothing worse about it than that, my brother," to which La Boetie replied that, indeed, nothing could be worse than that. From this point on, he admitted to Montaigne, he lost hope of a cure.
He decided to set his affairs in order, asking Montaigne to watch his wife and uncle in case grief got the better of them. When La Boetie was ready, Montaigne summoned the family into the room. They "composed their faces as well as they could" and sat around the bed. La Boetie told them what he intended to leave in his will, specifying that most of his book collection should go to Montaigne. Afterwards he called for a priest. La Boetie had collected himself so carefully for his deathbed speeches that Montaigne felt a moment of hope, but, once the effort was over, his friend deteriorated again.
A few hours later, still at La Boetie"s bedside, Montaigne told him that he "blushed for shame" to see him showing more courage in the face of his own death than he, Montaigne, was able to find in witnessing it. He promised to remember his example when his own time came. Yes, said La Boetie, that was a good thing to do. He reminded Montaigne of the many enlightening talks they had already had on such subjects. This experience was, he said, "the true object of our studies, and of philosophy."
Taking Montaigne by the hand, he a.s.sured him that he had done many things in life that had been more painful and difficult. "And when all is said," he went on, "I had been prepared for it for a very long time and had known my lesson all by heart." Like Montaigne at this stage, he had followed the ancients" advice and rehea.r.s.ed his death well. After all, he went on, still echoing the wisdom of the sages, he had lived healthily and happily for long enough. There was no need for regrets. Had he not already made it to a good age? "I was soon to be thirty-three," he said. "G.o.d granted me this grace, that all my life up to now has been full of health and happiness. In view of the inconstancy of things human, that could hardly last any longer." Old age would only have brought him pain, and might have made him miserly; it was better to have avoided this. Montaigne looked distressed; La Boetie reminded him that he must be strong. "What, my brother, do you want to put fear into me? If I felt fear, who but you should take it away from me?"
La Boetie was dying the perfect Stoic death, full of courage and rational wisdom. Montaigne was expected to do his part: to help his friend to maintain this courage, and then to act as witness, recording the details so others could learn from the story. Perhaps, in doing so, he improved on reality slightly, to make La Boetie sound n.o.bler and braver than he was. Perhaps not; La Boetie"s sense of the cla.s.sical virtues went so deep that he may genuinely have been capable of emulating his philosophical heroes almost to the end. As Montaigne wrote of him, "His mind was modeled in the pattern of other ages than this."
But Montaigne himself was a different creature, and, as his account goes on, more and more of his real self comes through: his skepticism, his eye for the awkward detail, and his determination to tell things as they were. There are even moments of irreverence. Writing about La Boetie"s farewell speeches later that day, he comments, "The whole room was full of wails and tears, which nevertheless did not interrupt the train of his speeches, which were a little long."
The next morning, Monday, La Boetie slipped in and out of consciousness, being revived with vinegar and wine each time. He reproached Montaigne: "Don"t you see that from now on all the help you give me serves only to prolong my pain?" After one such spell, he temporarily lost his vision. The lamentations of the people around him, whom he could not see, horrified him. "My Lord, who is tormenting me so? Why do they take me out of that great pleasant rest that I am in? Leave me alone, I beg you."
A sip of wine restored his faculties, but he was now slipping away. "All his extremities, even his face, were already icy with cold, with a death sweat that ran down all along his body; and hardly any sign of a pulse could be detected any longer."
On Tuesday he received the last rites, and asked the priest, his uncle, and Montaigne to pray for him. Two or three times he called out, once saying, "All right! All right! Let it come when it will, I"m waiting for it, strong and firm of foot."
In the evening, "having nothing left but the likeness and shadow of a man," he hallucinated again, this time with visions which he described to Montaigne as "marvelous, infinite, and ineffable." He tried to comfort his wife, saying that he had a story to tell her. "But I am going off," he said. Then, seeing her alarm, he corrected himself: "I am going off to sleep."
She left the room. La Boetie said to Montaigne, "My brother, stay close to me, please." There were still many other people around; Montaigne writes of them as "all the company." Nothing was ever done alone in the Renaissance, least of all dying. La Boetie"s wife was, it seems, the only person actually sent away.
