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The Theme Of Communication In The "Essais" Of Montaigne

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The Theme Of Communication In The "Essais" Of Montaigne

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Content THE THEME OF COMMUNICATION
IN THE ESSAIS OP MONTAIGNE
by
Robert Franklin Jones
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
Doctor of Philosophy
(French)
June 1973
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Xerox University Microfilms
300 North Zeeb Road
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74-923
JONES, Robert Franklin, 1937-
THE THEME OF COMMUNICATION IN THE ESSAIS
OF MONTAIGNE.
University of Southern California, Ph.D.,
1973
Language and Literature, modem
University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan
© Copyright by
Robert Franklin Jonea
1973
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED.
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
T H E GRADUATE SCHO OL
U N IV E R S IT Y PARK
LOS A NG ELES, C ALI FO R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
ROBERT FRANKLIN JONES
under the direction of h..is . . Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by a ll its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillm ent of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H IL O S O P H Y
f 'Tn^o
Dean
D ate....J . S J ? . ® . . 1 ? . . ? . ? . . . . .
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
.
Chairman
.....
UULKsrt
For
Stella M, Th.omh.ill
ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction 1
Chapter I The Primacy of Communication in 14
Montaigne's Life and Works
Chapter II An Interrupted Dialogue: La Bodtie 28
and the Genesis of a Theme
Chapter III Montaigne, Encoder and Decoder in 40
•propria persona
Chapter IV Obstacles to Communication 86
Chapter V Ideal Communication 119
Conclusion 142
Bibliography 157
iii
INTRODUCT I 0 H
So many critics have attempted to explain Montaigne
that any new attempt has to he undertaken modestly. Modern
Montaigne scholarship starts with Fortunat Strowski"^ and
2
Pierre Villey with their delineations of the three strata
of the Essais (before 1580, 1580-88, after 1588), corre
sponding roughly to the three periods in Montaigne's philo
sophical evolution (Stoic, Skeptic, Epicurean)— each schol
ar, however, being unaware of the other's work. Once these
epoch-making contributions were assimilated by the erudite
public, various scholars, according to the bent of their
own interests, saw fit to emphasize one of the three stages
in the evolution, and this, to the detriment, sometimes
even to the invalidation, of the other two stages. Battle
lines were drawn up, and during most of the post-First-
World-War era the argument of whether Montaigne was essen
tially a Stoic, or essentially a Skeptic, or essentially an
Epicurean was fought out.
The fight got under way with Arthur Armaingaud^ who
opposed Strowski's and Villey's evolutionist interpretation
with the argument that Montaigne was never a Stoic at heart,
but was basically an Epicurean merely posing as a Stoic.
Actually, Armaingaud got two quarrels started, and the sec
ond one was to absorb considerable scholarly energy in Mon
taigne studies for the first part of this century. It was
1
also Armaingaud'3 thesis that Montaigne, in no small way,
contributed textually to La Bodtie's controversial
Contr*un. A counterattack was quickly taken up by
Strowski, Villey, Paul Bonnefon, and Reinhold Dezeimeris,
with additional volleys coming later from Joseph Barriere
and Andrd Morize.^ As late as 1946 the quarrel surfaced
again when Harry Kurz published an "objective" review of
the controversy, siding nonetheless with the mainstream of
opinion, namely, that the Contr'un was wholly the unadul
terated work of La Boetie. Then, some two years later,
Kurz's work was answered by Maurice Weiler, who sided with
Armaingaud, whose dogmatic stance was complicated by an
other tradition in Montaigne studies— that of his anti
religiousness. Although this can be traced all the way
back to the seventeenth century when the Essais were placed
on the Index, it was Sainte-Beuve who most convincingly
articulated the stand of Montaigne as an unbeliever. To
mention the most important works that took up this problem,
there was Maurice Guizot who considered Montaigne a Skep
tic and by no means a Christian, while there was Maturin
Dr^ano who presented him as a firm Catholic. Finally,
in 1944, what with all the ink that had flowed, Jean Guitin
produced an evaluation of the problem in an article called
*0u en est le d&bat sur la religion de Montaigne," going as
far back as Pascal and Voltaire and ending with Dreano and
Marx Citoleux. In 1937* the latter, taking a rather extreme
point of view, went so far as to label Montaigne a theolo
gian. That the controversy is still not over may he testi
fied by Clement Sclafert's L'Ame religieuse de Montaigne in
1951j in which he attempts to show that religion holds a
place of great importance in the Essais. and by Donald M.
Frame's article, "Did Montaigne Betray Sebond?" the argu
ments of which hark back to Sainte-Beuve's stand on Mon
taigne as an unbeliever— a stand which Professor Frame
3hows to be inconsistent and based on inaccuracies.
Standing off to the side of these disputes are several
scholars who have made major contributions to the area of
Montaigne studies. Frederik Jansen in his Sources vives de
la nensde de Montaigne (1935) attaches no label to the
Essayist but attempts to approach him from various angles.
John Middleton Murray's "Montaigne: the Birth of an Indi
vidual" (1938) is considered the best interpretation of the
Essais prior to Hugo Friedrich's Montaigne (1949). This
latter work is generally considered to be the most impor
tant study on the Essais since Villey and Strowski. It is
a summary of Montaigne's thought, interpreting both the man
and the work. Among shorter works, there is unanimous
agreement over the eminence of Erich Auerbach's chapter
"L'Humaine condition," considered the best short essay on
Montaigne's style.
As a matter of fact, among the more recent studies,
problems of style have been the leading preoccupations. It
started on the broad scale: was Montaigne baroque (Iiribrie
Buffum) or was he a mannerist (Wiley Sypher)? In 1957
there was Floyd Gray's Le St.vle de Montaigne, in which the
details of his imagery and syntax are minutely analysed.
Finally, in 1970, the Comic Element of Montaigne's Style,
by Zoe Samaras, which concentrates on the comic devices
used by Montaigne to convey his message, shows the contin
uing interest in the stylistic approach.
There have been a few studies employing particularly
novel approaches such as Rachel Bespaloff's attempt
(nL*Instant et la liberte chez Montaigne1950) to examine
Montaigne's philosophy in the light of Existentialist doc
trine, or Philip P. Hallie's The Scar of Montaigne (1966)
which, in its highly eclectic approach, combines literary,
historical, and philosophical erudition in an attempt to
show Montaigne's mind through the Essais. Finally, Donald
Frame's translation of Montaigne's complete works as well
as his biography are considered major contributions.
One of the big problems in Montaigne studies is that
the Essayist slips away the minute he is pressed too close
ly. Careful collation of passages, meticulously chosen
with a specific end in mind, can "prove'' a given thesis:
Montaigne the Stoic, or Montaigne the Skeptic, or Montaigne
the Epicurean. It can be shown— and has been— that these
three aspects were all true, simply superseding each other
as Montaigne grew older. It has also been shown, however,
that Montaigne the Stoic and Montaigne the Epicurean coex
isted; and other combinations likewise. So, pressing Mon
taigne too closely is likely to yield a series of pictures
which, viewed individually, are true, hut taken as a whole
appear contradictory.
In this present study, I propose to study a theme
that, while accommodating traditional labels, goes beyond
them, pervading as it does all the essays. It is the
theme of communication. If, for a moment, we may think
of the various labels as indicative of roles which Mon
taigne alternately (or simultaneously) "essayed" in the
course of the composition of the Essais. it can be shown
that the theme of communication, acting as a backdrop
against which these successive roles are played out, may
serve as a central, unifying element in Montaigne's life
and work.
The question of communication is much larger than the
problem of writing. Montaigne was first and foremost a
talker and listener. Repeatedly, he makes it clear that
his greatest pleasure comes from sharing thoughts and
feelings with another human being. He says that his es
sential nature is suited to communication and revelation:
"Ma forme essentielle est propre h la communication et k
la production."^ As one man is "made" to paint, another
to compose, another to teach, another to sculpt, Montaigne
is "made" to communicate; and his use of the word "essen-
tielle" underlines the primacy of communication in his
life. Throughout the Essais there is the emphasis on con
versation and discussion, indicated by such chapter titles
as "Du parler prompt ou tardif," "De la vanity des pa
roles," "Du d^mentir," "De trois commerces," and "De l'art
de conferer," to name only the most obvious ones. With
Etienne de la Bodtie, his colleague in the Bordeaux Earle-
ment, he had been able to indulge his favorite pastime
fully, and together they achieved what Montaigne refers to
as "perfect communication": *Je sqay par une trop certaine
experience; il n'est aucune si douce consolation en la
perte de nos amis que celle que nous apporte la science
de n'avoir rien oublid h leur dire, et d*avoir eu avec
eux une narfaite et entiere enmiminioation" (11,8,376).^
Generally speaking, I define communication as the for
mulation of one's thoughts, feelings, and needs. In
intercommunication, two or more people are involved as
in a dialogue, and one must obviously externalize his inner
promptings in a way that they will be understood by another.
This exchange may take place through any number of media:
speech, gestures, writing, even silence. Moreover, two or
more people are not necessary; one can have an interior
monologue, and this I call monadic communication. Montai®ie
infinitely preferred the former, but upon losing la Bo^tie,
he had to resort more and more to the latter. It would 3eem
that it is the medium of writing that concerns us most in
7
this study. This is only true inasmuch as the tangible
object of my investigation-—the Essais— have come down to
us in written form. While writing is not identical with
the spoken language, it comes very close to being so with
Montaigne. We will see that it was his over-riding desire
to write as he spoke. So, although I will, necessarily, be
working with the written form, my field of investigation is
not the form— it is the content. And for the most part,
this excludes stylistic considerations.
Ideally speaking, communication is an interchange
among two or more individuals or groups by means of a mes
sage, which, in its unequivocal clarity or "transparency,"
conveys to a totally comprehending audience a totally com
prehended message. So Aristotle, in his Rhetoric, de
scribes as the three elements of communication: (1) the
person who speaks, (2) the speech that he makes, and (3)
the person who listens.*^ Again ideally, then, one is,
through his communication, trying to establish (as the ety
mology of the word indicates) a "commonness" with another.
However, this ideal paradigm sidesteps several complicating
factors, notably self-knowledge on the part of the speaker
or, more generally, the sender of the message, and open
ness and freedom from bias on the part of the receiver?
not to mention, in both cases, the ability to encode or
decode that message. If, furthermore, the message is seen
not as cognitive but emotive, if part or all of its pur-
port is, as we have learned to say, unconscious, if mean
ing is, in faot, in excess of intention, if— to move to an
other level— the source of the message or its recipient is,
rather than an individual, a group or even a culture— in
all of the cases, the ideal model is rendered complex and
even ambiguous.
Actually, most present-day communication theorists
propose seven closely intertwined ingredients in any com-
Q
raunication model. Communication as a process does not
allow the isolation of any of these components, and when
we talk about sourcej or message, or receiver, we are iso
lating a particular ingredient only to facilitate analysis.
The processes of communication require, first, that the
source encode the message. Whatsoever thought or feeling
or piece of information one wants to share must be put into
a form that can be transmitted. Basically, this involves
"coding" one*s message into spoken words or written words.
He who does the so-called "coding" is referred to as the
encoder. The message has a destination, or receiver, who
will be expected to "decode" it. The message will also
need a medium, or channel, if it is to get from the source
to the receiver. Sound waves act as a channel for speech.
Writing is another channel. Finally, in our effort to
establish a "commonness" with someone else, we seek inter
action. In a conversation between two people one is con
stantly communicating back to the other. This return pro—
9
cess is called feedback. He who is speaking uses it as a
signal as to how his message is being decoded. Is there a
yawn? Silence? A frown? A smile? We can even get feed
back from our own voices. As we hear ourselves talk we can
vary our tone accordingly as we think necessary to enhance
our message. Or, we can see the words we have written and
change the style or make additions and deletions.
Before getting into specific communication situations
described in the Essais. it is necessary to look at the
"determinants of effect."^ He who has something to com
municate naturally hopes that his communication will be
understood, that it will have high fidelity. In analyzing
communication, we are above all interested in what in
creases or reduces the fidelity of the processes. Whatever
reduces it is termed an obstacle to communication; on the
other hand, when it is increased to its maximum, we have
ideal communication. A chapter will be devoted to each of
these considerations.
To summarize the components of the communication chain,
we have: (1) the source. (2) the encoder. (3) the message.
(4) the channel. (5) the decoder. (6) the receiver, and
(7) feedback. As this is applied to the Essais. Montaigne
is naturally the source. His writing mechanisms served as
encoder, encompassing not only the physical act of writing
but also stylistic considerations, including spelling,
punctuation, grammar, etc. The channel is the Essais them
10
selves— -the book, the written end-product, whereas the mes
sage is the content of the Essais. The reader*s eye then
becomes the decoder as it sets about its work of retrans
lating the message into a nervous impulse and sending it
to the central nervous system, which in turn, acts as the
receiver. This form of communication could be simplified
as follows:
(1)
source
encoder
- Montaigne
(2) message - content of the Essais
(3)
channel - the Essais (writing)
(4) decoder
receiver
- the reader.10
% primary concern will be with the first two areas, treat
ing the last two incidentally. It is therefore within the
Essais themselves that I want to look in an attempt to ex
amine and analyze communication processes and problems as
Montaigne viewed them. In dealing fundamentally with the
theme of communication in Montaigne, I will be more con
cerned with what Montaigne says of communication as a sub
ject in his Essais than with how he himself communicates
via the Essais. There will be a chapter, however, devoted
to Montaigne, in nronria nersonna. a study of his own com
munication resources and skills not as literarily reflected
in the Essais (a task of literary criticism) but as gleaned
from details and incidents within the Essais. This is not
to forget that the essential goal of Montaigne in the
11
Essais is no longer thought to "be primarily artistic or
informative.11 "The Essays are a discourse, they are ad
dressed to someone, ... they are absolutely dependent
upon a locutor who writes and a desired interlocutor who
never replies." "Montaigne is constantly preoccupied with
his reader; his reader is his only companion with whom he
12
converses endlessly." It is his overriding desire to
communicate that is the raison d»8tre of the Essais. Mon
taigne states that his goal in the Essais is to communicate
his total, natural being, and he prides himself on being
the first ever to have done it: "Les autheurs se communi-
quent au peuple par quelque marque particuliere et estran-
gere; moy, le premier, par mon estre universal, comme
Michel de Montaigne" (111,2,782). One could almost charac-
13
terize this urge to communicate as a compulsion, but cen
tral to it is the desire to reveal the natural self:
"Mais, quel que je me face connoistre, pourveu que je me
face connoistre tel que .ie ~suis. je fay mon effect" (II,
17,636); "Je veux qu*on voye mon pas naturel et ordinaire,
ainsin detraqu6 qu*il est. Je me laisse aller comme je me
trouve" (11,10,388). He proposes to take off the mask and
let the reader see behind it: "C'est un*humeur couarde et
servile de s'aller desguiser et cacher sous un masque, et
de n'oser se faire veoir tel qu’on est. . . . Un coeur
genereux ne doit point desmentir ses pens^es; il se veut
faire voir .1usques au dedans" (II ,17»630). This total com-
12
mitment to self-revelation will naturally require the mar
shalling of all communicative resources at his disposal.
