Withdrawal

IN 1571 THE BORDEAUX JURIST, Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne, retired for good (or so he thought) from public life to spend his remaining days—he was thirty-eight, it could be considered oldish then—in the “liberty and tranquility” of his family estate and “the bosom of the Muses.” He established a retreat in one of his château’s two towers, with a library of some thousand books, the perfect environment and resource for a life of reflection. On the beams he had painted the resolve to leave his mind “in complete idleness to amuse itself.” But as weeds spring up in a fallow field, idleness produced all manner of “chimeras and fantastic monsters.” The horse (he switches metaphors— riding was a valued part of his life) had bolted. These things needed getting a grip on and “shaming into order.” So he started writing. (1, viii; 70)

Just what the monsters were is unclear. Nothing monstrous appears in Montaigne's earliest “essays.” In their original form, they are not much more than entries in a commonplace book, short conventional pieces about popular sayings—“that we arrive at the same end by different means”; or about narrowly practical problems—“should a besieged commander venture out to parley?” a typical real-life (and -death) dilemma in a France torn by religious wars. These pieces were not going to set the Garonne on fire.

A personal note may slip in, as when Montaigne admits to having a terrible memory—this as a prelude to a piece “On Liars” (liars need to remember what they’ve said to whom [1, ix; 71]). But by the time he comes to publish the first edition of his Essais in 1580, the personal element has become their declared whole and sole point. Not however with any wide literary ambition. A prefatory note To the Reader states that he is leaving an account of his “conditions and humors” for family and friends to remember him by when he is no more. For this “domestic and private” purpose he is “himself the substance of his book,” so it's not worth anyone else's while to spend their leisure on “a subject so frivolous and so vain.” Don't bother!