Now, the dying man became agitated. He tossed violently in the bed. He began to make strange requests. As Montaigne wrote: He began to entreat me again and again with extreme affection to give him a place; so that I was afraid his judgment was shaken. Even when I had remonstrated with him very gently that he was letting the illness carry him away and that these were not the words of a man in his sound mind, he did not give in at first and repeated even more strongly: "My brother, my brother, do you you refuse me a place?" This until he forced me to convince him by reason and tell him that since he was breathing and speaking and had a body, consequently he had his place. "True, true," he answered me then, "I have one, but it is not the one I need; and then when all is said, I have no being left." refuse me a place?" This until he forced me to convince him by reason and tell him that since he was breathing and speaking and had a body, consequently he had his place. "True, true," he answered me then, "I have one, but it is not the one I need; and then when all is said, I have no being left."
It was hard to know how to respond to these words. Montaigne tried to comfort him: "G.o.d will give you a better one very soon," he said.
"Would that I were there already," said La Boetie. "For three days now I have been straining to leave."
Over the next hours he often called out, wrote Montaigne, "simply to know whether I was near him." He always was.
From its conventional beginnings, Montaigne"s account has by now become both moving and eerie. He seems to be recording what was really said and done, regardless of the philosophical meaning. La Boetie himself had moved beyond imitating models. With his talk of needing a place, he seemed to be speaking almost without awareness, as Montaigne would be when he raved and tore at his doublet a few years later.
By two in the morning he was able to rest, which seemed a good sign. Montaigne left the room to tell La Boetie"s wife. Both were pleased at the improvement. But an hour or so later, when Montaigne was back in the room, La Boetie became restless again. He spoke Montaigne"s name once or twice. Then he exhaled a single sigh, and stopped breathing. La Boetie was dead-"at about three o"clock on the Wednesday morning, August 18th, 1563, after living 32 years, 9 months, and 17 days," as Montaigne recorded.
This, then, was death at close quarters-probably Montaigne"s first such intimate encounter with the death of someone he loved deeply. The physical reality was shocking, especially since it came from such a terrifying disease, though Montaigne says nothing of any personal fear of infection. Among the thoughts likely to have gone through his mind is the one that would later come back to him in the light of his own experience: the hope that death might be a tranquil affair for the person undergoing it, however little it looked that way from outside. He and La Boetie had discussed this question once: Montaigne thought it could be the case, but La Boetie disagreed. Now Montaigne must fervently have hoped that it was he who was right. It would be better to think that La Boetie had felt nothing but bliss while his body sweated and struggled. When Montaigne came to write about his own loss of consciousness later, one can almost see him taking up that old argument again-asking his friend, "See, you didn"t suffer, did you?" and hoping that La Boetie would reply, "No."
Although he trans.m.u.ted his sorrow into literature, Montaigne"s grief was overwhelming, and it seemed to become greater with time. After La Boetie died, everything was "nothing but dark and dreary night." Traveling in Italy nearly eighteen years later, he wrote in his private diary: "This same morning, writing to Monsieur d"Ossat, I was overcome by such painful thoughts about Monsieur de La Boetie, and I was in this mood so long, without recovering, that it did me much harm." He also wrote in the Essays Essays about how he longed for a true companion in Italy-someone whose ways harmonized with his own, and who liked to do the things he liked to do. "I have missed such a man extremely on all my travels." about how he longed for a true companion in Italy-someone whose ways harmonized with his own, and who liked to do the things he liked to do. "I have missed such a man extremely on all my travels."
No pleasure has any savor for me without communication. Not even a merry thought comes to my mind without my being vexed at having produced it alone without anyone to offer it to.
He never ruled out the possibility of finding someone to reprise La Boetie"s role. Seneca had advised this: a wise man should be so good at making new friends that he can replace an old one without skipping a beat. Sometimes, in the Essays Essays, Montaigne seems to issue a come-hither call to candidates: he hopes his book will please "some worthy man" who will seek him out. Yet he did not really feel that anyone could replace the original. He was forever disappointed: Is it not a stupid humor of mine to be out of tune with a thousand to whom I am joined by fortune, whom I cannot do without, only to cling to...a fantastic desire for something I cannot recapture?