Preparing for this, therefore, required ceaseless appraisal
and investigation of communication in all its aspects.
Whether drawing from history, from antiquity, or from con
temporary events both great and small, Montaigne is forever
alert to the way men talk, to what their gestures mean, to
the way they write, and to the way they relate to one an
other. By tracing the theme of communication, then, the
thesis which will emerge is that, for Montaigne, there was
no more enduring and absorbing obsession than that of com
munication, and that his principal aim was to communicate
himself— to communicate himself as he truly was.
• ^ Montaigne (Paris: Alcan, 1906).
2
lies Sources et Involution des Essais de Montaigne
(Paris: riachette, 1906).
^WY a-t-il une evolution dans les Essais?" Bulletin de
la soci6t£ des amis de Montaigne. 1st Ser.. Mo. 2 (i9l3).
n « 0 ; ¥o." 3 7I9T477 254-6’ 5 ' .
^Eor complete data on the works of authors mentioned
in this chapter, see Selected Bibliography at the end of
this present work.
^Michel de Montaigne, Oeuvres completes (Paris: Galli-
mard, Biblioth&que de la Pl^iade, 1962), Book III, chapter
3, p. 801. All subsequent references to this work will be
incorporated in the text. The roman numerals will refer to
Books of the Essais: the arabic, to chapters and pages.
^Italics are mine. Henceforth, any italics appearing
in quotations from the Essais will be mine unless otherwise
indicated.
13
^W. Rhys Roberta, "Rhetorica," Works of Aristotle,
ed. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, I946), XI,
14.
8
See David K. Berio, The Process of Communication
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1^66), pp. 23-38.
For the communication model I use here, I am also indebted
to Wilbur Schramm, Communication: Concents and Processes.
ed. Joseph A. DeVito (Englewood dliffs, N.J.: IPrentice
Hall, 1971), PP. 13-20.
^Berlo, p. 40.
10Naturally, one cannot speak of feedback in this writ
ing/reading model, unless the reader and writer happen to
be one and the same— a point I shall directly make regard
ing Montaigne, reader of his own essays.
11For this idea and the quotation which immediately
follows, see article by Anthony Wilden, "Par divers moyens
on arrive k pareille fin: A Reading of Montaigne," Modern
language Notes. 83, No. 3 (May, 1968), p. 582.
12
Zoe Samaras, The Comic Element of Montaigne’s Style
(Paris: Editions A.-&. Nize't, 197oJ, p. llOl
'In this connection he says, "Je suis affamd de me
faire connoistre; et ne me chaut a combien, pourveu que ce
soit veritablement" (111,5,824).
CHAPTER I
THE PRIMACY OP COMMUNICATION
"Nul plaisir n'a goust pour moy sans
communication" (111,9,965).
"II semble que l*ame esbranlee et esmeufe' se perde en
soy-mesme, si on ne luy donne prinse; il faut tousjours luy
fournir d'object ou elle s'abutte et agisse" (1,4,25).
This "object” for Montaigne will become his Essais. He
began to put his thoughts on paper as a way-—to extend his
own metaphor— of curbing his galloping imagination"*" brought
on by his idle retirement, which he had first visualized as
a way to free his mind: "II me sembloit ne pouvoir faire
plus grande faveur a mon esprit, que de le laisser en
pleine oysivet^, s'entretenir soy mesmes, et s*arrester et
rasseoir en soy" (1,8,54). Much to his dismay, things did
not quite turn out this way. In complete idleness, the mind
did not stay and settle in itself; instead, it became pain
ful for Montaigne and bad for his health: "Son [imagina
tion] oysifvete m*est k cette cause une penible occupation,
et qui offence ma sante" (111,3*796). It behaved— to re
turn to his metaphor— like a runaway horse, impossible to
control. It was a real chore trying to keep up with it,
and chores for Montaigne were incompatible with personal
freedom. With no curb on his imagination, chimeras and
fantastic monsters, without order or purpose, came spewing
14.
15
forth. He explains that it was in order to study these
monsters, in order to contemplate their ineptitude and
strangeness that he "began to put them in writing, which
"became a means of ordering a world that had "become tin-
shapely and chaotic through an unbridled imagination.
For the moment, then, writing is a private concern, and
if we can 3peak of communication at this point, it is mo
nadic communication as defined a"bove in the Introduction:
Montaigne asks the questions of himself and it is he who
proceeds to give the answers— myriad answers as it turns
out. Since this was a private exercise, he had nothing to
fear in representing himself as he truly was. It was cer
tainly much later that the idea of publication occurred to
him. This type of communication is more akin to the mono
logue than anything else, taking place in the absence of
a second party (even in the absence of a potential reader),
or rather, the second party is the consciousness of the
self, the self bifurcating into the writing self, repro
ducing fantasies, and the rational consciousness observing
those fantasies with a therapeutic aim in mind. It was an
act like that of studying oneself critically in a mirror,
returning week after week, month after month, to see how
2
one has changed. Just as one can listen to one's voice,
changing tone or modulation to correspond to the effect
sought after, so Montaigne would reread what he had written
earlier, this act constituting a sort of feedback,^enabling
16
him to modify the style or make additions or deletions.
With reference to the concept of feedback, there is a pas
sage in the Essais that is startlingly modern: "Le sens de
l'ouye . • . se rapporte k celuy du parler et se tiennent
ensemble d'une cousture naturelle: en faqon que ce que nous
parlons, il faut que nous le parlions premierement k nous
et que nous le facions sonner au dedans k nos oreilles,
avant que de l’envoyer aux estrangeres" (11,12,436).
A modern communication theorist describes it this way: "We
get feedback from our own messages. That is, we hear our
own voices and can correct mispronunciations. We see the
words we have written on paper and can correct misspellings
or change the style.
As Montaigne’s manuscript pages started piling up and
as he kept going back to reread, hoping in time to make
his mind ashamed of itself (’ ’esperant avec le temps luy en
faire honte k luy mesmes," 1,8,34), it must have occurred
to him that there was really nothing to be ashamed of after
all, and, in fact, he could even publish his writings with
impunity. Perhaps even with profit. After all, his at
tempts at being honest with himself had been successful,
he must have thought, and if his essays had been good for
him perhaps they would also profit another. He had started
by wanting to give himself a picture of himself; he ended
by wanting to communicate this picture to everyone. At
first, he sensed that they could be of interest to his
17
family or to close friends. Chapter 37 in Book II is ad
dressed to Madame de Derras. Montaigne tells her that he
wants to give her a faithful picture of himself which she
will have to remember him "by: "Je ne veux tirer de ces es-
crits sinon qu'ils me representent h vostre memoire au na
tural" (763). He maintains in Chapter 18 of Book II,
which he is writing from 1578 to 1580,^ that they are for
a corner of a library and for "un voisin, un parent, un
amy, qui aura plaisir a me racointer et repratiquer en
cett'image" (647). He quickly adds how much he would have
liked to have read or heard about his ancestors: "quel con-
tentement me seroit ce d’ouir ainsi quelqu*un qui me reci-
ta3t les meurs, le visage, la contenance, les parolles
communes et les fortunes de mes ancestres!" (647). In a
sense, then, Montaigne desires to communicate across time
and space with those who will follow him, knowing how much
he would have liked to have read about his ancestors what
his descendants will be able to read about him. In this
connection, he regrets that Seneca1s final words had been
lost (we remember that Montaigne carefully gives us those
of la Bo^tie): "Ce nous est une bien facheuse perte qu’elle
[Seneca’s final words! ne soyent venues jusques a nous"
(11,35,728). He also regrets the loss of many of Cicero’s
books: "Je croy que, si nous avions les livres que Cicero
avoit escrit sur ce subject [glory! , il nou3 en conteroit
de belles" (11,16,604). Of course, intending his writings
18
for family and friends is no longer the exclusively private
aim which he had at the start, but it is still a highly
personal one, and we have little cause to question his sin
cerity. For a man who knew Latin as his mother tongue, he
would have certainly followed the custom of his times and
written in Latin (as did La Bo^tie) had he been thinking
in terms of a lasting literary work. Near the end of the
Essais he writes: "J'escris mon livre h peu d'hommes et h
peu d'ann£es. Si q'eust est£ une matiere de dur£e, il
l'eust fallu commettre a un langage plus ferme" (111,9,
961).6
Yet, there are other considerations, leading one to
conclude that there was an evolution in Montaigne's think
ing with regard to his desire to make himself known. After
the initial success of the first publication of the Essais
in 1580, it was obvious to him that they were of interest
to people beyond his circle of friends and relatives: "La
faveur publique m*a donn£ un peu plus de hardiesse que je .
n'esperois" (111,9*942). The main steps in the evolution,
then, pass from the private and personal domain to the pop
ular and public one. At one point he confesses that publi
cation of his behavior yielded unexpected profit: "Je sens
ce proffit inespere de la publication de mes meurs qu'elle
me sert aucunement de regie" (958). He rationalizes that
he is obliged to make his life conform to what he has writ
ten about his life and not to give the lie to the picture
of his qualities: "Cette publique declaration m'oblige de
19
me tenir en ma route, et h ne desmentir 1'image de mes con
ditions" (958). It was as if he looked upon the word as in
violable, and once uttered, he felt ever after bound to it.
This public declaration acts as a safeguard as it were.
From this, it follows that Montaigne used his published
word as a guide to help him live more fully. Once his good
intentions were down in black and white, he felt obliged to
carry them out. Once he committed to paper a depiction of
his humors and traits, he felt constrained to remain true
to them. This makes quite clear his somewhat enigmatic
comment, "Je n'ay pas plus faict mon livre que mon livre
m'a faict" (11,18,648). It also shows to what considerable
extent there was feedback taking place between Montaigne
writer of the Essais and Montaigne reader of the Essais.
In interpreting them as a guide for living and being, he
remains equally true to his original purpose, i.e., of
ordering his chaotic mind and of using his essays as a
mirror in which to study himself. After 1580, however,
as he continues to write new essays and add to the old
ones, he cannot help being increasingly aware (in view of
their growing appeal) of their eventual impact on the pub
lic mind. Montaigne saw himself as "nay et vou6 h l*obeis-
sance de la raison publique et en ses faicts et en ses
diets" (111,11,1010). In The Scar of Montaigne. Philip P.
Hallie's leading argument is that Montaigne placed the good
health of France above all other considerations, even polit-
20
7
ical and religious ones. And health for Montaigne meant
health for both the body and the mind. He saw Prance as a
worm-eaten and maggoty body with "divisions at subdivisions
qui nous deschirent aujourd*huy" (111,1,768). He did not
even regret having no sons to carry on the family name
since he was living at a time when it was so hard to rear
children as moral beings: "A cette heure . . . il seroit si
difficile de les [children] rendre bons" (111,9,977). It
is perhaps not without significance that he started writing
the Essai3 the very same year as the horrible massacre of
Saint-Bartholomew. "L*autre cause qui me convie k ces pro
menades, e'est la disconvenance aux meurs presentes de nos-
tre estat" (933)« The times were marked by a severing of
relationships between men in all domains: social, political,
religious, linguistic. "En ce temps, qu'il ne se peut
•parler du monde que dangereusement ou faucement" (111,3,
798-99). Words themselves had become elusive and decep
tive. We have already quoted from a chapter whose very
title is "Du d&nentir." It was a time of rampant dissimu
lation: "La dissimulation est des plus notables qualitez
de ce siecle" (11,18,649). How then to set up a communica
tion which would mend the bones of the social community?
The Wars of Religion had sparked off a feeling of isolation
and incomraunicability. It was after all a time when people
were killed for words, a time of mass deceit and mass manip-
8
illation through words. Montaigne says so repeatedly.
21
Therefore, there was the need to restore purity, and conse
quently truth, to the word and hence to human communication.
"Nostre intelligence se conduisant par la seule voye de la
paroile. celuy qui la fauce, trahit la society publique.
C*est le seul util par le moien duquel se communiquent nos
volontez et nos pensdes, c*est le truchement de nostre ame"
(11,19,650). We cannot communicate our true desires and
thoughts if our words are distorted. This ties in well
with what Philip Hallie means when he stresses Montaigne's
concern for the health of France— her moral and linguistic
health. The best way to restore her to good health was
for each individual to restore himself to good health.
The Essais, once again, could serve each individual as a
guidebook^ in this respect, thus enabling Montaigne to
serve the public cause, something he placed great value on:
"eiTe suis de cet avis, que la plus honnorable vacation est
de servir au publiq et estre utile h beaucoup" (III,9,929)»10
Despite all of Montaigne's modesty, he was certainly aware
and hopeful of whatever benign influence he could bring to
bear: "Ce dessein de se servir de soy pour subject h es-
crire seroit excusable k des hommes rares et fameux qui,
par leur reputation, auroyent donn6 quelque desir de leur
cognoissance. ... II m^ssiet k tout autre de se faire
cognoistre qu'h celuy qui a dequoy se faire imiter, et du
quel la vie et les opinions peuvent servir de patron"
(11,18,646). Not belonging to that tiny class of rare and
22
famous men ("des hommes rares et fameux"), he placed him
self in the second class: those whose lives and opinions
are worthy of imitation. This is explicit not in the state
ment itself, for here, he is obviously thinking of famous
men like Caesar or Seneca. Nevertheless, behind the show
of modesty, Montaigne did indeed consider his life worthy
of, if not imitation, at least exposure.^ After all his
railing against "les escrivains ineptes et inutiles"
(111,9»923), bow could he justify his own writings except
by their usefulness: "Et ne me doibt on sqavoir mauvais
gre pourtant, si je la [my study, my lesson] communique.
Ce qui me sert, peut aussi par accident servir k un autre"
(11,6,357)• His statement on "l*humaine condition" offers
further corroboration that Montaigne saw exemplum value in
his own life: "Je propose une vie basse et sans lustre,
c'est tout un. On attache aussi bien toute la philosophie
morale a une vie populaire et privee que k une vie de plus
riche estoffe: chaque homme porte la forme entiere de
l*humaine condition" (111,2,782). A similar conclusion
can be made from what he says about Socrates and self-
knowledge, namely, that anyone who learns to know himself
in depth and thus to despise himself should boldly make
himself known by his own mouth: "Par ce que Socrates avoit
3eul mordu a certes au precepte de son Dieu, de se con-
noistre, et par cette estude estoit arriv£ k se mespriser,
il fut estime seul digne du sumom de Sage. Qui se con-
23
noi3tra ainsi, qu*il se donne hardiment h connoistre par aa
touche" (11,6,360) — a recommendation that Montaigne obvi
ously is acting upon as he writes the essays.
