Roman Clodia's Reviews > The Complete Essays

Personally I favour an obscure mute life which slips by

I'd dipped in and out of these essays before for work but this is the first time I've read them through in total - and I have to confess to being a bit underwhelmed. I think it's Montaigne's reputation as a philosopher (he isn't), as a great thinker (he isn't) and as a sort of sixteenth century Everyman (he's certainly not) which set up expectations that have now crumbled in the face of an actual full engagement with Montaigne's own writings.

A lot of this review is, as ever, completely subjective. At heart, Montaigne is conservative and essentially supports the status quo both culturally and politically: as he says about his time as Mayor of Bordeux, 'I had nothing to do except to preserve things and to keep them going; those are dull and unnoticeable tasks'. He describes the qualities of his term in office, flaws and all, as being someone with 'no memory, no concentration, no experience, no drive; no hatred either, no ambition, no covetousness, no ferocity'. It's honest, for sure, so there's that! But these are the words of someone, as we would say, overly privileged through an accident of birth who feels entitled to status, authority and power but no responsibility.

This is completely in keeping with Montaigne's politics, domestic and wider, which seep through these essays: he is so misogynistic that it's laughable; he makes barely a mention of the vast household that must support his house and estates and admits that he doesn't know how to speak comfortably to servants and anyone who works under or for him; and he supports the rank and hierarchy that places the king at the top of the social pyramid with barely-hidden contempt, in some places, for the vast 'mob' of French people who live at the bottom.

All this is typical for the sixteenth century, you might argue, and - to some extent - that's right. But this is also a time of huge intellectual ferment when traditional ideas were being challenged in all kinds of way, whether the questioning of the doctrines of the Catholic church, the flattening of social structures brought about by a nascent 'middle class' of bureaucrats, traders, artists, writers and 'civil servants', or the ongoing querelle des femmes, a humanist debate across Europe about the nature and place of gender, especially the role of women. This is a time famous for its queens (Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Catherine de Medici, Isabella of Spain just for starters), for religious reformation, for the growth of republicanism partly influenced by the classical Roman texts that Montaigne reveres. But I'm not completely sure that all this upheaval and early modernism is essentially captured in Montaigne's essays.

On the last point, the 'renaissance' of classical learning, Montaigne undoubtedly has the utmost respect for Greek and Latin literature. I can't help wondering, though, how many texts he's read in full. To be fair, humanist education was centred on florilegia i.e. anthologies of pre-cut axioms and short extracts from the classics that didn't necessarily encourage original thinking or even an engagement with the full texts themselves. This was partly because classical texts were still in the process of being emended and printed and remained expensive. School boys (and the few girls who were able to be educated) created common-place books where they copied out extracts often under pre-determined headings such as 'friendship', 'virtue', and 'honour' - and we can see this technique reflected in Montaigne's essays where he so often drops in a two or three line quotation to illustrate his point, even if it's vastly out of context for the text from which it comes.

It may well be that I do Montaigne a disservice here: I certainly know that his copy of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura is still extant and shows extensive marginalia along with an epigraph in which Montaigne imagines Lucretian atoms coming together at a point in the future to create an other Montaigne!

Nevertheless, I found it disappointing that Montaigne himself discusses the fact that these essays say things he's long known or thought: they're not the results of new thinking or research or debate. They're accepting of conventional ways of thinking and knowing and living; they don't challenge or probe or tentatively strike new ground. Even when Montaigne sounds less reactionary such as when he discusses exploration and colonialism, he's following in the footsteps of Jesuit priests, for example, who wrote records of their horrified experience of the exploitation of people and places in the New World.

Montaigne is a Stoic and thus one of his greatest values is moderation, not something to be sneezed at. Yet, at the same time, he promotes disengagement: he doesn't want passion, he doesn't believe in a struggle for change, he thinks all ambition is bad (I might agree with him in the case of ambition for money or power, but what about ambition for social justice or fairness?)

In the end, for me (and I know many people will disagree which is fine), these are the essays of a man with the money, land, estates, status and power who can afford to retreat into his, literal, tower (though definitely not ivory!) and ramble around his books and write with no concern for what an audience might think or what work his thoughts might do in the world. There are things I can relate to such as when he talks about the vagaries of humanity or how to live in the face of inevitable death or his deep love for his friend, La Boétie - but, too often, I find Montaigne's thoughts unsurprising and, I admit, superficial and somewhat pedestrian. I'm glad I've read these essays but they rather fade against the prose writings, for me, of fellow sixteenth century 'thinkers' like Philip Sidney and John Donne.

With thanks to the Montaigne group, especially Fionnuala, David, Kalliope, J.C., and Dianneb who have been delightful companions through Montaigne.