Whenever Montaigne sounds cool or detached from other people, as he sometimes does, one has to remember La Boetie. People should not, he writes, be "joined and glued to us so strongly that they cannot be detached without tearing off our skin and some part of our flesh as well." These are the words of a man who knows what it feels like to be flayed in this way.
In life, Montaigne apparently rebelled against La Boetie"s improving influence at times, but now no trace remained of this. With La Boetie safely dead, Montaigne could surrender to him unreservedly-and he could do what La Boetie had begged him to do: give him a place.
First he absorbed many of La Boetie"s books into his library, making room for his friend among his own most treasured possessions. Then he wrote about La Boetie"s death, rescuing as much as he could remember of the young philosopher"s testament to posterity. He prepared a stack of La Boetie"s writings for publication. Finally, when he retired, he made his friend the guiding spirit of his own new career. Alongside the main inscription about his retirement, he added another to his library wall: it is now worn and hard to decipher, but seems to consecrate all his future "studious work" to the memory of La Boetie, "the sweetest, dearest, and most intimate friend" the sixteenth century could produce. La Boetie was to watch over everything Montaigne did in his library: he would be his literary guardian angel.
By dying, La Boetie changed from being Montaigne"s real-life, flawed companion to being an ideal ent.i.ty under Montaigne"s control. He became less a person than a sort of philosophical technique. Seneca had advised his followers to use their friends in this way. Having found some admirable man, he said, one should visualize him as an ever-present audience, in order to hold oneself to his exalted standards. If you would live for yourself, he wrote, you should live for others-above all for your chosen friend.
Montaigne was willing to try any trick of this kind, if it promised consolation. As he wrote in one of his dedications to La Boetie"s posthumous books: "He is still lodged in me so entire and so alive that I cannot believe that he is so irrevocably buried or so totally removed from our communication." Letting La Boetie live on within himself was a way of fulfilling his friend"s dying wish, and easing his own loneliness. Meanwhile, he used techniques of distraction and diversion to get himself through the immediate shock of loss. Best of all, he discovered the therapeutic benefits of writing. By pa.s.sing on La Boetie"s death narrative and farewell to the world in written form, he helped himself to relive the scene, and thus outlive it. He never fully got over La Boetie, but he learned to exist in the world without him, and, in so doing, to change his own life. Writing about La Boetie eventually led him to write the Essays: Essays: the best philosophical trick of all. the best philosophical trick of all.
6. Q. How to live? A. Use little tricks
LITTLE TRICKS AND THE ART OF LIVING.
A BOUT ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHERS BOUT ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHERS, Montaigne was usually dismissive: he disliked their pedantries and abstractions. But he showed an endless fascination for another tradition in philosophy: that of the great pragmatic schools which explored such questions as how to cope with a friend"s death, how to work up courage, how to act well in morally difficult situations, and how to make the most of life. These were the philosophies he turned to in times of grief or fear, as well as for guidance in dealing with more minor everyday irritations.
The three most famous such systems of thought were Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism: the philosophies collectively known as h.e.l.lenistic because they had their origins in the era when Greek thought and culture spread to Rome and other Mediterranean regions, from the third century BC BC onwards. They differed in details, but were so close in essentials as to be hard to distinguish much of the time. Like everyone else, Montaigne mixed and matched them according to his needs. onwards. They differed in details, but were so close in essentials as to be hard to distinguish much of the time. Like everyone else, Montaigne mixed and matched them according to his needs.