He declares, "Le guain de nostre estude, c*est en estre
devenu meilleur et plus sage" (1,26,151)* This declaration
of principle applies not only to education and learning hut
also to the writing and reading of the Essais. So, in
understanding the primacy of communication with Montaigne,
one can conclude that he hopes to communicate a good
example, and that, through it, man will become better and
wiser. He has told us that the composition of his book has
had a moral influence on his own life; he no doubt hopes
that it will have one on ours also. He 3ees a direct cor
relation between the individuals wrong-doing and the
states wrong-doing: "ISrreur particuliere faict premie-
rement ISrreur publique" (11,11,1005), Between the extre
mist Huguenots and the League, responsible for the strife
that was tearing Prance apart the whole fifty-nine years of
MontaigneS life, there was a wide range of moderates, not
the least of whom was Montaigne, Philip Hallie sees Mon
taigne as speaking "through the Essays in favor of the
12
•health* of Prance," If private errors create public
errors, then public health starts with the individual, from
which it follows that corrupt language causes and reflects
corrupt morals. Hallie contends that Montaigne wants to
show a war-torn and sick Prance how man should communicate
24
if he expects to make the fatherland whole again. In short,
one may conclude that he sees in good communication a means
of achieving social redintegration.
Though this desire to communicate a good example,
morally and linguistically, figures importantly in Mon
taigne's motivations, we must make an effort to penetrate
to a deeper psychological level in quest of the first im
pulses of a more intimate nature. The key word I think is
pleasure•
Throughout, he returns again and again to the theme of
communication as pleasure. In fact, for him, pleasure and
communication are inseparable. No pleasure has any savor
for him without communication: "Nul plaisir n'a goust pour
moy sans communication1 1 (III,9»965). He says that he is
vexed when a merry thought crosses his mind and there is no
one to offer it to: "II ne me vient pas seulement une gail-
larde pensee* en l'ame qu'il ne me fache de 1'avoir produite
seul, et n'ayant k qui l'offrir" (111,9,965). For Mon
taigne, the word "conference" is synonymous with communica
tion. One of his chapters is entitled "De l'art de
eonferer," and it treats the art of discussion. We note
his use of superlatives in the following remark: "le plus
fructieux et naturel exercice de nostre esprit, c'est h
mon gc6 la conference" (111,8,900). It is a variation of
the quotation above, "Nul plaisir n'a goust pour moy sans
communication." As he develops his thought, he will go one
25
step further with his superlatives: "J'en [la conference]
trouve 1*usage plus doux que d'aucune autre action de
nostre vie" (111,8,900). Gascon exaggeration is frequent
in the Essais, but, here, he is speaking in all earnest
ness. In saying that he finds communication sweeter than
any other action of our life, he is giving it priority
over seeing*. Often, through his choice of metaphors, he
implies that he also gives it priority over other primeval,
pleasure-giving urges: eating, sex, and parenthood. We
know much about Montaigne*s eating habits and he clearly
enjoyed sitting down to a meal. He also lets us in on
many secrets about his sexual appetite and we gather that
13
he was something of a paramour in his youth. ^ Yet, how
ever much he was given to his appetites or however much he
treasured his sight, in the citation above he is unequiv
ocal in placing his desire for communication in the fore
front: “plus doux que d'aucune autre action." This is
corroborated elsewhere: "II n*est point de si doux
apprest pour moy, ni de sauce si appetissante, que celle
qui se tire de la societe" (111,15,1085). In the conclud
ing part of his chapter entitled “De 1*affection des peres
aux enfans,“ Montaigne makes the point that he would rather
produce rich writings by intercourse with the muses than
produce a perfectly formed child by intercourse with his
wife: "Et je ne sgay si je n'aimerois pas mieux beaucoup
en avoir produict ung tun escrit], parfaictement bien
26
formd, de l’accointance des muses, que [un enfant! de
l'accointance de ma femme" (11,8,383).
In trying to discover first impulses of an intimate
nature which will explain why Montaigne needed to communi
cate, one finds the all-important role of La Bo^tie. The
next chapter will explore that role.
. . . faisant le cheval eschappe, mon esprit se
donne cent fois plus d*affaire a soy-mesmes, qu'il n’en
prenoit pour autruy" (1,8,34).
p
Montaigne tells us he did this with portraits he had
of himself: "J'ay des portraits de ma forme de vingt et
cinq et de trente cinq ans; je les compare avec celuy d'as-
teure: combien de fois ce n'est plus moy!" (111,13,1083).
^Thibaudet would seem to concur in this inasmuch as he
draws an interesting corollary between Montaigne and the
paper he writes on, the paper being "his interlocutor":
"Ce qu'il verse sur son papier c'est le succddand de sa
mdmoire, c'est sa mdmoire hors de lui. C*est aussi son
interlocuteur," p. 67.
^Communications: Concerts and Processes, ed. Joseph
A. DeVito, p. 19.
For dating the composition of individual chapters,
I have used those proposed by Pierre Villey in his Les
Essais de Michel de Montaigne (Paris: Presses universi-
taires de France, 1965) and by Donald Frame's Montaigne:
a Biography (New iork: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1^65),
Appendix A, pp. 324-26.
^At this point in the Pldiade adition, Maurice Rat has
the following footnote: "Montaigne veut dire sans doute: au
Latin, comme de Thou, son histoire," p. 1652.
7
Philip P. Hallie, The Scar of Montaigne (Middletown,
Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 1966), pp. 8-9,
19-20.
8See 11,17,631; 11,18,649; 111,1,768; 111,9,971-72.
o
^See infra, p.135, discussion on exenrplum.
27
10Gustave Lanson writes, "II avait la passion du bien
public," Les Essais de Montaigne: dtude et analyse (Paris:
Mellott^e, 1930), p. 20.
■^^See infra, pp. 124-25, p. 135.
12Hallie, p. 8.
^Por typical details, see 1,55,301 and 111,9,964.
C H A P T E R II
AN INTERRUPTED DIALOGUE:
LA BOETIE AND THE GENESIS OP A THEME
"Ma forme essentielle est propre k la
communication et a la production; je
suis tout au dehors et en evidence,
nay a la society et k l*amitiTjBtoT)---------------------------
Prom Villey to Donald Frame, the catalytic role of
Etienne de la Bottle in the Essais has "been noted. Albert
Thibaudet states, for example, that "La mort de la Bodtie
6tait necessaire pour nous donner les Essais comme l*61oi-
gnement de Mme de Grignan pour nous donner les lettres."^*
Montaigne and La Bodtie met in 1557. Montaigne was 25; La
Bodtie, 28. They had known of one another before meeting.
"Nous nous cherchions avant que de nous estre vus • • .;
nous nous embrassions par noz noms" (1,28,187). There
followed an extraordinary friendship terminated at the end
of six years (two years of which they were separated) by
La Boetie*s untimely death at the age of 54 by dysentery,
considered contagious at the time. When La Bo^tie fell
sick, his entourage was convinced that it was a case of the
plague. Even so, Montaigne visited him daily, and, when
his condition became critical as of Saturday, August 14,
Montaigne did not leave his side until the day he died*
Wednesday, August 18, 1563.2 The two friends had been
28
colleagues together in the Bordeaux Parlement, but once La
Bo^tie is dead, Montaigne wastes little time retiring,
waiting only till his father's death some three years la
ter.^
Montaigne, grief-stricken in the wake of his good
friend's death, seeks distraction in love: "Ayant besoing
d'une vehemente diversion pour m’en distraire, je me fis,
par art, amoureux. . • . L*amour me soulagea et retira du
mal qui m'estoit caus3 par l'amitie" (111,4,813). Then,
two years later, at his father's insistence, he lets him
self become married to Franqoise de la Chassaigne, a col
league's daughter. Within three years (1568) Montaigne
becomes a wealthy landholder at his father's death. On his
retirement from the Bordeaux Parlement (1570), he turns at
once to the publication of La Bo^tie's poetry (Latin and
French) as well as his translations. The following year,
at the age of 38 and 1 1 en pleines forces encore," he retires
officially from public life. Withdrawing to his library
now full of La Boetie's books,^ he had the following in
scription placed on the wall:
Priv£ de l'ami le plus doux, le plus cher
et le plus intime, et tel que notre siecle
n'en a vu de meilleur, de plus docte, de
plus agrdable et de plus parfait, Michel
de Montaigne, voulant consacrer le souve
nir de ce mutuel amour par un temoignage
unique de sa reconnaissance, et ne pouvant
le faire de manikre qui 1* exprimdt mieux,
a voue k cette m^moire ce studieux appa-
reil dont il fait ses delices.5
He obviously devotes a good deal of time to reading and
handling these books which had formerly been read and
g
handled by la Boetie. These books which had helped fash
ion La Bodtie^ would now help fashion Montaigne. Just a3
their wisdom was once the inspiration of their friendship
and communication, it will now inspire a new kind of
"friendship” and a new kind of communication. "N'ayant
plus d'ami k qui se prendre, il [Montaigne] se tourne vers
Q
les livres et vers lui-mSme."
When La Boetie died, Montaigne’s most intimate com
munication was cut off. It will be re-established in a
new form once Montaigne retires to his tower. First, there
were the comments he made in the margins of the books he
read— comments, surely, much like those he had once made
vocally to the books’ former owner. Then, he starts to
write the first essays, more of an exercise in discipling
a runaway imagination than anything else. This effort is
soon transcended, however, by the exigences of "une par-
faite et entiere communication" (11,8,376). He had known
the incomparable pleasure of communicating the whole self
with another, and as long as La Boetie was alive, it was
enough to be known to perfection by one other human being.
With La Boetie's death, the source of pleasure being cut
off, Montaigne turned to the Essais as a substitute for
the interrupted dialogue. He will depict himself pains
takingly, hoping to duplicate, if only approximately, La
Boetie'a "portrait" of him:
Je SQay bien que je ne lairrai apres moi
aucun respondant si affectionn^ de bien
loing et entendu en mon faict comme j 'ay
est6 au aien [La Boetie'a] . II n'y a
peraonne k qui je vousisse pleinement
compromettre de ma peinture: luy aeul
jouyasait de ma vraye image et l'emporte.
C'est pourquoy je me deschiffre moy- q
mesme si curieusement" (111,9*961, n. 3).
"L'amitie, pour Montaigne, consiste, comme les Essais. h
prolonger, k doubler sa peraonne."^ With La Boetie there
had been intercommunication; now, the Es3ais would be, at
least at the outset, the fruit of monadic communication.
The first was alive and immediate; the second would be a
tribute to the first. "C'est d’elle [existence subjective]
que derivent lea Essais, substitut de l'ami perdu, offrande
h l'amiti^, soliloque qui recompose et refait le dialogue
11
bris£." Montaigne expresses it this way: "Est-ce pas un
pieux et plaisant office de ma vie, d'en faire k tout ja-
12
maia les obseques?" The Essais can be looked upon, then,
as a life-long obsequy and as a reconstitution of a para
dise lost. Montaigne's withdrawal would seem, at least on
1 “ 5
the surface, as a solipsistic gesture. ^ He is after all
in quest of his essence as typified by his question, "Que
sais-je?" Yet, Anthony Wilden makes the point that "you
cannot seek your essence without the double assumption that
others have known it and that you have lost it"1^ ("luy
[La Boetie] seul jouyssait de ma vraye image et l'emporte").
What appears solipsistic in nature (by dint of the solitary
52
aspect of his quest) is actually carried out in the context
of the ideal friendship that he had lost and seeks to re
capture. Thibaudet explains that friendships have some
thing in common with love affairs, there being a masculine
component and a feminine one: "11 y a un Element viril, la
Boetie, un element plus docile et f^minin, Montaigne."'*''*
Anthony Wilden goes farther in this direction, seeing in la
■j /r
Bodtie the master, in Montaigne the slave, using these
terms, of course, in a psychological context. "With the
death of la Boetie, Montaigne is reduced to a relationship,
not with an ideal person, but with an ideal, period." Wil
den sees Montaigne's quest as the search for the "ame de la
vieille marque" to whom the Essais are ostensibly ad-
17
dressed;. laBodtie, continues Wilden, becomes "la
Boetie," which becomes synoztymous with such things as sta
bility, being, judgment, and plenitude.
At the same time, the real absence of its
referent calls into the discourse all the
things this absence stands for: flux, be
coming, vanity, void. The goal of the
Essays is both metonymieally and meta
phorically expressed in the words by
which Montaigne characterizes la Boetie:
"Un'ame pleine." And in all the passages
where he describes the stability of his
judgment, the stoicism of his attitude to
life, the plenitude of his "regard de
dans," it is "la Boetie" who speaks to
Montaigne, rather than Montaigne to "la
Boetie."
Wilden interprets Montaigne's assumption of the image of
himself in la Boetie as a type of enslavement in the long
run. "For Montaigne, 'La Boytie' effectively became in-
teriorized as the immutable master, ^Montaigne' became the
mutable slave, and the relationship could only be sustained,
the desire for reciprocal recognition worked out, by a
transformation of the labor of the slave: or in other words
] Q
by the symptomatic labor of the Essays." This interpre
tation is strengthened by the fact that the Essais were
never really finished, that Montaigne went on writing and
writing till his death, performing La Boetie's obsequies,
as it were. "It is rather an appealing re-assertion of the
ineluctable value of friendship and of his own value as a
IQ
friend." 3 Or, as Montaigne puts it: "Un sage ne voit
guiere moins son amy mourant, au bout de vint et cinq ans
qu'au premier an" (111,4,814).
Since Montaigne's friendship with La Boetie is crucial
in explaining the raison d'dtre of the Essais. it would be
useful first to examine what friendship meant for Montaigne.
Les hommes de la sociyty et familiarity
desquels je suis en queste, sont ceux
qu'on apelle honnestes et habiles hommes;
1'image de ceux cy me degouste des autres.
C'est, h le bien prendre, de nos formes la
plus rare, et forme qui se doit princi-
pallement k la nature. La fin de ce com
merce, c'est simplement la privauty, fre-
quentation et conference: l'exercice des
ames, sans autre fruit (111,3,802).
So in specifying the qualities he looks for in a friend,
oc\
the most important are that he be a gentleman (honneste)
and that he be intellectually talented (habile). He knows
that this is the rarest type, and the idea that such a man
does exist spoils his taste for the others. (He is writing
this a full twenty years after La Boetie's death.) The pur
pose of the friendship is simply intimacy, fellowship, and
conversation. "L'amiti^ se nourrit de communication"
(1,28,183). Friendship is not possible between a son and
father because "toutes les secrettes pens^es des peres ne
se peuvent communiquer aux enfans" (183). This emphasis
on intimacy and the sharing of secrets implies that commu
nication among friends must be total. There must also be
total selflessness: "En la vraye amitie, de laquelle je
suis expert, je me donne h mon amy plus que je ne le tire
h moy" (111,9*954). In such a friendship, communication
ultimately becomes transparent, dispensing with the usual
channels of words, gestures, etc. Physical proximity is
not even necessary; in fact, absence is no longer absence
when there are means of communication: "Et si l'absence luy
est ou plaisante ou utile, elle m'est bien plus douce que
sa presence; et ce n'est pas proprement absence, quand il
y a moyen de s'entr'advertir" (954).
