"Of Friendship," by Michel de Montaigne

 

Wine label given to me by
onetime group member Alice Link,
who just turned 100!

At the outset of his Essay “On Friendship,” Montaigne states his intention to imitate the method of a painter in his employ.  The painter starts with “the best spot, the middle of each wall” and there paints a beautiful picture “labored over with all his skill.”  He fills in the empty spaces around it with “grotesques.”  Montaigne compares his Essays to these paintings.  He says his Essays are also “monstrous bodies,” without any “definite shape, having no order, sequence, or proportion other than accidental.”

He doubts his own ability to create a “rich polished picture.” He states his admiration for a work of his deceased friend, Étienne de la Boétie, entitled La Servitude Volontaire, which espouses liberty over tyrants. Montaigne laments that despite having been bequeathed La Boétie’s library and papers, he has not been able to publish more than one small volume of his friend’s work.

Nevertheless, Montaigne is grateful that La Servitude Volontaire is what brought them together as friends, and their friendship was so “entire and so perfect that certainly you will hardly read of the like, and among men of today you see no trace of it in practice.”

Montaigne’s admiration for his friend launches him into his discussion of different types of friendship.  He talks about familial friendships, e.g., of a father for a son, between brothers, affection of men and women, (including marriage), and “licentious Greek love,” (a code term for homosexual love). In each case Montaigne argues these kinds of love fall short.  He returns to his description of a “more equitable and equable kind of friendship” as embodied in his relationship with La Boétie.

In his closing paragraph, Montaigne defends his friend’s reputation and his patriotism.  He states that he has decided to refrain from reprinting La Servitude Volontaire, and instead will substitute his sonnets (which in fact, didn’t make it into the last edition of Montaigne’s book, published in 1588).

No doubt the editors of Great Conversations 1 also selected Montaigne's Essay "On Solitude" as a companion piece to "Of Friendship."  On Monday night we'll talk about whether the solitude of which Montaigne speaks can really be considered as parallel to his idea of friendship.