All the schools had the same aim: to achieve a way of living known in the original Greek as eudaimonia eudaimonia, often translated as "happiness," "joy," or "human flourishing." This meant living well in every sense: thriving, relishing life, being a good person. They also agreed that the best path to eudaimonia eudaimonia was was ataraxia ataraxia, which might be rendered as "imperturbability" or "freedom from anxiety." Ataraxia Ataraxia means equilibrium: the art of maintaining an even keel, so that you neither exult when things go well nor plunge into despair when they go awry. To attain it is to have control over your emotions, so that you are not battered and dragged about by them like a bone fought over by a pack of dogs. means equilibrium: the art of maintaining an even keel, so that you neither exult when things go well nor plunge into despair when they go awry. To attain it is to have control over your emotions, so that you are not battered and dragged about by them like a bone fought over by a pack of dogs.
It was on the question of how to acquire such equanimity that the philosophies began to diverge. Each had a different idea, for example, of how far one should compromise with the real world. The original Epicurean community, founded by Epicurus in the fourth century BC, required followers to leave their families and live like cult members in a private "garden." Skeptics preferred to remain amid the public hurly-burly like everyone else, but with a radically altered mental att.i.tude. Stoics were somewhere in between. The two best known Stoic writers, Seneca and Epictetus, wrote for an elite Roman readership who were deeply involved in the affairs of their time and had no time for gardens, but who desired oases of tranquillity and self-possession wherever they could find them.
Stoics and Epicureans shared a great deal of their theory, too. They thought that the ability to enjoy life is thwarted by two big weaknesses: lack of control over emotions, and a tendency to pay too little attention to the present. If one could only get these two things right-controlling and and paying attention paying attention-most other problems would take care of themselves. The catch is that both are almost impossible to do. So difficult are they that one cannot approach them head-on. It is necessary to sidle in from lateral angles, and trick oneself into achieving them.
Accordingly, Stoic and Epicurean thinkers spent much time devising techniques and thought experiments. For example: imagine that today is the last day of your life. Are you ready to face death? Imagine, even, that this very moment-now!-is the last moment of your existence. What are you feeling? Do you have regrets? Are there things you wish you had done differently? Are you really alive at this instant, or are you consumed with panic, denial, and remorse? This experiment opens your eyes to what is important to you, and reminds you of how time runs constantly through your fingers.
Some Stoics even acted out these "last moment" experiments with props and a supporting cast. Seneca wrote of a wealthy man named Pacuvius, who conducted a full-scale funeral ceremony for himself every day, ending with a feast after which he would have himself carried from the table to his bed on a bier while all the guests and servants intoned, "He has lived his life, he has lived his life." You could achieve the same effect more simply and cheaply just by holding the idea of your own demise in your mind and paying full attention to it. The Epicurean writer Lucretius suggested picturing yourself at the point of death, and considering two possibilities. Either you have lived well, in which case you can go your way satisfied, like a well-fed guest leaving a party. Or you have not, but then it makes no difference that you are losing your life, since you obviously did not know what to do with it anyway. This may offer scant comfort on your deathbed, but if you think about it in the midst of life it helps you to change your perspective.
Such shifts of att.i.tude are the purpose of many of the thought experiments. If you have lost someone or something precious, you can try to value her, him, or it differently by imagining that you never knew that person, or never owned that object. How can you miss what you never had? A different angle produces a different emotion. Plutarch suggested such a ploy in a letter to his wife, after their two-year-old daughter died: he advised her to think back to before the girl was born, and pretend they were back in those days again. Whether this consoled her is not known, but at least it gave her something to focus on instead of swimming in an ocean of undifferentiated grief. Montaigne and La Boetie both knew this letter well, for La Boetie translated it into French and Montaigne edited his translation for publication. It may have come into Montaigne"s mind each time one of his own children died, as well as when he lost La Boetie. The friendship had been so short that it should not have been difficult to remember a time before it and recapture his pre-La Boetie nonchalance.
Such tricks of the imagination can be used in mundane situations as well as extreme ones; they are effective even against mild feelings of boredom or depression. If you feel tired of everything you possess, suggests Plutarch, pretend that you have lost all these things and are missing them desperately. Whether the object is a favorite plate, a friend, a mistress, or the good fortune of living in a time of peace and in good health, this exercise magically makes it seem worth having after all. The principle is the same as when brooding on death: faced with the idea of losing something now now, you realize its value.