There is in Montaigne, to a rather conspicuous degree*
the notion that the object of man's desire is never satis
faction or possession: "la jouyssance et la possession ap-
partiennent principalement a 1'imagination. Elle embrasse
plus chaudement ce qu'elle va querir que ce que nous tou-
chons, et plus continuellement" (955 )• This attitude gives
35
added dimension to an earlier quote: "Et si l'absence luy
[mon amy] est ou plaisante ou utile, elle m'est bien ulus
douce que sa presence" (954). He explains this somewhat
paradoxical notion by saying that "vous trouverez que vous
estes . . . plus absent de vostre amy quand il vous est
present: son assistance relasche vostre attention et donne
liberty a vostre pens^e de s'absenter k toute heure pour
toute occasion" (953). One is led to conclude that La
Bo^tie's death, i.e., eternal absence, was ultimately more
21
beneficial to Montaigne in playing out his emotional life,
for it was precisely this absence that kept alive his desire
and it was this desire that crystallized the theory of unity
in friendship and communication which is at the basis of
the Essais.
During the six years that Montaigne and La Boetie en
joyed their extraordinary friendship, they were separated
22
for two of them. They most certainly exchanged letters
but not one of them has come down to us. Montaigne tells
us that he would hhve preferred to write his essays in the
form of letters if he had had someone to talk to. He is
quite clearly thinking of La Boetie: "II me falloit, comme
je l'ay eu autrefois, un certain commerce qui m'attirast,
qui me soustinst et souslevast" (1,40,246). Yet, we must
agree with Thibaudet in asking, "Mais precis^ment Montaigne
vivant avec son ami etlt-il song<5 k ecrire des lettres, ou
simplement k Ecrire? G'est douteux, s'il avait eu a qui
56
parler."2^ It is not only doubtful— it is just about cer
tain. Montaigne is emphatic about his distaste for writ-
24.
ing, about his preference for movement, for sociableness.
Perhaps a different wife than the one he had would have
been able to replace the emptiness left by la Boetie.2^
In his chapter "De l’amiti^," friendship is presented as
the epitome of human relationships: "II n'est rien k quoy
il semble que nature nous aye plus achemind qu'h la socie
ty. . . . Or le dernier point de sa perfection est cettuy-
cy tl'amiti^]" (X,28,182). Montaigne is compelled to ex
teriorize, to share his thoughts with another, to have the
pleasure of an interlocutor. He gives the opinions of
three different Ancients as to what their reaction would
be if they were denied the pleasure of someone to talk to:
first, Seneca, who would go so far as to reject wisdom al
together if he had to keep it unuttered; secondly, Cicero,
who would reject life itself— even the most abundant life
possible— should he be denied human relationships; finally,
Arehytas, who would find heaven itself unbearable without
the presence of a companion. But when all is said and done,
Montaigne concludes on a characteristic note: "Mais il vaut
mieux encore estre seul qu*en compaigne ennuyeuse et inepte*
(111,9,965). Opting for solitude, rather than for boring
and foolish company, is no great sacrifice for Montaigne,
however. He has the memory of a perfect friendship (and
the friend*s books) to fill the empty hours, and, in the
37
last analysis) the Essais become a companion, a hook which
is a double of Montaigne himself. And we recall what he
says about association with books: "II me console en la
vieillesse et en la solitude. ... II emousse les poin-
tures de la douleur. . . . C'est la meilleure munition que
j'aye trouv6 k cet humain voyage" (111,3)805-06). Here,
he is naturally speaking about books in general, but what
he says would hold true— even more so— for the book, to
which he never tired of returning, reading and rereading,
adding and deleting, the book that so much formed the crux
of his life that it "made him more than he made it," the
book that took up and ultimately replaced, howsoever im
perfectly, the interrupted dialogue.
^Montaigne. p. 143.
p
Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 32.
* 2
•Tiad La Boetie lived and had he stayed on at the Parle
ment, it is tempting to conclude that he would not have re
tired from public life: "Enfin, le Parlement, ou il si^geait,
lui devient odieux, et il ne tarde pas. pour chasser les
derniers souvenirs d'un pass6 qui l'attriste, k r^signer sa
charge de conseiller," Paul Bonnefon, Montaigne et ses amis
(Paris: Colin, 1898), I, 221.
^"C'est tout ce que j'ay peu recouvrer de ses reliques
[Montaigne is referring to La Boetie's Le Contre Un and Md-
moire sur l»6dit de .janvier 15621 , moy qu'il laissa, d'une
si amoureuse recommandation, la mort entre les dents, par
son testament, h^ritier de sa bibliothfeque et de ses pa-
piers" (1,28,182). In La Boetie's will, we find the fol
lowing reference to this legacy: "Ledict testateur prie
monsieur maistre Ayquem de Montaigne, conseillier de roi en
la court de Parlement de Bourdaulx, son intime fr&re et in
violable amy, de reculhir pour un gaige d*amiti<3 ses livres
et ses papiers qui sont k Bordeaulx, desquels lui faict pre
sent," Bonnefon, I, 112.
38
^Montaigne, Oeuvres completes, pp. xvi-xvii.
IMontaigne] avait sous les yeux le dernier present
de son collogue au Parlement de Bordeaux. Ces volumes lui
redisaient la tendresse de l'ami absent, et sans doute il
les contemplait en composant ce chapitre de "l'Amitid."
Ils faisaient revivre, en quelque sorte celui qui les avait
manies auparavant," Bonnefon, I, 223-24.
^"Un'ame tla Boetie'si S . la vieille marque et qui eut
produit de grands effects, si sa fortune 1'eust voulu,
ayant beaucoun ad . i oust d & ce riche naturel par science et
esliude" (I'l.17.64377 ------------
®Thibaudet, Montaigne, p. 145.
9"I1 y a lh une sorte d'embaumement qui conserve la
figure de la vie. C*est ainsi que lui a conserve en lui,
vivant, La Bodtie," ibid., p. 54.
10Ibid., p. 148.
11Ibid., p. 152.
12
Pierre Villey, Les Essais de Michel de Montaigne
(Paris: Presses universitaires de Prance, 1965), p. 336.
*^"L’inter9t de Montaigne pour lui-mdme ne degdn&re
en solipsisme. II reste ouvert au commerce des hommes,"
Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne (Paris: Gallimard, 1968), p. 253.
^Anthopy Wilden, "Par divers moyens . . . ," p. 585.
■^Thibaudet, Montaigne, pp. 144-45.
■^Op. cit., p. 590.
1 7
'See my discussion on "want-ad" in Conclusion,
pp. 150-54.
^Op. cit., p. 588, p. 590.
19Ibid., p. 592.
20
The same quality is mentioned by Montaigne when he
describes his ideal traveling companion: "C*est une rare
fortune, mais de soulagement inestimable, d’avoir tin
honneste homme, d*entendement ferme et de meurs conformes
aux vostres, qui ayme h vous suyvre. J*en ay eu faute ex
treme en tous mes voyages. Mais une telle eompaignie, il
la faut avoir choisie et acquise d&s le logis" (111,9*965).
39
p“ L
"La m^moire de celui qu*il a perdu devient le con-
tenu de sa vie," Friedrich, Montaigne, p. 254.
op
In referring to this separation, Montaigne writes,
"J'ay tird autrefois usage de nostre esloigneraent, et commo
dity. Nous remplissions mieux et estandions la possession
de la vie en nous separant; il vivoit, il jouissoit, il
voyoit pour moy, et moy pour luy, autant plainement que s*il
eust esty" (111,9,954-55).
2^Thibaudet, Montaigne. p. 145.
CHAPTER III
MONTAIGNE, ENCODER AND DECODER,
IN PROPRIA PERSONA
"La parole est moitid k celuy qui parle,
moiti<5 & celuy qui l*escoute" fill,13,
1066).
Montaigne’s supreme achievement comes in realizing the
importance of tone and movement of the voice in expressing
and signifying meaning and of transposing these vocal qual
ities into a literary style. Erich Auerbach says, for ex
ample, that as he read Montaigne, he thought he could hear
him speak and see his gestures.^- To create so vivid a pres
ence would imply that Montaigne had to possess an unusual
array of communicative techniques. The present chapter
will explore this implication, as we examine Montaigne in
action, so to speak. In the Essais there is a significant
number of passages which furnish us with a glimpse of how
Montaigne viewed his own linguistic and communicative re
sources, of how he related, and with what ease, to other
people. Prom his discursive comments, one can deduce cer
tain conclusions about his way of communicating at home
with family and friends and abroad with foreigners. He is
also very interested in the problems of communication as
they affect him when he is sick. Finally, his reading of
the Ancients has all the earmarks of monadic communication,
40
41
which, when transposed to another level, i.e., writing
(writing of the Essais for Montaigne), can he interpreted
as communication across time and space. I will turn first
to his way of speaking.
"J'entre en conference et en dispute avec grande liber
ty et facility* (111,8,901). Shere is no douht that he en
joyed a good conversation and did so with considerable ease.
He was greatly helped by his attitude of suspended judgment
which permitted him to listen to varying opinions with im
partiality: "Nous autres, qui privons nostre jugement du
droict de faire des arrests, regardons mollement les opi
nions diverses, et, si nous n'y prestons le jugement, nous
y prestons ais^ement l'oreille" (901). He talks about
everything by way of conversation and about nothing by way
of advice: "C'est par maniere de devis que je parle de tout,
et de rien par maniere d'advis" (111,11,1010-11). It is
just for the love of conversation that he enters in a dis
cussion. What he says is not to be taken as words of ad
vice, and if he can speak so boldly, he justifies it by
asserting that he has no right to be believed: "Je ne se-
rois pas si hardy k parler s'il m'appartenoit d*en estre
creu" (1011). When accosted once by a great personage who
complained of Montaigne's vehement exhortations, he ex
plained that it was simply a conversational ploy: "Vous
sentant band<5 et pr6par6 d'une part, je vous propose 1'autre
de tout le soing que je puis, pour esclarcir vostre juge-
ment, non pour 1*obligor" (1011).
2
Montaigne is constantly berating his memory. He
boasts that if he were to live a long time, he would prob
ably even forget his very name (11,17,634). He claims that
his faulty memory had affected his way of talking: "Mon
parler en est plus court" (1,9,35). An enemy of babble, he
feels that he has spared his friends in this respect
through his lack of memory. Too good a memory, he ration
alizes, impedes the talker with too many details. The
story he is telling becomes burdened with pointless cir
cumstances, and even if the story was a good one, he ends
up ruining it:
... si elle [la m£moire] m'eust tenu bon,
j'eusse assourdi tous mes amys de babil,
les subjects esveillans cette telle quelle
faculty que j'ay de les manier et employer,
eschauffant et attirant mes discours. C'est
piti6. Je l'essaye par la preuve d'aucuns
de mes privez amys: k mesure que la me-
moire leur fournit la chose entiere et pre
sente, ils reculent si arriere leur narra
tion, et la chargent de vaines circonstan-
ces, que si le conte est bon, ils en es-
touffent la bont6, (I,9t35-36).
In addition to wanting his interlocutor to take his
faulty memory into account, he demands that some allowance
be made for the human foibles related to the tumultous and
vacillating mind. Because of these foibles, all he can
guarantee his listener in the way of certainty in what he
says is that it is what he had in his mind at the time:
"En ce que je dy, je ne pleuvis autre certitude, sinon que
43
c'est ce que lors j'en avoy en ma pens^e, pens^e tumul-
tuaire et vacillante" (111,11,1010). He admits that, in
speaking, no matter how little he is emboldened to digress
from the topic at hand, he never fails to lose it; this
trait, like that'of his poor memory, has affected his way
of talking; "Si je m'enhardis, en parlant, k me destoumer
tant soit peu de mon fil, je ne faux jamais de la perdre:
qui faict que je me tiens, en mes discours, contraint, sec
et resserr^" (11,17,634).
In any lively discussion there is always the possi
bility of rising tempers. Montaigne carefully prepares for
this eventuality by striking a bargain with those who may
argue with him;
Quand vous me sentirez esmeu le premier,
laissez moy aller h tort ou a. raison; j'en
feray de mesme a mon tour. La tempeste ne
s'engendre que de la concurrence des cho-
leres qui si produisent volontiers l'une
de 1'autre, et ne naissent en un point.
Donnons k chacune sa course, nous voyl&
tousjours en paix, (II,31»698).
He openly confesses that his lively and noisy way of speak
ing is easily carried away into hyperbole: "La parole vive
et bruyante, comme est la mienne ordinaire, s'emporte vo
lontiers k l'hyperbole" (111,11,1005). This easily happens
to him when he becomes excited either by his listener's
resistance or by the intrinsic heat of the narration. We
note in the following passage the keen perception that Mon
taigne displays of his own communicative resources, and we
44
note likewise his intellectual honesty in sacrificing those
resources in the interest of pure truth if, and when, he is
cornered with his hyperbole:
Moy-mesme, qui faicts singuliere conscience
de mentir et qui ne me soucie guiere de don
ner creance et authorite h ce que je dis,
m'apperqoy toutesfois, aux propos que j’ay
en main, qu*estant eschauffe ou par la re
sistance d*un autre, ou par la propre cha-
leur de la narration, je grossis et enfle
mon subject par vois, mouvemens, vigueur et
force de parolles, et encore par extention
et amplification, non sans interest de la
verite nayfve. Mais je le fais en condition
pourtant, qu'au premier qui me rameine et
qui me demande la verite nue et crufe', je
quitte soudain mon effort et la luy donne,
sans exaggeration, sans emphase et remplis-
sage, (1005).
Many a word of truth is spoken in jest and Montaigne
does not fail to emphasize the salutary effect of this
playfully jabbing type of communication: "En cette gail-
lardise nous pinqons par fois des cordes secrettes de nos
imperfections, lesquelles, rassis, nous ne pouvons toucher
sans offence; et nous entreadvertissons utillement de nos
deffauts" (111,8,917-18). Montaigne especially likes con
versation with a strong jouster (*un roide jousteur"), one
who prods him and presses him. His ideas are launched by
his opponent: "La jalousie, la gloire, la contention me
poussent et rehaussent au dessus de moy-mesmes" (111,8,900).
Montaigne sees clearly that he is part of the intellectual
elite, even the cream of that elite, and in the following
remark there is a surprising element of the snob, quite un
45
usual for Montaigne: "Comme nostre esprit se fortifie par
la communication des esprits vigoureux et reiglez, il ne se
peut dire combien il perd et s’abastardit par le continuel
commerce et frequentation que nous avons avec les esprits
bas et maladifs" (111,8,900). Because of this elitism, it
is easy to understand why Montaigne will never really find
a suitable replacement for la Bodtie.
