Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)

Montaigne was a French gentleman of Bordeaux best known for his multi-volume Essais (Essays), and he is generally regarded as the inventor of the genre. According to noted Montaigne translator Donald Frame, you might interpret the term "essay" two ways:

• as a "test" or "trial" of the writer's judgement
• as a "probing" or "sampling" of the writer's self.

Of that self, the nineteeth-century literary historian Edward Dowden writes:

"He was of middle temperment ... between the jovial and the melancholic, a lover of solitude, yet the reverse of morose, choosing bright companions rather than sad; able to be silent, as the mood took him, or to gossip; loyal and frank; a hater of hypocrisy and falsehood; a despiser of empty ceremony; disposed to interpret all things to the best; cheerful among his children; careless of exercising authority; incapable of househould management; trustful and kind towards his neighbors; indulgent in his judgements; yet warm in his admiration of old heroic virtue."(a)

Our selection this month, "Of Experience," is the very last in the sequence of Montaigne's Essais.

It fascinates as a capsule of Montaigne's philosophy. For example, he writes:

I would rather be an authority on myself than on Cicero. In the experience I have of myself I find enough to make me wise, if I were a good scholar. He who calls back to mind the exess of his past anger, and how far this fever carried him away, sees the ugliness of this passion better than in Aristotle, and conceives a more justified hatred for it. (b)

If Montaigne is considered a "modern" because of his reliance on his own perceptions and judgement, however, why does he cite passages from classical authors throughout the piece?

(a) Dowden, Edward, A History of French Literature, LaVergne, TN: Bibliolife, 2009.
(b) Great Books Reading and Discussion Program, Fourth Series, v.3, p.12)