The key is to cultivate mindfulness: prosoche prosoche, another key Greek term. Mindful attention is the trick that underlies many of the other tricks. It is a call to attend to the inner world-and thus also to the outer world, for uncontrolled emotion blurs reality as tears blur a view. Anyone who clears their vision and lives in full awareness of the world as it is, Seneca says, can never be bored with life.
A person who does not sleepwalk through the world, moreover, is freed to respond to situations in the right way, without hesitation-as if they were questions asked all of a sudden, as Epictetus puts it. A violent attack, a quarrel, the loss of a friend: all these are demands barked at you by life, as by a schoolteacher trying to catch you not paying attention in cla.s.s. Even a moment of boredom is such a question. Whatever happens, however unforeseen it is, you should be able to respond in a precisely suitable way. This is why, for Montaigne, learning to live "appropriately" (a propos) is the "great and glorious masterpiece" of human life.
Stoics and Epicureans alike approached this goal mainly through rehearsal and meditation. Like tennis players practicing volleys and smashes for hours, they used rehearsal to carve grooves of habit, down which their minds would run as naturally as water down a river bed. It is a form of self-hypnotism. The great Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius kept notebooks in which he would go over the changes of perspective he wished to drill into himself: How good it is, when you have roast meat or suchlike foods before you, to impress on your mind that this is the dead body of a fish, this the dead body of a bird or pig; and again, that the Falernian wine is the mere juice of grapes, and your purple-edged robe simply the hair of a sheep soaked in sh.e.l.l-fish blood! And in s.e.xual intercourse that it is no more than the friction of a membrane and a spurt of mucus ejected.
At other times, he imagined flying up to the heavens so that he could gaze down and see how insignificant all human concerns were from such a distance. Seneca did this too: "Place before your mind"s eye the vast spread of time"s abyss, and consider the universe; and then contrast our so-called human life with infinity."
Another practice of the Stoics was to visualize time circling around on itself, over eons. Thus Socrates would be born again and would teach in Athens just as he did the first time; every b.u.t.terfly would flap its wings in the same way; every cloud would pa.s.s overhead at the same speed. You yourself would live again, and have all the same thoughts and emotions as before, again and again without end. This apparently terrifying idea brought comfort, because-like the other ideas-it showed one"s own fleeting troubles at a reduced size. At the same time, because everything you had ever done would come back to haunt you, everything mattered mattered. Nothing was flushed away; nothing could be forgotten. Meditating on this forced you to pay more attention to how you lived your everyday life. It posed a challenge, but also led to a kind of acceptance: to what the Stoics called amor fati amor fati, or love of fate. As the Stoic Epictetus wrote: Do not seek to have everything that happens happen as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene.
One should be able to accept everything just as it is, willingly, without giving in to the futile longing to change it. Montaigne seemed to find this trick easy: it came to him by nature. "If I had to live over again," he wrote cheerfully, "I would live as I have lived." But most people had to practice it, and this was where the mental exercises came in.
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Seneca (ill.u.s.tration credit i6.1) (ill.u.s.tration credit i6.1)
Seneca had an extreme trick for practising amor fati amor fati. He was asthmatic, and attacks brought him almost to the point of suffocation. He often felt that he was about to die, but he learned to use each attack as a philosophical opportunity. While his throat closed and his lungs strained for breath, he tried to embrace what was happening to him: to say "yes" to it. I will will this, he would think; and, if necessary, I this, he would think; and, if necessary, I will will myself to die from it. When the attack receded, he emerged feeling stronger, for he had done battle with fear and defeated it. myself to die from it. When the attack receded, he emerged feeling stronger, for he had done battle with fear and defeated it.
Stoics were especially keen on pitiless mental rehearsals of all the things they dreaded most. Epicureans were more inclined to turn their vision away from terrible things, to concentrate on what was positive. A Stoic behaves like a man who tenses his stomach muscles and invites an opponent to punch them. An Epicurean prefers to invite no punches, and, when bad things happen, simply to step out of the way. If Stoics are boxers, Epicureans are closer to Oriental martial arts pract.i.tioners.