Communication must be candid, quarrelsome, and vigor
ous, not artful, not too civilized. He accepts criticism
provided that one does not criticize him too imperiously
and magisterially, mainly because he really only gives to
criticism as much authority as he wishes:
Pourveu qu’on n'y procede d’une troigne
trop imperieuse et magistrale, je preste
l'espaule aux reprehensions que l*on faict
en mes escrits. . . . Toutefois il est
certes malaisd d'y [h se corrigerl attirer
les hommes de mon temps; ils n'ont pas le
courage de corriger, par ce qu'ils n*ont pas
le.courage de souffrir h l'estre, et parlent
tousjours avec dissimulation en presence les
uns des autres. . . . Mon imagination se
contredit elle mesme si souvent et condamne,
que ce m*est tout un qu'un autre le face:
veu principalement que je ne donne a sa re
prehension que 1*authorit4 que je veux,
(111,8,902).
What he cannot abide, then, are those people who hesitate
to criticise merely for fear of being criticized in turn,
and especially those who are affronted when their criti
cism is not taken seriously. Communication, if it feao?s
criticism and moves with constraint, is inferior and not
suitable to Montaigne. In fact, he goes to meet a man who
46
contradicts him, as La Bodtie’s stoicism must have contra
dicted his epicurism. Form is very important in all this,
as it was for the "honnSte homme" of the Renaissance.^
During his days in the Bordeaux Parlement, he had studied
the expressions of judges, and he must have some of them in
mind when he says that he cannot abide people who must
criticize or give advice and then act personally insulted
if their words are not heeded: nJe romps paille avec celuy
qui se tient si haut k la main, comme j*en cognoy quelqu*un
qui plaint son advertissement, s'il n'en est creu, et prend
k injure si on estrive k la suivre" (111,8,902-03).
Blows that are straightforward, Montaigne accepts head
on, even though they be weak. But for blows that are out
or order (poor form), he loses patience: "En fin, je reqois
et advoue toutes sortes d’atteinctes qui sont de droict fil
pour foibles qu'elles soient, mais je suis par trop impa
tient de eelles qui se donnent sans forme** (903). And
after that, if there can be any doubt of the importance of
form over matter, the next statement is unconditional: "II
me chaut peu de la matiere,"or still, "Ce n’est pas tant
la force et la subtility que je demande, comme 1 * ordre"
(111,8,903). He has even endured financial loss rather
than put up with ineptness in questions of form: "J'ay
rompu plusieurs marchez qui m'estoyent utiles, par 1*imper
tinence de la contestation de ceux avec qui je marchandais"
(906) .
47
In the chapter, "De l'art de conferer," he says he
seeks the company of people who treat him roughly: "Je
cerche a la verity la frequentation de ceux qui me gourment
que de ceux qui me craignent" (903). If a discussion is
under way, Montaigne wants it to he lively. He wants his
adversary to speak out; he wants to he told when he is
wrong. To win over an adversary because of the weakness of
his argument is nothing compared to winning a victory over
oneself when, in the heat of hattle, one makes oneself how
heneath the force of the adversary's reason. There is em
phasis here on what we commonly call good sportsmanship,
the concept that what counts is not whether you win hut how
you play: "Ce n'est pas a qui mettra dedans, mais a qui
faira les plus helles courses" (906). Expressed abstract
ly, it is the superiority of form over matter and this is
one of the main leit-motivs of the Essais. In the very
last analysis, Montaigne is not truly concerned with what
he has to say hut with how he says it; thus, his constant
concern for style, his undying interest in communicative
techniques and resources. He tells us that he who speaks
true can speak as foolishly as he who speaks false, "car
nous sommes sur la maniere, non sur la matiere du dire.
Mon humeur est de regarder autant a la forme qu'h la sub
stance, autant h l'advocat qu'h la cause" (906). In his
headings, the same approach guides his choice. He picks
up a hook not for its message or learning; rather, he wants
48
to study the style ("fagon"). Likewise, in his choice of
friends: "Tout ainsi que je poursuy la communication de
quelques esprits fameux, non pour qu*il m'enseigne, mais
pour que je le cognoisse" (906). He acknowledges that from
friendship with a great mind he will of course learn some
thing, but the emphasis is still on form, not substance.
He wants above all "to know" him, to observe his "style,"
to study his "form." Robert J. Brake writes: "What is
especially striking about Montaigne's views on Renaissance
oratory was his concern for the manner more than the matter
of speaking, the form more than the substance, and, indeed,
the advocate more than the cause.
Montaigne extolls the military life: "II n'est occupa
tion plaisante comme la militaire" (111,13,1075). He sees
in military service a way of making a laudable contribution
to the public welfare: "II n'est point d'utility ny plus
juste, ny plus universelle que la protection du repos et
grandeur de son pays" (1075). In extolling the military
life, he does not fail to mention one aspect that particu
larly pleases him: the soldier's straightforward way of act
ing and speaking: "la Compaignie de tant d'hommes vous
plaist, nobles, jeunes, actifs, . . . la liberty de cette
conversation sans art. et d'une faqon de vie masle et safes
ceremonie" (1075). What counts in the soldier's way of
talking is the lack of ceremony, the freedom of an artless
relationship. In reality, this mode of communication is
49
ill-suited to ordinary affairs in the course of living.
Montaigne had, in fact, tried to practice it in public
dealings "but found it inept, even dangerous. His conclu
sion is that he who walks in the crowd has to draw his el
bows in, sometimes stepping back, sometimes advancing:
Celuy qui va en la presse, il faut qu'il
gauchisse, qu'il serre ses coudes, qu'il
recule ou qu'il avance, voire qu'il quitte
le droict chemin, selon ce qu'il recontre;
qu'il vive non tant selon ce qu'on luy pro
pose , selon le temps, selon les hommes,
selon les affaires, (ill,9,970).
It becomes, in short, a question of accommodating substance
to form. Communication, to succeed in the world as it is,
must take form into account. Soldiers can blurt out the
simple truth— blurt it out boisterously even— because it
conforms to their manly behavior and their occupation. But
in other forms of activity, words and sentences must be
carefully weighed before they are pronounced, this word
eliminated if it might sound harsh ("qu'il serre ses
couddes"), this phrase dropped, that one uttered ("qu'il
recule ou qu'il avance"). Once you leave the private do
main and enter the public one, you have to live not so
much according to yourself as according to others. You
have to live according to the time, according to the men,
according to the business at hand. For this, there is no
precise system that one can offer. That is what Gide meant
by saying that "il y a chez Montaigne mo ins une doctrine
qu'une m^thode." A doctrine implies a body of principles—
50
something which is fixed and consistent. A method merely
implies procedure, which, in turn, implies form. "Moy,
je m'offre par mes opinions les plus vives et par la forme
plus mienne” (111,1,769). Montaigne says that his plan in
speaking is Bde representer . . . une profonde nonchalance
et des mouvemens fortuites et impremeditez, comme naissans
des occasions presentes” (III,9»940). So, it is careless
ness that he aims for— a studied and calculated careless
ness.** This, of course, is in the realm of pure form. He
knows exactly what he is going to say; he even knows how
to make it sound eloquent. But when he finally utters it,
it will sound extemporaneous, and whatever eloquence it
will have will seem purely accidental, "aymant aussi cher
ne rien dire qui vaille que de montrer estre venu prepare
pour bien dire” (940). let us not forget that he maintains
he writes as he speaks. The seeming casualness of the
Essais confirms this. After all, our thoughts come to us
most often in random fashion with underlying associative
links. Since Montaigne's primary aim, as he declares it,
is to communicate his being as it truly is— "ondoyant,
vains et divers”— his style must correspond to the reality
of his being. It must be a style that is careless, or
seemingly so, like the order of his thoughts is careless.
Floyd Gray points out that for Montaigne ”le style est un
refus d'arranger la pensee dans un ordre logique.”^ In
actuality, there is often no obvious order to thought, and
51
if one is to communicate one's true nature, it cannot be
done either orderly or logically. This is certainly one
of Montaigne's supreme achievements and contributions to
the movement of literature, clearly making him the fore
runner of the stream of consciousness techniques of this
century.
There is another advantage to be gained from careless
ness. When your statements sound prepared, you have ob
viously given them forethought and weighed their conse
quences. You do this in the event that if there is some
thing Binding in what you say, you want to anticipate it
and satisfy yourself in advance that you are willing to be
bound by it. Montaigne, however, wants to be bound by
nothing, freedom being one of his crucial priorities.
Therefore, if he speaks in a careless and spontaneous man
ner, he makes his statements unbinding, and thereby has a
convenient excuse if someone tries to hold him to his word:
II faudra doresnavant (car, Dieu mercy, jus-
ques h cette heure il n'en est pas advenu de
faute), que, au lieu que les autres cerchent
temps et occasion de penser a ce qu'ils ont
k dire, je fuye a me preparer, de peur de
m'attacher h quelque obligation de laquelle
j'aye h despendre. L'estre tenu et obligd
me fourvoie et le desprendre d'un si foible
instrument qu'est ma memoire, (111,9»939-40).
The two things which put him off track are: being held and
bound to what he has to say (through having memorized it),
and having to depend on so feeble an instrument as his
memory. Montaigne's frequent repudiation of his memory is
also a repudiation of pedantry and of rhetoric. He clearly
hated the task imposed on the memory hy standard pedagogi
cal practices of the time: "... nostre charge ce n'est
que redire ce qu'on nous a diet" (1,26,149). The student
had to learn a text by heart, word by word, and then recite
it. The memory is called upon to reproduce the text in
order. Montaigne, who is against constraint in general,
naturally prefers an unpremeditated order, free from re-
liance on the memory.f
Returning to what I said about there being no obvious
order to thought, there is nevertheless order in all think
ing, especially in disciplined thinking, which is a sophis
ticated process requiring that we adhere to a given frame
9f reference and deliberately reject extraneous thought
associations. If I am discussing "les cannibales" and
somebody quotes, "Mais quoy, ils ne portent point de haut
de chausses!" I am not permitted to shift my attention to
the latest fashions in mens' trousers. The word "chausses"
could conceivably set off one's thinking in that direction,
but the rules of disciplined thinking require inhibition
of such facile associations (whereas Montaigne often does
not). However, when the mind is free of these strict rules
or when it is tired, concentration diminishes and motiva
tions of a lower order take over. The extreme of this,
of course, is in dream activity where motivations are en
tirely primitive and where associations run rampant. It
53
is somewhere "between these two extremes that Montaigne's
communicative processes unfold most characteristically.
In his chapter called "De la diversion," he gives an example
of making practical use of the technique of association.
He was employed to console an afflicted lady. He knew
that the sayings of philosophy would be of little use, and
less so, his own sayings. His point of departure was na
turally her affliction, but by gently deflecting the sub
ject, through careful use of association, by diverting it
bit by bit to subjects nearby, then subjects more remote,
he gradually stole away from her her painful thought. He
calls this technique diversion:
Declinant tout mollement noz propos et les
gauchissant peu h peu aus subjects plus voi-
sins, et puis un peu plus esloingnez, selon
qu'elle se prestoit plus k moy, je luy des-
robay imperceptiblement cette pensee doule-
reuse, et la tins en bonne contenance et du
tout r'apaisee que j'y fus. J'usay de di
version, (111,4,809).
That's how it works with a second person, the tech
nique of association. But how does it work with oneself?
How does Montaigne describe the processes in his own mind?
He says, for example, that he cannot keep his subject
still: "Je ne puis asseurer mon object. II va trouble et
ehancelant, d'une yvresse naturelle" (782). Montaigne is
describing that in-between point mentioned above. That is
the true nature of the human mind. "Ceci m'advient aussi:
que je ne me trouve pas oh je me cherche; et me trouve plus
54
par rencontre [i.e., hasard] que par 1*inquisition de mon
jugement" (1,10,41-42). When he loses his train of thought,
it is usually through chance encounter that he finds himself
again, and not hy searching his judgment. "J'aurai eslanc^
quelque subtility en escrivant. . . . Plus tard je l'ay si
bien perdue que je ne sqay ce que j’ay voulu dire” (42).
He tosses off some subtle remark, associations lead him
this way or that, and, soon, he has gone so far that he no
longer knows what he meant by that earlier "subtility."
Then, in typical Gascon exaggeration, he states that if he
erased every passage where this happens to him, there would
be nothing left of himself! "Si je portoy le rasoir par
tout ou cela m'advient, je me desferoy tout" (42). In
short, he recognizes the associative process as the moving
force in the Essais as it is in his mental life. In fact,
it is by applying to his Essais this natural mental process
that he succeeds in communicating to the reader his very
essence. Passing from idea to idea, seemingly coq-h-l’Sne.
Montaigne concentrates on the passing ("passage"), and that
is what he means when he says, "Je ne peins pas l'estre,
je peins le passage." This is also what he means when he
says, "Tout movement nous descouvre" (1,50,290). His
guiding rule, in his own words, is: "Je prends de la for
tune le premier argument" (289); "Je ne suis jamais venu
k bout que quelque piece des miennes n'extravague tous-
jours" (111,13,1085).
55
Trying to get an idea of Montaigne in action within
his household is speculative at hest. He nor anyone else
leaves any full accounts of conversations which took place.
Yet, there are certain indications here and there which per-
Q
mit a few interesting conclusions.
Je m’ouvre aux miens tant que je puis; et
leur signifie tr&s-volontiers l'estat de
ma volontd et de mon jugement envers eux,
comme envers un chacun. Je me haste de
me produire et de me presenter: car je ne
veux pas qu’on s’y mesconte. k quelque
part que ce soit, (11,8,376).
It is in the chapter "De l’affection des peres aux enfans"
that Montaigne makes this touching statement on how he
"opens" himself to his family. In his private life as in
the Essais, whether for better or for worse, he does not
want people to he mistaken about him. What he ideally
wants is the freedom to say, right or wrong, whatever
comes into his head, without being bound to it— just for
the love of conversation. Unfortunately, this kind of
communication, which he supposedly had with La Bo^tie, was
at a premium in his life. Ordinarily, he tells us, he had
to play the fool for company’s sake, discussing frivolous
subjects and stories (111,11,1004). It is important to
note that tiresome though such conversations were he did
at least lend them an ear for the sake of good form, ad
mitting however that the temptation was strong to make the
following rejoinder to such prattling: "II n'en est rien"
(1004).
