Shaina Reads

Mondays with Montaigne is a (hopefully) weekly feature about the essays of Michel de Montaigne, French humanist and skeptic of the Renaissance and father of the modern essay. Each Monday, I'll mull over a piece from The Complete Works. I might do this in the order the essays appear in; I might not.

I was a bit nervous to read this week's essay, "Of sadness" (or, depending on the translation, "Of sorrow"). I grapple with anxiety on a near-daily basis, though I have become much better at coping with it than I was when it first reared its ugly head during my middle school days. Anxiety and depression tend to go hand-in-hand—not a big surprise. All of this is to say that after my difficult December, I wasn't sure how I would react to a piece all about the blues.

I shouldn't have worried. As with his other essays so far, Montaigne examines sadness through a historical lens, recalling kings who went to war and watched their children die or become captive with stoic faces, only to melt down at the death of a friend or comrade. Extreme grief, Montaigne says, is a "bleak, dumb and deaf stupor that benumbs us when accidents surpassing our endurance overwhelm us" (pg. 7). The pain we feel after great tragedy is too paralyzing to express, and sometimes only a lesser hurt can finally summon tears.

He reflects on the assertion that those who do not struggle to put their feelings into words may not be feeling that deeply. While I don't agree wholeheartedly, it reminded me of an article I read on TED earlier today about how to have meaningful conversations about mental illness. This quotation in particular resonated:

In Solomon’s words: “Wittgenstein said, ‘All I know is what I have words for.’ And I think that if you don’t have the words for it, you can’t explain to somebody else what your need is. To some degree, you can’t even explain to yourself what your need is. And so you can’t get better.”

I can entirely relate to feeling so full of worry, panic or sorrow but not having the words to describe it. As Montaigne puts it, "In truth, the impact of grief, to be extreme, must stun the whole soul and impede its freedom of action..." (pg. 7). I dare not try to speak for all who have experienced depression, but that's a pretty damned good description of it.

As for Montaigne's own experience of sadness?

"I am one of those freest from this passion. I neither like it nor respect it, although everyone has decided to honor it ... They cloth wisdom, virtue, conscience with it: a stupid and monstrous ornament!" (pg. 6)

OK, down with that, but then comes this:

"I am little subject to these violent passions. My susceptibility is naturally tough; and I harden and thicken it every day by force of reason." (pg. 9) 

To me, this reads a bit suspect. I know that Montaigne fell into deep depression after the death of his close friend and colleague, Étienne de la Boétie (side note that I'm sure will come back in future posts: Montaigne's intimacy with Boétie and apparent lack of interest in his marriage and family have led some scholars to believe he was queer), so for him to assert how "free" he is of it feels much like someone trying to put a melancholic past behind him. I suppose, ultimately, I can't blame him for that.

Any thoughts for me today?

You know that giant doorstop full of Michel de Montaigne essays that I got for the holidays? Well, I want to read it. This isn't exactly a two- or three-sitting read kind of book, and I don't think it should be. I want to savor the collection week by week, which leads me to my newest feature:

Mondays with Montaigne is a (hopefully) weekly feature about the essays of Michel de Montaigne, French humanist and skeptic of the Renaissance and father of the modern essay. Each Monday, I'll mull over a piece from The Complete Works. I might do this in chronological the order the essays appear in; I might not.

All right, let's get to it! This week's essay is "By diverse means we arrive at the same end." (Note: Quotations will differ somewhat based on translation.)

In his first piece of Book One of his Complete Works, Montaigne reflects on the inconsistent nature of humankind. In fact, the three-and-a-half page essay can best be summarized by one quotation:

"Truly man is a marvelously vain, diverse, and undulating object. It is hard to found any constant and uniform judgment on him." - pg. 5

He relates several tales of war, in which royalty of Wales, Bavaria and Thebes, among others, react to common-folk who defy their attempts at conquest; they are either so impressed by the dauntless men and women who dare stand up to them or so astonished by their audacity that they each gave up their pursuits. However, he offers another example in Alexander the Great, who remained unmoved by acts of valor—faced with the brave and silent Betis, he tortures him to death, vowing to "conquer his muteness yet." Montaigne muses as to why courage vexed Alexander so:

"Could it be that hardihood was so common to Alexander that, not marveling at it, he respected it the less? Or did he consider it so peculiarly his own that he could not bear to see it at this height in another without passionately envious spite?" - pg. 5-6

It is a fascinating question, particularly for those interested in human psychology: why do we as humans have such varying responses to one another? And why, sometimes, do these vary within a single person? Beyond the psyche, these questions also bring up broader ideas about how context and environment come into play, as well as very broad questions of free will vs. fate. Do we really have as much control as we think?

What say you, reader? Why do we differ so much in our reactions, even from day to day, and how much control do we really have over them?