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Epicurus (ill.u.s.tration credit i6.2) (ill.u.s.tration credit i6.2)
Montaigne found the Epicurean approach more congenial in most situations, and he took their ideas even further. He claimed to envy lunatics, because they were always mentally elsewhere-an extreme form of Epicurean deflection. What did it matter if a madman"s idea of the world was skewed, so long as he was happy? Montaigne retold cla.s.sical stories such as that of Lycas, who went about his daily life and successfully held down a job while believing that everything he saw was taking place on stage, as a theatrical performance. When a doctor cured him of this delusion, Lycas became so miserable that he sued the doctor for robbing him of his pleasure in life. Similarly, a man named Thrasylaus nurtured the belief that every ship that came in and out of his local port of Piraeus was carrying wonderful cargoes just for him. He was happy all the time, for he rejoiced each time a ship came safely to port, and did not seem to worry that the cargoes never materialized. Alas, his brother Crito had his delusion treated, and that was the end of it.
Not everyone can have the benefit of being insane, but anyone can make life easier for themselves by turning down the beam of their reason slightly. With grief, in particular, Montaigne learned that he could not recover simply by talking himself out of it. He did try some Stoic tricks, and he was not afraid to focus his attention on La Boetie"s death long enough to write his account of it. But most of the time he found it more helpful to divert his attention to something else altogether: A painful notion takes hold of me; I find it quicker to change it than to subdue it. I subst.i.tute a contrary one for it, or, if I cannot, at all events a different one. Variation always solaces, dissolves, and dissipates. If I cannot combat it, I escape it; and in fleeing I dodge, I am tricky.
He used the same technique to help others. Once, trying to console a woman who was (unlike some widows, he implies) genuinely suffering grief for her dead husband, he first considered the more usual philosophical methods: reminding her that nothing can be gained from lamentation, or persuading her that she might never have met her husband anyway. But he settled on a different trick: "very gently deflecting our talk and diverting it bit by bit to subjects nearby, then a little more remote." The widow seemed to pay little attention at first, but in the end the other subjects caught her interest. Thus, without her realizing what was happening, he wrote, "I imperceptibly stole away from her this painful thought and kept her in good spirits and entirely soothed for as long as I was there." He admitted that this did not go to the root of her grief, but it got her through an immediate crisis, and presumably allowed time to begin its own natural work.
Some of this came from Montaigne"s Epicurean reading; some from his own hard-won experience. "I was once afflicted with an overpowering grief," he wrote, clearly thinking of La Boetie. It could have destroyed him had he relied only on his powers of reason to rescue him. Instead, understanding that he needed "some violent diversion," he managed to develop a crush on someone. He does not say who, and it seems to have been insignificant, but it gave his emotions somewhere to go.
Similar tricks worked for another unwelcome emotion, anger: Montaigne once successfully cured a "young prince," probably Henri de Navarre (the future Henri IV), of a dangerous pa.s.sion for revenge. He did not talk the prince out of it, or advise him to turn the other cheek, or remind him of the tragic consequences that could result. He did not mention the subjects of anger or revenge at all: I let the pa.s.sion alone and applied myself to making him relish the beauty of a contrary picture, the honor, favor, and good will he would acquire by clemency and kindness. I diverted him to ambition. That is how it is done.
Later in his life, Montaigne used the trick of diversion against his own fear of getting old and dying. The years were dragging him towards death; he could not help that, but he need not look at it head-on. Instead, he faced the other way, and calmed himself by looking back with pleasure over his youth and childhood. Thus, he said, he managed to "gently sidestep and avert my gaze from this stormy and cloudy sky that I have in front of me."
He became such a connoisseur of side-stepping techniques that he even found political sleight-of-hand admirable, so long as it was not used to support tyranny. One story he relished was that of how Zaleucus, prince of the Locrians of ancient Greece, reduced excessive spending in his realm. He ordered that any woman could be attended by several maids, but only when she was drunk, and that she could wear as many gold jewels and embroidered dresses as she liked, if she was working as a prost.i.tute. A man could sport gold rings if he was a pimp. It worked: gold jewelry and large entourages disappeared overnight, yet no one rebelled, for no one felt they had been forced into anything.