56
Since Montaigne's house was always free and accessible
to anyone (111,9,943), he had to take the good along with
Q
the had as far as his interlocutors were concerned.^ Meal
time was evidently an important time for conversation. Mon
taigne held great store by relaxation and affability: "Le
relachement et facilite honore, ce semble, a merveilles et
sied mieux a une ame forte et genereuse" (111,13,1089)#
Not surprisingly then, he agrees with Epicurus that "il ne
faut pas tant regarder ce qufon mange qu'avec qui on mange"
(1083). He dislikes long sessions at the table and usually
sits down after the others. When the meal is over, how
ever, he enjoys lingering on, listening to the stories that
are told provided that he does not take part. He alleges
discomfort in talking on a full stomach but finds shouting
and arguing before a meal very healthy and pleasant:
". . . je me lasse et me blesse de parler l'estomac plain,
autant comme je trouve l'exercice de crier et contester
avant le repas tres salubre et plaisant" (1000). As a mat
ter of fact, Montaigne derives sure pleasure from that
brand of communication in which friends banter and exchange
brisk retorts. He enjoys high-spirited repartee and knows
how to endure retaliation: "Je la laisse passer et, bais-
sant joyeusement les oreilles, remets d'en avoir ma raison
a quelque heure meilleure" (111,8,917)# He adds that there
is no merchant who always gains. Voice and facial changes
are extremely important. Perfect composure is essential;
57
otherwise, one is likely to reveal merely weaknesses.
Turning now from Montaigne's way of speaking and his
way of relating at home and among friends, I would like to
examine his linguistic abilities in speaking foreign lan
guages and to observe him in action as he travels abroad.
His French, he claimed, was corrupted: "Mon langage fran-
pois est alters, et en la prononciation et ailleurs, par
la barbarie de mon ereu" (II,17f622). In the first edition,
Montaigne worded this same statement differently: "Je ne
spay parler que la langue Franpoise, encore est elle alt6-
r^e.""*- ® On the surface, this would seem to disclaim oral
facility in Italian and Gascon as well as contradict his
statement about Latin being his mother tongue.^ He does
say that his oral Latin had become rusty through neglect:
"J'ay perdu par des-accoustumance la promptitude de m'en
pourvoir servir h parler" (II,27»622). If he says he knew
how to speak only French, it is in the context of total
fluency. The later version, where the emphasis shifts from
exclusively oral aspects to oral and written ("en la pro
nonciation et ailleurs"). must have been the upshot of a
TP
conversation he had with Pasquier, who, taking issue with
Montaigne's statement of 1580 (i.e., that he knew only
French), showed him several words and idioms in the Essais
that were clearly not at all French, but Gascon.^ He dis
avows knowledge of Gascon, or rather, of "Perigordin," as
he calls the dialect of his region: "Si n'est-ce pas pour
58
estre fort entendu en mon Perigordin, car je n'en ay non plus
d'usage que de l'Alemandn (11,27*622). It is hard to be
lieve that as gentleman-farmer, as local legal counselor,
and as mayor of Bordeaux, he was not fluent in the dialect
of his constituency.^- It also contradicts what he says,
or rather intimates, in Book I about his knowledge of Peri-
gordian: "J'avois plus de six ans avant que j'entendisse
non plus de Frangois ou de Perigordin que d'Arabesque"
(1,26,173)• Again, it is a question of fluency as opposed
to mere comprehension. In the following passage, the
phrase, "plus qu'autre que j'entende," puts the emphasis
on understanding ("entendre"), not on speaking. We note
how his characterizations of the various Gascon dialects
deal particularly with sonority and expressiveness:
Mon Perigordin . . . est un langage, comme
sont autour de moy, d'une bande et d'autre,
le Poitevin, Xaintongeois, Angoumoisin, Ly-
mosin, Auvergnat: brode, trainant, esfoir<5.
II y a bien au-dessus de nous, vers les
montaignes, un Gascon que je treuve singu-
lierement beau [le bearnaisl , sec, bref,
signifiant, et k la verite un langage masle
et militaire plus qu'autre que j'entende;
autant nerveux, puissant et pertinant,
comme le Frangois est gratieus, delicat et
abondant, (11,17,622).
If I may be permitted a parenthesis in the way of commen
tary on this passage, the words Montaigne uses prompt me
to offer an analysis not altogether off the subject. Note
the adjectives used to describe a "beau" speech (communica
tion): sec, bref. mSle. militaire. nerveux, -puissant. I am
59
encouraged to relate them to Montaigne's stoic (masculine)
ideal, via la Boetie, transposed into linguistic preference.
This could lead one to speak of a sexist or sexual bias in
Montaigne.He seems deliberately to oppose the male lan
guage to the female language, schematized antithetically in
the following way:
un langage masle
[tux langage
femelle]
un Gascon
[le bdamais]
le Franqois
beauj sec, bref,
signifiant
nerveux
puissant
pertinant
gratieus
delicat
abondant
The adjectives, "gratieus," "delicat,” "abondant," put em
phasis on form and could be interpreted to imply deception.
On the other hand, the male adjectives, "bref," "signifiant,"
"puissant,” ”pertinant,” shift emphasis to substance and
imply straightforwardness. The male language is therefore
one with the center of being of the male. He and his lan
guage are in essence one and the same. Appearance and
reality come together— Montaigne's major goal.
Due to his perception of the subtleties of the various
Gascon dialects, it is safe to assume that he was quite
proficient in them (especially his own Perigordian) at
least from an aural point of view. In addition, he has
some knowledge of Spanish and Italian. At the beginning of
the "Apologie de Raimond Sebond" he explains the circum
stances which led to his translation of Sehond's work:
"Et par ce que la langue Italienne et Espaignolle estoient
familieres a mon pere, et que ce livre est hasty d'un Es-
paignol harragoin^ en terminaisons Latines, il [Pierre
Bunell esperoit qu'avec un hien peu d'aide il [mon pere]
en pourroit faire son profit" (11,12,415-16). If Mon
taigne's father was familiar with Spanish, Montaigne him
self apparently had quite limited knowledge, at least in
the eyes of Maurice Rat, who, in his edition of the Essais
(the one heing used in this present study) appended the
following footnote to the passage ahove: "Si le latin de
Sehon est tres plat, on n'y trouve nulle trace d'espagno-
lisme" (p. 1545, n. 1).
As for his Italian, it appears that he was semi-fluent.
During his stay in Italy he kept his Journal de Voyage in
Italian; and he was ahle to hold his own in a conversation
as long as it was just ordinary talk and not serious dis
course: "En Italie je disois ce qu'il me plaisoit en devis
communs; mais, aus propos roides, je n'eusse os£ me fier
h un Idiome que je ne pouvois plier, ny contourner outre
son alleure commune" (111,5,851). One wonders if the Ital
ian he used was of the kind he advised a man to use who was
at pains to speak it in Italy:
61
Je conseillois, en Italie, a quelqu'un qui
estoit en peine de parler Italien, que,
pourveu qu'il ne cerchast qu'a se faire
entendre, sans y vouloir autrement exceller,
qu'il employast seulement les premiers mots
qui luy viendroyent a la bouche, Latins,
Franqois, Espaignols ou Gascons, et qu'en y
adjoustant la terminaison Italienne, il ne
faudroit jamais a rencontrer quelque idiome
du pays, (11,12,528).
The one thing we can be sure of is that the languages that
he mentions here are the same ones with which he himself
had most familiarity.
Through his own learning of Latin in early childhood,
he expresses a linguistic principle which has become a
commonplace in more recent times: "Je voudrois qu'on com-
menqast k . . . promener l'&Lhve d&s sa tendre enfance, et
. . . pour faire d’une pierre deux coups, par les nations
voisines oh le langage est plus esloign^ du nostre, et au-
quel, si vous ne la formez de bon'heure. la langue ne se
•peut nlier" (1,26,152). The story of how young Michel's
tongue was bent to Latin is too well known to repeat here.
As his tutor, his father had brought in from Germany a
Latinist who spoke no French. "Le langage latin m'est
comme naturel, je l'entens mieux que le Franqois. . . .
J'ay tousjours eslance du fond des entrailles les pre
mieres paroles Latines" (111,2,788). All his life he was
beguiled by the dignity of the Latin language: "Le latin
me pippe k sa faveur par sa dignite, au dela de ce qui
luy appartient, comme aux enfans et au vulgaire" (11,17,
617). As common as Latin still was in the Renaissance and
62
as familiar as Montaigne was with it, it is interesting to
ponder the question of why he did not choose it as the
1 f i
medium for the Essais. After all, as a young student,
his noted professors hesitated to accost him in latin: "Mes
precepteurs domestiques [Groucchi, Guerente, Buchanan,
Muret] m'ont diet souvent que 3'avois ce langage en mon en-
fance si prest et si & . main, qu'ils craingnoient; a m'accos-
ter" (1,26,173). This statement from Book I was written
in 1579-80, some thirty-five years after the fact. Still,
in Book III, we find his statement (written in 1585-88):
"le langage latin m'est comme naturel, je l'entens mieux
que le Franqois; mais il y a quarante ans que je m'en suis
du tout poinct servy k parler, ny k escrire; si est-ce que
k des extremes et soudaines esmotions ou je suis tomb6,
. . . pasm6, j'ay tousjours eslanc<3 du fond des entrailles
les premieres paroles Latines (111,2,788). Through lack
of practice, then, he lost his ability to use it. He ad
mits this loss as early as 1578-80— in this ca3e, the abil
ity to speak it quickly: "J'ay perdu par des-accous.tumance
la promptitude de m'en Idu latin] pouvoir servir k parler"
(11,17,622). In the final stratum (i.e., material pub
lished after 1588), he also includes writing, as already
pointed out above: "Ouy, et k escrire, en quoy autrefois je
me faisoy appeller maistre Jean" (622). This statement in
his waning years, however, does not imply categorically
that he avoided using Latin as the medium for the Essais
"because he was incapable of doing so. After all, he was
not yet forty when he started writing them. Furthermore,
he had just previously spent many months on the transla
tion of Raimond Sebond's Latin work and, secondly, on the
translation of La Bodtie's Latin works. Then, too, he was
steeped in his readings of the Latin classics in the origi
nal and of the Greek classics translated into Latin. If he
wrote part of the Journal de Voyage in Italian, he certain
ly could have written the Essais in Latin had he wanted to
do so. He did not, however, and three possible reasons
that one could suggest in conclusion are: (1) he was anti
pedant and antischolastic; (2) he was ostensibly writing
for friends and family, whose knowledge of Latin was cer
tainly limited;^ (3) he was a child of the Pleiade re-
18
forms. While liking Latin and Greek, Montaigne thought
we buy them too dear: "C'est un bel et grand agencement
sans doubte que le Grec et Latin, mais on l'achepte trop
cher" (1,26,172).
Montaigne's recommendation that the student be given
the chance to travel abroad is not realized in his own case
until he is nearly fifty years old. He was fascinated by
foreign things, especially languages: "Les polices, les
moeurs loingtaines me flattent, et les langues" (11,17,617).
When he had the opportunity, through an interpreter, to
interview some Indians from the New World, he was impressed
by the sound of their language and hazarded comparing it to
64
Greek: "Leur langage, au demeurant, c*est un doux langage
et qui a le son aggreable, retirant aux terminaisons
Grecques" (1,32,212). He also made the following semanti
cal observation: "Ils ont une faqon de leur langage telle,
qu'ils nomment les hommes moitie les uns des autres"
(212-13).19
Among the Ancients, he naturally leaned toward the Ro
mans because his Greek was not proficient. 1 1 Je ne me prens
guiere . . . aux Grecs [livres grecs], par ce que mon juge
ment ne sqait pas faire ses besouignes d'une puerile et
apprantisse intelligence” (11,10,389). Elsewhere, he con
fesses complete ignorance of Greek: ”Je n'entens rien au
Grec” (11,4,344). This statement must be counted as high
ly exaggerated, yet typical, to be sure, of the anti-pedan
tic pose of his era and especially of his own nature. After
all, more than one third of the maxims he had inscribed on
the ceiling beams of his library are in Greek. He had, we
must conclude, a fundamental knowledge of Greek, but not
sufficient to permit him to read in the original with ease.
Now that some notions of Montaigne's facility with
foreign languages have been established, we can follow him
in his travels abroad through his comments on those travels.
V7hat he likes so much about traveling is the opportunity it
affords of exercising and developing the mind:
le voyage me semble un exercice profitable.
L'ame y a une continuelle exercitation k
remarquer les choses incogneufe’ s et nou-
velles; et je ne sqache point meilleure
escolle, comme j'ay diet souvent, a former
la vie que de luy proposer incessamment la
diversity de tant d'autres vies, fantasies
et usances, et luy faire gouster une si
perpetuelle variety de formes de nostre
nature, (III,9»951).
This exercise of the mind derives principally from mixing
with men:
A l'apprentissage de la vie , le commerce
des hommes y est merveilleusement propre,
et la visite des pays estrangers, non pour
en rapporter seulement, h la mode de nos
tre noblesse Franqoise, combien de pas a
Santa Rotonda . . . ou . . . combien le
visage de Neron, de quelque vieille ruyne
de lli, est plus long ou plus large que
celuy de quelque pareille medaille, mais
pour en rapporter principalement les hu-
meurs de ces nations et leurs faqons, et
pour frotter et limer nostre cervelle con-
tre celle d'autruy, (1,26,152).
This is not the only passage in which Montaigne eschews the
harrow viewpoint of his fellow countrymen on tour abroad.
He is very critical of those who abominate foreign ways and
condemn "tant de meurs barbares qu'ils voient" (111,9,964).
He complains that most of them only take a trip for the re
turn, unable and unwilling to communicate with foreigners:
"Ils voyagent couverts et resserrez d'une prudence taci-
turae et incommunicable" (964). Montaigne is ashamed of
his countrymen's provincialism: "J'ay honte de voir noz
hommes enyvrez de cette sotte humeur, de s'effaroucher des
formes contraires aux leurs" (964). One should be open and
receptive. Foreign cultures have languages of their own—
verbal and non-verbal languages. A culture could be de
fined as people in communication, sharing rules of lan
66
guage, of custom, and of habit. These rules have evolved
out of the people themselves, and if one is to know the peo
ple one must study and observe the rules.
Montaigne realized that his fellow countrymen who tra
veled abroad constantly made the error of using the context
of Itench culture as a point of reference. It was only
through total immersion in the foreign culture that one
could formalize a new context and enjoy effective communi
cation. His Journal de Voyage is rich in incidents where
he "shows a lively interest in all sorts of details of
everyday living— prices, foods, lodgings, as well as manners
and customs in the larger sense— nearly always, to be sure,
with the hope of coming to know people of other nations
better through their way of life. . . . Wherever he goes,
20
he tries to live as the natives do." Montaigne*s travels
and the curiosity that he everywhere evinces may reflect a
deeper, unconscious curiosity about himself. As usual with
Montaigne, his relationship with others, his communication
with others, reflects in some degree his relationship and
communication with himself. In similar fashion, his curi
osity may then be part of an ongoing communication with him
self, though it has all the earmarks (especially in the
socially and politically pointed parts) of being concerned
with others.
