{"id":3342,"date":"2009-02-02T05:00:22","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T10:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/?p=3342"},"modified":"2009-02-01T17:04:25","modified_gmt":"2009-02-01T22:04:25","slug":"monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-disadvantage-of-greatness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-disadvantage-of-greatness","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the disadvantage of greatness"},"content":{"rendered":"

With Of the disadvantage of greatness<\/em> (pp. 849-853), Montaigne counters Mel Brooks’ wisdom that “it’s good to be the king.” M. concedes that the actions and effects of kings are awesome, but the tradeoff is that they’ll never have a measure of themselves because of the deference of their subjects.<\/p>\n

See, in M.’s childhood, his mates always took it easy on him in athletic events, because it wasn’t worth it to totally trounce him. Similarly, he says, princes will never know what they’re worth, because their subjects will do anything to let them win.<\/p>\n

(Of course, you <\/em>could try to “speak truth to power,” but as M. reminds us, “For Dionysisus, because he could not match Philoxenus in poetry, and Plato in prose, condemned the one to the quarries and sent the other to be sold as a slave on the island of Aegina.”)<\/em><\/p>\n

M. extends this thought to Homer’s treatment of the vulnerability of the gods. He contends that Homer allows Venus (Aphrodite) to be wounded in battle in the Iliad<\/em> because this “endows her with courage and boldness, qualities not found in those who are exempt from danger.” He writes:<\/p>\n

The gods are made to angry, to fear, to flee, to be jealous, sorrowful, and passionate, in order to honor them with virtues which among us are built of these imperfections. He who does not share the risk and difficulty can claim no involvement in the honor and pleasure that follow hazardous actions. It is a pity to have so much power that everything gives way to you. Your fortune repels society and companionship too far from you; it plants you too far apart.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The passage reminded me of our Seattle trip two years ago, when I met up with a friend from grad school<\/a>. He’d had some serious mental problems in recent years, mainly due to autoimmune problems. The conversation we had still haunts me.<\/p>\n

At one point, I asked him about the Iliad<\/em>, his favorite book. I was rereading it, and I asked him about the meaning of the gods in the poem. I always tried to reconcile the idea of them as “extensions of the psyche” with their overt actions within the battles. I don’t know if I really thought about the idea that they were imbued with flaws and vulnerabilities in order to magnify their greatness. I think I’d been coming at the problem from the other direction, the idea that the greatness of the heroes was in their inhuman qualities, with Achilles foredoom as the apex of this concept.<\/p>\n

I mean, I knew that the characters’ humanity was critical to understanding them, but I never thought about transferring that principle to the gods. So this short essay by M. may re-launch me to Troy, along with the 1,000 ships.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With Of the disadvantage of greatness (pp. 849-853), Montaigne counters Mel Brooks’ wisdom that “it’s good to be the king.” M. concedes that the actions and effects of kings are awesome, but the tradeoff is that they’ll never have a measure of themselves because of the deference of their subjects. See, in M.’s childhood, his … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the disadvantage of greatness”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[45],"tags":[84,118],"class_list":["post-3342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-montaigne","tag-homer","tag-montaigne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-RU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2730,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-evil-means-employed-to-a-good-end","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":0},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of evil means employed to a good end","author":"Gil","date":"October 20, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm going to skip some of the short ones in this segment, such as Of riding post (pp. 626-7) and Of thumbs (pp. 634-5), on the grounds that I couldn't come up with anything funny to write about them. If anything, they bolster the Montaigne-as-blogger argument, because we all have\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3305,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-coaches","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":1},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of coaches","author":"Gil","date":"January 26, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As near as I can tell, this is Montaigne's progression in Of coaches (pp. 831-849): I don't like riding in coaches; I'm much more comfortable on horseback. Some ancient kings and emperors sure used some strange and extravagant means of conveying their coaches. Kings and emperors tend to spend their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2891,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-defense-of-seneca-and-plutarch","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Defense of Seneca and Plutarch","author":"Gil","date":"November 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"No rambling exegeses this week. Instead, you get a couple of passages from Montaigne. The first comes from his Defense of Seneca and Plutarch: We must not judge what is possible and what is not, according to what is credible and incredible to our sense. . . . It seems\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3226,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-on-okay-i-didnt-finish-this-one","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: On okay I didn’t finish this one","author":"Gil","date":"January 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2411,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-back-next-week","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":4},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Back Next Week","author":"Gil","date":"September 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I was too busy\/addled this weekend to write my Monday Morning Montaigne post, dear readers. But I did finish the Apology for Raymond Sebond, and have (what I think) are some neat observations about it. I was gratified to see that M. loosened up a bit more in this last\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3459,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-vanity","url_meta":{"origin":3342,"position":5},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of vanity","author":"Gil","date":"February 16, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I think Montaigne's fighting with the Essays as much as I am. At least, after 56 pages of Of vanity (pp. 876-932), I feel as if I have less of a grip on them than I did before. Since I haven't read any background material or criticism, I have no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3342"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3344,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3342\/revisions\/3344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}