From his own experience of nearly dying, Montaigne would learn that the best antidote to fear was to rely on nature: "Don"t bother your head about it." From losing La Boetie, he had already discovered that this was the best way of dealing with grief. Nature has its own rhythms. Distraction works well precisely because it accords with how humans are made: "Our thoughts are always elsewhere." It is only natural for us to lose focus, to slip away from both pains and pleasures, "barely brushing the crust" of them. All we need do is let ourselves be as we are.
Montaigne took from his Stoic and Epicurean reading what worked for him, just as his own readers would always take just what they needed from the Essays Essays without worrying about the rest. For his contemporaries, this meant seizing on his most Stoic and Epicurean pa.s.sages. They interpreted his book as a manual for living, and hailed him as a philosopher in the old style, great enough to stand alongside the originals. His friend etienne Pasquier called him "another Seneca in our language." Another friend and colleague from Bordeaux, Florimond de Raemond, extolled Montaigne"s courage in the face of life"s torments, and advised readers to turn to him for wisdom, especially about how to come to terms with death. A sonnet by Claude Expilly, published with a 1595 edition of Montaigne"s book, praised its author as a "magnanimous Stoic" and spoke warmly of his manly way of writing, his fearlessness, and his ability to give strength to the weakest of souls. Montaigne"s "brave essays" will be praised for centuries to come, Expilly wrote, for-like the ancients-Montaigne teaches people to speak well, to live well, and to die well. without worrying about the rest. For his contemporaries, this meant seizing on his most Stoic and Epicurean pa.s.sages. They interpreted his book as a manual for living, and hailed him as a philosopher in the old style, great enough to stand alongside the originals. His friend etienne Pasquier called him "another Seneca in our language." Another friend and colleague from Bordeaux, Florimond de Raemond, extolled Montaigne"s courage in the face of life"s torments, and advised readers to turn to him for wisdom, especially about how to come to terms with death. A sonnet by Claude Expilly, published with a 1595 edition of Montaigne"s book, praised its author as a "magnanimous Stoic" and spoke warmly of his manly way of writing, his fearlessness, and his ability to give strength to the weakest of souls. Montaigne"s "brave essays" will be praised for centuries to come, Expilly wrote, for-like the ancients-Montaigne teaches people to speak well, to live well, and to die well.
This provides the first inkling of the transformations Montaigne would undergo in his readers" minds over the centuries, as each generation adopted him as a source of enlightenment and wisdom. Each wave of readers found in him more or less what they expected, and, in many cases, what they themselves put there. Montaigne"s first audience was a late Renaissance one, filled with neo-Stoics and neo-Epicureans fascinated by the question of how to live well, and how to achieve eudaimonia eudaimonia in the face of suffering. They embraced him as one of themselves, and made him a best seller. They thus laid the foundations for all his future fame as a pragmatic philosopher, and as a guide to the art of living. in the face of suffering. They embraced him as one of themselves, and made him a best seller. They thus laid the foundations for all his future fame as a pragmatic philosopher, and as a guide to the art of living.
MONTAIGNE IN SLAVERY.
Montaigne"s trick of absorbing La Boetie into himself, as a kind of ghost or secret sharer in all he did, might seem to run counter to his plan of distracting himself from grief. But in its way, it was was a form of diversion: it led him away from thoughts of loss towards a new way of thinking about his present life. A split opened up between his own point of view and the one he imagined La Boetie might take, so that, at any moment, he could slip from one to the other. Perhaps this is what gave him the idea that, as he wrote elsewhere, "We are, I know not how, double within ourselves." a form of diversion: it led him away from thoughts of loss towards a new way of thinking about his present life. A split opened up between his own point of view and the one he imagined La Boetie might take, so that, at any moment, he could slip from one to the other. Perhaps this is what gave him the idea that, as he wrote elsewhere, "We are, I know not how, double within ourselves."