While travelling, curious as he is to soak up local
color, he shuns Frenchmen: "Je peregrine tr&s saoul de nos
67
faqons, non pour cercher des Gascons en Sicile (j'en ay
assez laisse au logis); je cerche des Grecs plustost, et
des Persans; j'acointe ceux-la, je les considere; c'est IS.
oil je me preste et ou je m'employe" (111,9*964). Thorough
ly cosmopolitan in outlook, Montaigne can hardly he accused
of chauvinism: "II me semble que je n'ay rencontr^ guere de
manieres qui ne vaillent les nostres" (964). "IJ'J embrasse
un Polonais comme un Franqois, postposant:cette lyaison na-
tionale & l'universelle et commune" (111,9,950). When
abroad, he laughs at those who want to know if he prefers
to be served in the French fashion, making straight for the
tables thickest with foreigners: "On m*a demand^ si je vou-
lois estre servy k la Franqoise, je m'en suis mocqu^ et me
suis tousjours jett6 aux tables les plus espesses d'estran-
gers" (964). Thus, he makes a point of "essaying" the local
dishes and the local customs. Through total immersion, he
hopes to enter into the intimacy of the non-Frenchman's
mind and life. In Bfile he attends discussions between Cal
vinists, Lutherans, and Zwinglians, notes their differences,
but does not participate himself. In a synagogue in Verona,
with his usual suspended judgment, he talks with Jews about
their religious practices. Everywhere, he observes, he in
quires, he interrogates, he "essays." His fluency in three
languages and his knowledge of two additional ones must
have made it possible for him to speak with just about any
one he met.
68
Summing up what has heen said, communication for Mon
taigne, whether with friends, at home, or abroad, was es
sential to the exercise of the mind. He revelled in good
conversation but deplored its rarity in Prance, especially
at his own table. He was happiest in open, varied, and
far-ranging talk, and with his facility in foreign lan
guages, he apparently had ample opportunity to indulge him
self during his long trip abroad. It would now be well to
consider Montaigne, encoder and decoder, in those areas not
specifically covered in the foregoing topics.
He had undertaken his long trip, we may recall, for
pleasure and for health, often visiting baths along the way
to get relief for his kidney stone. He had suffered some
excruciating pain, and, in this connection, there are some
significant passages showing Montaigne communicating. He
often considered communication problems as they affected
the sick and the dying. He thinks that it is important
to be able to maintain one's equanimity, without minimizing
or exaggerating the pain. He is naturally an enemy of that
exaggeration intended to. produce pity from onlookers. "Je
me deffais tous les jours par diseour3 de cette humeur pue
rile et inhumaine, qui faict que nous desirons d'esmouvoir
par nos maux la compassion et le deuil en nos amis’ ’ (111,9,
957). It is clearly a case where much is communicated by
groans and signs and forlorn looks, all calculated to get
a feedback of grief and compassion. He condemns such tac
69
tics. The messages which are exchanged are tinged with mis
representation and therefore with fraud. His aim is to
represent things as they are, plain and unvarnished: "Je
represente mes maladies, pour le plus, telles qu'elles sont,
et evite les parolles de mauvais prognostique et exclama
tions composes" (957). His composure "being contagious, the
people who are attending him will, in their turn, exude an
air of composure: "Sinon l’allegresse, aumoins la contenance
rassise des assistans est propre pr&s d'un sage malade"
(957). This, then, is a combination of verbalized and non
verbalized communication, both working together to produce
reciprocally good benefits for all. "II faut estendre la
joye, mais retrencher autant qu*on peut la tristesse" (957).
During the kidney-stone attacks, Montaigne wants to be
"capable de commerce, capable d’entretien jusques h cer-
taine mesure" (11,37,739). This is not to say that one
should assume a stoic mask22 in the face of excruciating
pain. When it really hurts, Montaigne is not above a sigh
or a cry: "Non pourtant que je me mette en peine pour main-
tenir cette decence exterieure. . . . Je me plains, je me
despite quand les aigres pointures me pressent" (740).
He is fascinated by the idea of testing his communicative
abilities in the severest of pain: "Je me taste au plus
espais du mal et ay tousjours trouvd que j'estoy capable
de dire, de penser, de respondre aussi sainement qu'en un
autre heure. . . . J*essaye souvent mes forces et entame
moy-mesmes des propos les plus esloignez de mon eatat"
(740). This is certainly indicative of just how obsessed
he was with communication. Conscious efforts were to no
avail, however, the day he fell from his horse. What he
uttered had little to do with what was actually going on<:
"C'estoyent des pensemens vains, en nufe', qui estoyent es-
meuz par les sens des yeux et des oreilles; ils ne venoyent
pas de chez moy" (11,6,556). The last part of this sentence
indicates that Montaigne was well aware of the subconscious
mind and that it can sometimes be responsible for what we
say. The conscious mind, for Montaigne, is "la raison."
He maintains that he scarcely malces a movement without di
rect consent of "la raison" and its subsequent crystalli
zation ("mouvement") whenever thought becomes action: "Je
n*ay guere de mouvement qui se cache et desrobe k ma rai
son, et qui ne se conduise k peu pres par le consentement
de toutes mes parties" (111,2,790). Good communication
calls for an awareness of all levels and impulses of the
self as well as the subsequent realization that in human
interrelationships there are factors at work unknown to
their possessor himself, potentially significant in in
creasing understanding. There are unspoken messages— often
unintentional ones— just like verbalizations, if only one
can decode them. "II y a des parties secrettes aux ob
jects qu'on manie et indivinables, signamment en la nature
des hommes, des conditions muettes, sans montre, inconnues
par fois du possesseur mesme, qui se produisent et es-
veillent par des occasions survenantes" (111,2,792). This
underscores the complexity of human nature as envisioned by
Montaigne, and, consequently, points up the subtleties that
are inherent to communication as he sees it: self-awareness
goes hand in hand with self-knowledge, and, ideally speak
ing, communication approaches "transparencywhen there
is a high degree of self-knowledge. Likewise, it is im
peded when there is a low degree.
Montaigne has "trois occupations favories et particu-
lieres" (111,3,808): association with men, with women, and
with books. It is the last one that he finds most dependa
ble: "C*est la meilleure munition que j'aye trouv6 h cet
humain voyage" (806). He speaks of books and of "commerce"
with them in the same terms as he speaks of association
with people. Strictly speaking, it is an association that
cannot be included in the pale of communication as defined
in this study, there really being no reciprocal transfer
of meaning involved. Yet, there are times when Montaigne
is so immersed in his readings that he himself feels as
though there were communication taking place. And of
course, there is, but it is one-sided, at least momentari
ly; it becomes multi-sided, however, through the vehicle
of the Essais, with Montaigne acting as a mediator between
books and readers. "II [Montaigne] pense que son livre
✓ 24
sera un ami qui communiquera a d*autres son experience."
72
This communicatory process has three stages:
(1) hooks ---> Montaigne
(2) Montaigne --- > Essais
(5) Essais readers
Montaigne tells us that if he is bothered by a troublesome
thought, he turns to reading because books "me destournent
facilement a eux et me la [imagination importune] desrobent"
(111,3,805). Reading sets Montaigne musing. "Je feuillette
h cette heure un livre, h cette heure un autre" (806). Set
of musing one moment, he may write or dictate the next:
"Tantost je resve, tantost j'enregistre et dicte, en me pro-
menant, mes songes que voicy" (806). And thus, from his
perusal of books to his "songes que voicy," and finally, to
his readers, there unfolds a three-staged, delayed-action
communication. To use different words, we might say that
the essays are the transcriptions of Montaigne’s monadic
communication ("je resve," "mes songes que voicy") inspired
by his communication with the Ancients ("le commerce conti-
nuel que j*ay avec les humeurs anciennes," 11,17,643).
As he did not take much to contemporary authors, the
examples I look at necessarily treat of his "commerce" with
Oft
the Ancients. The fact that such men as Pompey and Bru
tus are far from being his contemporaries in no way pre
vents Montaigne from speaking of them as personal friends.
He says he had cause to defend them many times, and we note
his use of the word "accointahce": "Or j’ay attaqud cent
73
querelles pour la deffence de Pompeius et pour la cause de
Brutus. Cette accointance dure encore entre nous" (111,9,
975). Just as he would have liked to have read about the
intimate habits of his ancestors, so he would have liked to
have been able to see the Ancients talk, walk, and sup: "Je
les visse volontiers diviser, promener, et soupper!" (976).
Was this desire on his part responsible for the inclusion
in the Essai3 of many passages where he is talking, walking,
and supping, himself— Montaigne in action, a3 it were? His
own times marred by ceaseless domestic strife, he turns back
to an age with which he feels closer affinity. "Me trou-
vant inutile a ce siecle, je me rejecte k cet autre, et en
suis si embabouyn^ que l'estat de cette vieille Romme ...
m*interesse et me passionne" (975). After his trip to Rome
he added, "Est-ce par nature ou par erreur de fantasie que
la veufe* des places, que nous sqavons avoir est£ hantees et
habitees par personnes lesquelles la memoire est en recom
mendation, nous esmeut aucunement plus qu'oulr le recit
de leurs faicts ou lire leurs escrits?" (976). Along with
Du Bellay, Montaigne is thus aware, long before Rousseau
and Lamartine, of the power of places to evoke emotions
concerning things past, and, to set off, metaphorically at
least, processes of monadic communication: "II me plaist de
considerer leur visage, leur port et leurs vestements: jere-
mache ces grands noms entre les dents et les faicts retentir
k mes oreilles" (976). It reminds one of the attachment
74
he had for his father’s walking sticks.2^
He says that he loves Lucan and enjoys his company:
"J’ayme aussi Lucain, et le practique volontiers" (11,10,
590). The verbs he uses when referring to the Ancients
often have direct oral connotations: "C’est une nation,
diroy .je k Platon” (1,51,204). Eugene Voizard, without
using the word "mediator,” expresses much the same idea:
Montaigne, en effet, connaissait tous les
dcrivains de 1*antique Rome aussi parfai-
tement que tout savant du XVI2 siecle.
Son g^nie s’^tait d^veloppe, avait grandi
dans leur commerce et dans leur intimity;
des ses ]iLus jeunes annees, il s'^tait
passionne pour eux et avait lu avec en-
thousiasme .leurs ouvrages . . . . Tous ces
grands auteurs avaient laiss£ dans son
esprit une empreinte durable et indele-
bile; c’est pourquoi son livre porte, pour
ainsi dire, leur marque; quand il parlait
d’eux et de leur ^poque, il devait en sen-
tir 1’influence secrete, et §tre entrain^
inconsciemment k les reproduire, chaque
fois qu'il voulait les faire revivre eux
et leurs iddes.28
He speaks of Seneca as if they had had discussions together,
even using the verb "parler": "Je croirois volontiers Seneca
de 1*experience qu'il en fit en pareille occasion, pourveu
qu’il m'en voulut parler k coeur ouvert” (111,9,971).
"Parler" is replaced by "reciter" when he describes his
purpose in writing the essays: "Les autres forment l'homme;
je le recite et en represente un particulier" (111,2,782).
If there is speaking ("parler"), there is also listening
("oulr"): "Les escrits des anciens ... me tentent et re-
muent quasi ou ils veulent; eeluy que j’oj; me semble le
75
plus roide" (11,12,553). So closely was he involved with
the Ancients that he refers to their living and dying as if
they were his contemporaries: "Ce seroit ingratitude de mes-
priser les reliques et images de tant d’honnestes hommes et
si valeureux, que . 1 ’aiy veu vivre et mourir. et qui nous
donnent tant de bonnes instructions par leur exemple, si
nous les sqavions suivre" (111,9,976). He even goes so far
as to say that he knew the Capitol in Rome and its location
before he knew the Louvre: "Or 3’ay estd nourry d&s mon en-
fance avec ceux icy [the Romans]; j'ay eu connoissance des
affaires de Romme, long temps avant que he l’aye eue de
ceux de ma maison. . . . J*ay eu plus en teste les condi
tions et fortunes de Lucullus, Metellus et Scipion, que je
n'ay d’aucuns hommes des nostres" (975). I have already
pointed out that Montaigne wanted to write something that
would be useful for the public welfare. His inspiration^^
was the great minds before him— Epicurus, Plato, and Pytha
goras, about whom he says:
En cette obscurite et ignorance du monde,
chaeun de ces grands personnages s’est tra-
vaille d’apporter une telle quelle image de
lumiere, et ont promend leur ame k des in
ventions qui eussent au moins une plaisante
et subtile apparence: pourveu que, toute
fausse, elle se peust maintenir contre les
oppositions contraires. . . . Ils ont voulu
consider tout, balancer tout, et ont trouvd
cette occupation propre a la naturelle cu-
riosite qui est en nous. Aucunes choses,
ils les ont escrites -pour le besoin de la
societd publique, comme leurs religions;
et a este raisonnable, pour cette conside
ration, que les communes opinions, ils
76
n'ayent voulu les espelucher au vif, aux
fins de n'engendrer du trouble en I'obeis-
sance des loix et coustumes de leur pays,
(11,12,492).
In exercising their minds, these Ancients wanted to con
sider and weigh everything— even conceptions that were
false. But when it was a question of breeding disorder in
people's obedience to the institutions of the country, they
preferred not to bare opinion to the skins and consequently,
kept the needs of society in mind. There was an important
lesson in this for Montaigne's own essays, and it was also
a lesson that many of his contemporaries could benefit
from— contemporaries, who had not had the good fortune of
"talking" and "listening" to the Ancients in all their wis
dom. ^ He saw it as his role to carry the standard forward,
relaying the message of departed voices: "Ils ne s'aydent
plus; ils en requierent, ce me semble, d'autant plus mon
ayde" (111,9,975). In the framework of communication, Mon
taigne is relaying the message of the Ancients. He knew
that in their "instructions" and "lumiere" there was a
valuable body of wisdom from which his fellow-countrymen
could draw great profit if only they had access to it. It
is likely that he felt some identification with Jacques
Amyot and the way in which he rendered such a prodigious
service to Prance by his translation of Plutarch's Lives.
Je donne avec raison, ce me semble, la
palme a Jacques Amiot star tous nos escri-
vains Pranqois, [entre autres choses] ,
... pour la profondeur de son sqavoir,
77
ayant peu developper si heureusement un au-
theur [Plutarque] si espineux et ferrd
(. . . Je voy un sens si "beau, si Men
joint et entretenu par tout en sa tra
duction, que, ou il a certainement entendu
1*imagination vraye de l'autheur, ou,
ayant -par longue conversation plante vive-
ment dans son ame une generaTe Idde de
celle de Plutarque, il ne luy a aumoins
rien prestd qui le desmente ou qui le des-
die); mais sur tout je lui sqay bon grd
d'avoir sqeu trier et choisir un livre
si digne et si & propos, -pour en faire
present k son nays. Nous autres ignorans
estions perdus, si ce livre ne nous eust
relevez du bourbier; sa mercy, nous osons
& cett’heure et parler et escrire: . . .
c’est nostre breviaire, (11,4,344).
