Virtual Memories

As near as I can tell, this is Montaigne’s progression in Of coaches (pp. 831-849):

1. I don’t like riding in coaches; I’m much more comfortable on horseback.
2. Some ancient kings and emperors sure used some strange and extravagant means of conveying their coaches.
3. Kings and emperors tend to spend their subjects’ money liberally and ostentatiously.
4. People sure were inventive in the days of old, and the past is like a million foreign countries.
5. Boy, have we committed some awful atrocities on the natives in the Americas.
6. The king of Peru never used a coach, but was borne in a throne of gold by his subjects.

It’s that second-to-last section that M. focuses on, detailing a number of grotesque abuses that the Spanish inflicted on the natives in the new world. Reflecting on the ill treatment of the natives, he laments that America wasn’t discovered in the time of Alexander, who could have brought out the better aspects of their souls, rather than push them into darkness and war as the explorers did. I was caught up on that point, as it seemed to indicate that M. thinks the world would have been better off without a Catholic church.

Moreover, I was fascinated by the notion that, in his time, the Americas  really were a new world. I’m not sure I ever considered how Columbus’ discovery was understood in that era (the first century or so after 1492). M. writes:

Our world has just discovered another world (and who will guarantee us that it is the last of its brothers, since the daemons, the sibyls, and we ourselves have up to now been ignorant of this one?) no less great, full, and well-limbed than itself, yet so new and so infantile that it is still being taught its A B C; not fifty years ago it knew neither letters, nor weights and measures, nor clothes, nor wheat, nor vines. . . . If we are right to infer the end of our world, and that poet is right about the youth of his own age, this other world will only be coming into the light when ours is leaving it. The universe will fall into paralysis; one member will be crippled, the other in full vigor.

I’m sure there’s some cutting remark to be made here, contrasting America with Europe, but I’m not the guy to make it.

This week’s Montaigne essay, On some verses of Virgil (pp. 774-831), turned out to be really good. However, I didn’t have time to write about it, so I’m going to reread it this week and try to put something together for you by next Monday.

Suffice to say, my worries about a 50-plus-page essay titled after a poet I’ve never read turned out to be unfounded. I should know better than to take M.’s titles on face value.

I was flummoxed by Of diversion (pp. 764-774) and tempted to skip writing about it. Problem is, the next essay, On some verses of Virgil, is

1. 50 pages long, and
2. about a poet I’ve never read.

So you’re stuck with Of diversion this week. The first two-thirds of this one discuss the various ways that individuals and the polis can be, well, diverted from unpleasant thoughts or feelings. Montaigne begins by telling us how he once consoled a sad woman, not by telling her that her sorrow was useless, but “very gently deflecting our talk and diverting it bit by bit to subjects nearby, then a little more remote, as she gave me more of her attention, I imperceptibly and entirely soothed for as long as I was there.” Once he left, she showed no improvement.

He brings up similar cases of diverting attention from a singular topic. M. being M., that subject tends to be death. He thinks there’s a rare person who can look death square in the eye; most men on the gallows will begin “praying aloud, with a violent and continual excitement,” and “busying their senses . . . as much as they can.” Facing death, we put ourselves elsewhere, in diversions of escape, or our children’s futures, or the lasting glory of our works.

The last third of the essay, as I said, goes off the rails for me. M. explains, “It takes little to divert and distract us, for it takes little to hold us.” From there, he launches into a digression about how we’re moved by lamentation in fiction, how actors and orators convince themselves of the sorrow of their speeches, and how people will mourn when they see a funeral procession, even if they don’t know who’s in the casket. He makes good points about the ease with which we get preoccupied, but it seems out of place in an essay that focuses on the implacability of grief and the difficulties we have diverting it.

Still, he offers up a wonderful little portrait of Keeping It Real after a loved one’s death:

In a region near our mountains the women play the part of Prester Martin [who spoke both parts at Mass]; for even as they magnify their grief for their lost husband by remembering the good and agreeable qualities he had, at the same time they also assemble and proclaim his imperfetions, as if to bring themselves to some sort of balance and to turn themselves aside from pity to disdain; with much better grace, at that, than we who, at the loss of a casual acquaintance, pride ourselves on lending him new and undeserved praises and making him quite another man, when we have lost sight of him, than he seemed ot use when we were seeing him. As if regret were an instructive thing, or tears enlightened our understanding by washing it. From this moment I renounce any favorable testimonials that anyone may want to give me not beause I shall deserve them but because I shall be dead.

On to Virgil!

Of three kinds of association (pp. 753-764) could be subtitled, “These are a few of my favorite things.” Montaigne starts out this one by telling us to flexible. It’s the first thing I told my associate editor after hiring her, and it’s also the lesson I tried to impart to a gathering of undergrads at my alma mater back in 2002. As M. put it, “We must not nail ourselves down so firmly to our humors and dispositions. Our principal talent is the ability to apply ourselves to various practices. It is existing, but not living, to keep ourselves bound and obliged by necessity to a single course.”

