'The Rarest of Achievements'

“According to his own statement it was as an escape from the boredom begotten by retirement that the idea of meddling with authorship occurred to Montaigne. What doubtless confirmed him in the idea, however, was the satisfaction which every born literary artist feels in communicating himself to others. As he read the moralists who were most admired, he must have become conscious of a strength that could march abreast of theirs.”

Writing is a reliable antidote to boredom. A well-crafted sentence, an elegantly framed argument, a neatly arranged set-up and punchline focus our attention and feel substantial, even permanent, even when we know otherwise. In addition, every act of writing is a reply to a predecessor, one half of a conversation – a lesson taught by Guy Davenport. Literature is a vast kinship network of precursors. Readers and writers have no excuse for feeling alienated, apart from self-pity.

 

The author quoted above is Jacob Zeitlin (1883-1937), a professor of English at the University of Illinois who in 1934-36 published a three-volume translation of Montaigne’s Essays. The passage is taken from Zeitlin’s introduction to his translation, published as a separate volume and republished online by Isaac Waisberg at IWP Books.

 

In retirement from public life (as mayor of Bordeaux, etc.), Zeitlin tells us, “. . . Montaigne looked forward to living the brilliant, unencumbered life of the châtelain, cutting a fine figure among the gentlemen of his neighbourhood, ruling over his domain like a little king, and imparting to this life the distinction of an intellectual and studious application ‘in the bosom of the learned Virgins.’” Not exactly how I foresaw my retirement, beginning last year. Mostly I took it to mean more time to read and write. The moralists cited by Zeitlin above include Seneca, Plutarch and Lucretius, among others I’ve been rereading thanks to Montaigne.

 

In 1983, Guy Davenport wrote the introduction to a North Point Press reissue of Montaigne’s Travel Journal (trans. Donald Frame), collected in Every Force Evolves a Form (1987). He writes: “It has been said of Montaigne, and can be said of Plutarch, that in reading him we read ourselves.”

 

That’s my lingering impression, based on decades of reading and rereading. Humans are innately interested in other humans. Knowing them, we come to know ourselves in small ways, assuming we are attentive, reflective readers. Clearly, Plutarch and Montaigne made a lasting impression on Davenport. In the same essay he writes:

 

“We all lead a moral inner life of the spirit, on which religion, philosophy, and tacit opinion have many claims. To reflect on this inner life rationally is a skill no longer taught, though successful introspection, if it can make us at peace with ourselves, is sanity itself. The surest teachers of such reflection, certainly the wittiest and most forgiving, are Plutarch and Montaigne.”

 

Davenport likewise revised accepted literary history: “Plutarch invented the essay, and wrote seventy-eight of them; Montaigne invented its name in French and English.” Dr. Johnson in his Dictionary defined essay as “a loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.” Which, in the cases of Plutarch, Montaigne, Johnson and Davenport is not derogatory.

 

One of the enduring attractions of reading Montaigne is the way he eludes academic pigeonholing. He can’t be reduced to an ideology or philosophical category. This is because he writes as a man, with all the contradictions implicit in that identity. He is like us, only more so. Zeitlin writers:

 

“One wonders if there ever was another writer like Montaigne, who, while avowing the utmost sincerity in the expression of his feelings and opinions and offering an almost transparent honesty of character as his guarantee, nevertheless created such contradictory impressions in the minds of his readers concerning both his ideas and his character.”

 

Again, another sign of Montaigne’s essential humanity. Zeitlin concludes the introduction with a long, masterfully organized two-sentence paragraph:

 

“The essential core of Montaigne’s wisdom remains in the doctrine that the meaning and beauty of life consist in an inner quality of consciousness that brings to its owner the greatest satisfaction and serenity of which a human being is capable, and not in the external signs by which the world commonly appraises us. In this spirit he keeps proclaiming that to live for the sake of living is not only the most fundamental but the most eminent part of our occupation, and that he himself has no other trade and art than to live; that to live for the sake of one’s real being is very different from living for appearances; that the road of those who aim at honour is not the same as that which is held by those who profess order and reason for their good;  that our duty is to compose our characters, to win not battles and provinces, but regularity and tranquillity in our conduct; that the soul shows its greatness not so much in mounting high and pressing forward, as in knowing how to control and circumscribe itself, and shows its elevation by preferring a moderate level to eminence; that the life he praises is one that glides soberly and silently, with goodness, moderation, equability, and constancy, and without bustle and ostentation; and that life well-regulated even in its most private recesses is the rarest of achievements.”

 

Montaigne was born on this date, February 28, in 1533, and died in 1592 at age fifty-nine.