Montaigne himself remarked that he might not have written the Essays Essays had this s.p.a.ce not been opened in himself. Had he had "someone to talk to," he said, he might only have published letters, a more conventional literary format. Instead, he had to stage his and La Boetie"s dialogue within himself. The modern critic Anthony Wilden has compared this maneuver to the master/slave dialectic in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel: La Boetie became Montaigne"s imaginary master, commanding him to work, while Montaigne became the willing slave who sustained them both through the labor of writing. It was a form of "voluntary servitude." Out of it emerged the had this s.p.a.ce not been opened in himself. Had he had "someone to talk to," he said, he might only have published letters, a more conventional literary format. Instead, he had to stage his and La Boetie"s dialogue within himself. The modern critic Anthony Wilden has compared this maneuver to the master/slave dialectic in the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel: La Boetie became Montaigne"s imaginary master, commanding him to work, while Montaigne became the willing slave who sustained them both through the labor of writing. It was a form of "voluntary servitude." Out of it emerged the Essays Essays, almost as a by-product of Montaigne"s trick for managing sorrow and solitude.
La Boetie"s death certainly did leave Montaigne with some literary slavery of a more down-to-earth kind, in the form of his stack of unpublished ma.n.u.scripts. These were not particularly unusual or original, with the exception of On Voluntary Servitude On Voluntary Servitude (a.s.suming that this was indeed La Boetie"s work), but they deserved better than being left to crumble to dust. Whether because La Boetie had asked him to, or on his own initiative, Montaigne now became his friend"s posthumous editor-a demanding role, which gave a push to his own literary career. (a.s.suming that this was indeed La Boetie"s work), but they deserved better than being left to crumble to dust. Whether because La Boetie had asked him to, or on his own initiative, Montaigne now became his friend"s posthumous editor-a demanding role, which gave a push to his own literary career.
Rather surprisingly, considering his well-ordered character, La Boetie"s ma.n.u.scripts seem to have been in a higgledy-piggledy state. In one of his dedications to the published work, Montaigne talks of having "a.s.siduously collected everything complete that I found among his notebooks and papers scattered here and there." It was a formidable task, but he found many things worth publishing, including La Boetie"s sonnets. There were also translations of cla.s.sical texts, such as the letter of consolation from Plutarch to his wife on the death of their child, and the first ever French version of Xenophon"s Oeconomicus Oeconomicus, a treatise on the art of good estate and land management-a subject of relevance to Montaigne, who was just about to resign from Bordeaux.
Having sorted out the ma.n.u.scripts, Montaigne saw a collected edition of them through the press. He traveled to Paris to liaise with publishers and to promote the result. For each of La Boetie"s pieces he courted a suitable patron, crafting graceful and sycophantic dedications to influential people including Michel de L"Hopital and various Bordeaux notables-as well as to his own wife, in the case of the Plutarch letter. Conventional though the "dedicatory epistle" genre was, his letters are lively and personal. He also appended an even more personal piece of writing to the book: his account of La Boetie"s death. The whole undertaking confirms the sense that he was now in a literary partnership with La Boetie"s memory, and that the two of them could expect a great future together. It taught Montaigne a lot about the world of publishing and about what fashionable Parisians liked to read, information that would come in useful.
The account of La Boetie"s death appeared in the form of a letter to Montaigne"s own father: a strange choice. Perhaps Pierre had urged him to write it. He had certainly done this once before. Around 1567, he had given his son a very challenging literary commission indeed, which had also done its part in turning him into a writer.
This early request seems to have been Pierre"s attempt to shake his son out of a continuing tendency to idleness; it was another of those "tricks," inflicted for its victim"s benefit. Even in his mid-thirties, Montaigne still had something of the sulky teenager about him. He was dissatisfied with his career as magistrate, disinclined to the life of a courtier, snooty about the law, and indifferent to building and property development. Moreover, despite his interest in literature, he showed no signs of writing much. Pierre may now have guessed that he himself did not have long to live, and he probably felt that Montaigne needed preparing for the responsibilities that would soon descend on him. He needed a challenge.
Micheau wanted to write: very well, let him write! Pierre handed him a 500-page folio volume, written by a Catalan theologian over a century earlier, in stilted Latin, and said, "Translate this into French for me when you get a moment, will you, son?"