Back in my little speech at Hampshire College, I told the kids, “Learn how to learn. Because I guarantee that if you study one narrowly specialized field, you’ll come to hate it within five years of graduation and you’ll wish you could branch out into another field.”

But that’s just the intro to the essay. As I said, this one’s about the things M. loves most in life. I enjoyed the heck out of this one because I’m pretty sure I’d have written the exact same thing, if I were living well in an era that didn’t have basketball or comics.

The first of  M.’s faves is “rare and exquisite” friendship, consisting of conversation in its various forms. These conversations don’t have to be lofty. He tells us:

In our talks all subjects are alike to me. I do not care if there is neither weight nor depth in them; charm and pertinency are always there; everything is imbued with mature and constant good sense, and mingled with kindliness, frankness, gaiety and friendship.

(In fact, he digresses to warn against speaking too learnedly: “[Learned men] quote Plato and Sain Thomas in matters where the first comer would make as good a witness.” Which is to say, know your audience.)

The second of M.’s faves is “beautiful and well-bred women.” Rather than fill this section with personal anecdotes, he writes more about the need to Treat Her Right and not think solely with your Spitzer. Still, he tells us,

[I]f beauty of [the mind or the body] had necessarily to be lacking, I would have chosen sooner to give up the mental. It has its use in better things; but in the matter of love, a matter which is chiefly concerned with sight and touch, you can do something without the graces of the mind, bothing without the graces of the body.

And this leads us to M.’s favorite association. Friendship is “annoying by its rarity,” while love “withers with age,” so neither of them suffice. And that brings us to M.’s  association with books. I thought about paraphrasing his thoughts on his lifelong love of books, but I was so moved by his description of his library that I decided to transcribe that and offer it up.

When at home, I turn aside a little more often to my library, from which at one sweep I command view of my household. I am over the entrance, and see below me my garden, my farmyard, my courtyard, and into most of the parts of my house. There I leaf through now one book, now another, without order and without plan, by disconnected fragments. One moment I muse, another moment I set down or dictate, walking back and forth, these fancies of mine that you see here.

It is on the third floor of a tower; the first is my chapel, the second a bedroom and dressing room, where I often sleep in order to be alone. Above it is a great wardrobe. In the past it was the most useless place in my house. In my library I spend most of the days of my life, and most of the hours of the day. I am never there at night. Adjoining it is a rather elegant little room, in which a fire may be laid in winter, very pleasantly lighted by a window. And if I feared the trouble no more than the expense, I could easily add on to each side a gallery a hundred paces long and twelve wide, on the same level, having found all the walls raised, for another purpose, to the necessary height. Every place of retirement requires a place to walk. My thoughts fall asleep if I make them sit down. My mind will not budge unless my legs move it. Those who study without a book are all in the same boat.

Te shape of my library is round, the only flat side being the part needed for my table and chair; and curving round me as it presents at a glance all my books, arranged in five rows of shelves on all sides. It offers rich and free views in three directions, and sixteen paces of free space in diameter.

In winter I am not there so continually; for my house is perched on a little hill, as its name indicates, and contains no room more exposed to the winds than this one, which I like for being a little hard to reach and out of the way, for the benefit of the exercise as much as to keep the crowd away. There is my throne. I try to make my authority over it absolute, and to withdraw this one corner from all society, conjugal, filial and civil. Everywhere else I have only a verbal authority, essentially divided. Sorry the man, to my mind, who has not in his own home a place to be all by himself, to pay his court privately to himself, to hide! Ambition pays its servants well by keeping them ever on display, like a statue in a market place. “Great fortune is great slavery (Seneca).” Even their privy is not private. I have found nothing so harsh in the austere life that our monks practice as this that I observe in the orders of these men, a rule to be perpetually in company, and to have numbers of others present for any action whatsoever. I find it measurably more endurable to be always alone than never to be able to be alone.

If anyone tells me that it is degrading the Muses to use them only as a plaything and a pastime, he does not know, as I do, the value of pleasure, play, and pastime. I would almost say that any other aim is ridiculous. I live from day to day, and, without wishing to be disrespectful, I live only for myself; my purposes go no further.

In my youth I studied for ostentation; later, a little to gain wisdom; now, for recreation; never for gain. As for the vain and spendthrift fancy I had for that sort of furniture [books], not just to supply my needs, but to go three steps beyond, for the purpose of lining and decorating my walls, I have given it up long ago.

I know the news will break your heart, but there’s no Montaigne post this week. My headcold rendered me even less comprehensible this weekend. I’ll try to write about the first few essays of Book Three next week.