By writing the Essais in the wake of his own "longue con
versation" with the Ancients, he was, in a sense, refract
ing their "lumiere" (message) and putting it in a configu
ration that could be perceived by his countrymen. Given
below is an example of Montaigne's method, in its most
obvious form, of relaying the message from antiquity— in
this case, Seneca's. Quotation marks are used to set off
Seneca's words; upper case lettering is used to accentuate
Montaigne's verbal markers as mediator:
"Exilia, tormenta. bella. morbos. naufragia
meditare. ut nuUo sis malo tyro." A quoy
nous sert cette curiosite de preoccuper
tous les inconvenients de l'humaine nature,
et nous preparer avec tant de peine k l'en-
contre de ceux mesme qui n'ont k l'avanture
poinct a nous toucher? "Parem passis tris-
titiam facit. pati posse.* * "fton seulemant*
le coup, mais le vent et le pet nous frap-
pe." Ou commes les plus fievreux, car cer-
tes c'est fievre, aller dbs S. cette hexire
vous faire donner le fouet, parce qu'il
peut advenir que fortune vous le fera souf-
frir tin jour, et prendre vostre robe four-
78
r^e des la S. Jean parce que vous en aurez
besoing k Noel? "Jettez vous en 1'experience
des maux qui vous peuvent arriver, nomm^ment
des plus extremes: esprouvez vous Ih,"
DISENT-ILS, "asseurez vous la." Au rebours,
le plus facile et plus naturel seroit en des-
charger mesme sa pensee. Ils ne viendront
pas assez tost, leur vray estre ne nous dure
pas assez; il faut que nostre esprit les es-
tende et alonge et qu'avant la main il les
incorpore en soy et s’en entretienne, comme
s'ils ne poisoient pas raisonnablement a nos
sens. "Ils poiseront assez quand ils y se-
ront," DIT UN DES MAISTRES, non de quelque
tendre secte, mais de la plus dure.depen
dant favorise toy; croy ce que tu aimes le
mieux. Que te sert il d*aller recueillant
et prevenant ta male fortune, et de perdre
le present par la crainte du futur, et estre
k cette heure miserable par ce que tu le
dois estre avec le temps?" CE SONT SES MOTS,
(111,12,1027).
In none of this does he ever name Seneca, simply referring
to him at one point as "un des maistres, non de quelque
tendre secte, mais de la plus dure." While articulation of
the message is central, Montaigne is not a simple echo of
antiquity, with no voice of his own. In this particular
passage, in addition to being a "prism," Montaigne is also
a distorter and interpreter: he is attacking as much as
transmitting Seneca's message. 7/e note that throughout the
passage, Montaigne stamps it with the seal of ancient au
thority:
(1) disent-ils (ils = the Ancients)
(2) dit un des maistres (un = Seneca)
(3) ce sont ses mots (ses = Seneca).
The following example is even more explicit in pointing up
Montaigne's self-vested role^ as antiquity's message-
"bearer and articulator.
79
Nous n'aurons pas faute de "bon re gens. in-
terpretes de la simplicity naturelle. So-
crates~en sera l*un. Car de ce qu'il m'en
souvient. il parle environ en ce sens aux
juges qui delTBerent de sa vie: "J’ay peur,
messieurs, etc., etc." (111,12,1029).
The words, regens and interpretes. serve to underscore the
■ 3 2
authority-^ and reliability of the message. The verb
parler emphasizes verbalized immediacy, and Montaigne's
casual transitional phrase of "de ce qu’il m’en souvient"
makes one almost feel that he was more than 3 *ust a vicari
ous witness of Socrates' trial, being carried forward in
time by the work of the memory ("m’en souvient"), and,
finally, being transferred from mind to paper— the intel-
lectualized, remembered, interpreted, end-product. His re
fractional role is especially apparent in a passage on Pla
to. For the reader’s benefit, Montaigne assesses Plato’s
reliability as a behaviorial model,^ describing, at the
same time, certain communicative processes:
Platon traicte ce mystere [philosophy] d’un
jeu assez descouvert. Car, ou il escrit
selon soy, il ne prescrit rien a certes.
Quand il faict le legislateur, il emprunte
un style regentant et asseverant. et si y
mesle hardiment les plus fantastiques de
ses inventions, autant utiles a persuader
h la commune que ridicules k persuader h
soy-mesmes, sachant combien nous sommes
propres h recevoir toutes impressions, et,
sur toutes, les plus farouches et enormes,
(11,12,492).
It will now be useful to summarize and form some con-
elusions about Montaigne's communicative techniques and
resources. While finding much conversation spoiled by-
babble, prattling, and just plain imperious manners, he
so appreciated good discussion that he preferred it to all
other pleasures. Because of his alleged poor memory and
his own natural inclination, his speech tended to be con
strained, dry, compressed, but this did not keep him from
entering discussion with great freedom and ease, even
welcoming contradictions, verbal jabs, strong "jousting,"
and criticism, provided the blows were straightforward and
ordered. This attitude clearly characterizes him as a
partisan of form over substance, of manner over matter,
in the realm of intercommunication. The way we use language
and the way we express ideas help to tell others who we are.
In fact, Montaigne apparently realized that all our overt
behavior at any given time is a form of communication to
those around us. An awareness of this can make the be
havioral message complement the intended message, thus pro
ducing greater probability of effective communication.
Thus, he did not fail to take into account certain nonver
bal forms of interpersonal communication: vocal intonation,
volume, speed of movement, facial expressions, gesturing,
and selectively exaggerated articulation. In intercommuni
cation, not only how you say something but also what you
look like when you say it can have a vital effect in the
communicative effort.
Montaigne's interest in foreign languages and coun
tries led him to reflect on techniques of communication in
inter-cultural situations. He had marked facility in for
eign languages. Rusty though his Latin became as he grew
old, he was bilingual in Latin and French as well as semi
fluent in Italian. He apparently understood, if not spoke,
the various Gascon dialects, especially his own native Peri-
gordian. While he seems to have had a basic knowledge of
Greek, any conclusions of his notions of Spanish are specu
lative at best. In his travels, his two ruling character
istics were curiosity and cosmopolitanism. Shunning
Frenchmen, he delighted in close contact with foreigners,
never missing an opportunity to question them and observe
them. Through total immersion in the foreign culture he
could come closer to decoding the non-verbal as well as
the verbal language of that culture.
Finally, moving to another level of communication—
that of reading— Montaigne's commerce with the Ancients
through books and his subsequent musings which ultimately
crystallized in the written word on the pages destined to
become the Essais, take on, through the permanence of
writing, the dimensions of a message through limitless
distances in space and time. Keeping in mind Edward Sa-
pir's statement"^ on the necessity of imitating overt be
havior in the interest of a consolidated society, we see
Montaigne assuming the function of a refractor, the Essais
82
■becoming a communicatory prism poised at the "boundary
between Antiquity and Modern Times. In this context,
the Essais take on the function of communicating, in di
gest form, the wisdom of classical writings (along with
the wisdom Montaigne drew from his own experiences), making
them relevant and beneficial in the growth of the social
experience of the Renaissance Frenchman.
^Erich Auerbach, "L'Humaine Condition,H Mimesis; the
Representation of Reality in Western literature (Princeton:
Princeton tfniv., 1953), p. 290.
p
"Et suis si excellent en l’oubliance, que mes escrits
mesmes et compositions, je ne le3 oublie pas moins que le
reste. On m'allegue tous les coups k moy-mesme sans que je
le sente" (11,17,635). See also 1,9,34; 111,2,783.
•"Tor the sake of clarity in the discussion that fol
lows "form" is defined as how things are said, whereas
"substance" refers to what is said. Form then is manner,
and substance is matter. I use the term "style" as a syno
nym for the word "form."
Robert J. Brake, "On *Speeehifiers Well Snubbed*:
Some Rhetorical Viewpoints of Montaigne," Quarterly Journal
of Speech. 56, p. 211.
c
VI use the word in its basic meaning of lack of care.
The concept of ordo neglectus was prevalent in sixteenth-
century life and arts, but if Montaigne falls in with it,
it is because it corresponds authentically to a need in his
own nature. See Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne. p. 351.
f .
Floyd Gray, Le Style de Montaigne (Paris: Nizet, 1958),
P. 49.
^Thibaudet thinks that Montaigne*s alleged lack of
memory is more a question of "distraction" than anything
else: "Le manque de memoire de Montaigne, dont on fait cent
contes, semble avoir 6t6 de la distraction. II avait la
memoire de ce qui 1'int^ressait, surtout des faits histo-
riques. II a bien sur ses portraits la tdte d*un concen
tre, et d*un etonn<5, d*un distrait. On le voit dans son
portrait qui se demande et vous demande: Que sais-je? Oh
suis-je?" Montaigne. p. 33.
83
®Also, see Infra# p. 90, pp. 113-14, and pp. 122-23.
9*Cette mollesse de jugement ... ra*attache ... chez
moy, au milieu d'une famille peupl^e et maison des plus fr£-
quent^es. J*y voy des gens assez, mais rarement ceux avecq
qui j'ayme b . communiquer" (111,3,801).
^■®See footnote 2 for p. 622 on p. 1589 of the Essais,
Maurice Rat, ed.
IT
". . . Latin, qui m'a esty donn^ pour matemel"
(11,17,622).
^See footnote 2 for p. 622 on p. 1589 of the Essais.
Maurice Rat, ed.
^Although too much has certainly been made of Montai
gne' s comment, "que le Gascon y arrive, si le Franqois n'y
peut aller" (1,26,171), any close reading of the Essais
fails to turn up a significant number of Gasconisms. Eugene
Voizard in his study on Montaigne's language found only
twenty, Etude stir la langue de Montaigne (Geneva: Slatkine
Reprints, 19&9), p. 7.
•^This is to say nothing of the time he supposedly
spent with local peasants: "Le bon pere que Dieu me donna
... m'envoia des le berceau nourrir a un pauvre village
des siens, et m'y tint autant que je fus en nourrisse, et
encores au delh" (111,13,1079).
16
^Another passage would lend itself to a similar anal
ysis: "J'ayme une society et familiarity forte et virile.
une amitid qui se flatte en l'asprety et vigueur de son
commerce, comme 1'amour, 6s morsures et esgratigneure s san-
glantes" (111,8,902).
■^See supra, p. 18.
17
See supra, p. 17.
18
For further ramifications of the three reasons given,
see the following: Friedrich, pp. 33-54, p. 377; Lanson,
Les Essais de Montaigne, p. 81; Thibaudet, Montaigne. p. 48.
IQ
JIt is interesting to speculate if this particular
observation was the inspiration for the lyrical description
of his relationship with La Boytie: "C'est un assez grand
miracle de se doubler" (1,28,190). Two pages later he con
tinues, "Nous estions a moitie de tout. . . . J*estois desjh
si fait et accoustume IT estre deuxiesme par tout, qu'il me
semble n*estre plus qu'a demy" (192).
84
2fi
Donald M. Frame, Complete Works of Montaigne (Stan
ford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1946), p. 861.
21
For some typical passages, see: 1,7,32-33; 1,14,54;
11,29,685; 111,4,811.
22
This stoic mask, inspired though it was hy classical
stoicism, has its "basic wellsprings in Montaigne's identi
fication with the common lot as shown in the following
passage which probably dates hack to some of his very first
writings: "Combien voit-on de personnes populaires, con-
duictes a la mort, et non k tine mort simple, mais mesl^e de
honte et quelque rois de griefs tourmens, y apporter une
telle asseurance, qui par opiniatretd, qui par simplesse
naturelle, qu'on n'y apperqoit rien de chang^ de leur estat
ordinaire; establissans letirs affaires domestiques, se re-
commandans k leurs amis, chantans, preshans et entretenans
le peuple; voire y meslans quel-fois des mots pour rire,
et beuvans k leurs cognoissans, aussi bien que Socrates"
(1,14,51).
•'See supra
2^Thibaudet, Montaigne. p. 55.
2- ’ This can even become four-staged as when Montaigne
sometimes passes on to his reader what one particular An
cient said by the mouth of another: "Comme dit Democritus
par la bouche de Cicero ..." (11,12,519).
Montaigne is unequivocal in stating his preference
for the writers of antiquity: "Je ne me prens guiere aux
nouveaux, pour ce que les aneiens me semblent plus pleins
et plus roides" (11,10,389). *. . . l'escole ancienne,
escole k laquelle je me tiens bien plus qu'h la modeme"
(111,5,825). "A l'adventure que le commerce continuel que
j'ay avec les humeurs anciennes, et l'ld^e de ces riches
ames de temps pass6 me ddgouste, et d'autruy et de moy
mesme" (11,17,642).
27
*"J'en [of my ancestors] conserve l'escriture, • . .
et n'ay point chass^ de mon cabinet des longues gaules que
mon pere portoit ordinairement en la main" (11,18,647).
28
Langue de Montaigne, p. 294.
2^"Si me gratifie-je de cecy, que mes opinions ont cet
honneur de rencontrer souvent aux leurs [ Ancientsj; et que
je vais au moins de long apr&s, disant que voire" (1,26,145).
85
30
Philip P. Hallie writes: "That reaction to those
•unhealthy' times understandably involves disgust with the
times and a desire to withdraw from them; but it also in
volves an aspiration to help remedy them through modera
tion. This is where [ Montaigne ] stood in his century: a
Catholic moderate, inhabiting the ‘golden mean.* the .juste
milieu that the Romans and Greeks had taught hxm to respect,
but an active moderate, acting to help cure a diseased
Prance," p. 9*
^Iontaigne does not take this role lightly. He real
izes that marching abreast of the Ancients is no mean task:
"II faut avoir les reins bien fermes pour entreprendre de
marcher front h front avec ces gens ll. [the Ancients] "
(1,26,145).
32
^ That Montaigne held the authority of ancient wisdom
in high esteem is apparent in this humorous confession of
his concerning the sexual pleasures obtained from having
intercourse with a lame woman: "Par la seule authority de
l*usage ancien et publique de ce mot, je me suis autresTois
faict & croire avoir regeu de plaisir d*une femme de ce
qu*elle n*estoit pas droicte" (111,1,1012).
33
In this connection, Montaigne uses the word "patron"
as is shown in the following passage on another of his
favorite models: "Ce personnage lh [Cato] fut veritablemsnt
un natron que nature.choisit pour montrer jusques ou l'hu-
maine vertu et fermete pouvoit atteindre" (1,37,227).
^^"The primary condition for the consolidation of
society is the imitation of overt behavior," p. 76.
C H A P T E R IV
OBSTACLES TO COMMUNICATION
"Nostre parler a ses foiblesses et ses
defauts, comme tout le reste" (IE, 12,508).
Prom a quantitative point of view Montaigne spends far
more time describing the obstacles to communication than
the mechanics of good communication. After all, if the
enemy is to be routed, first he must be identified. For
Montaigne, the enemy takes many forms and plays many roles:
bombast, professional jargon, lack of introspection, visual
influence of garb and status, ingeniousness and inadequacy
of perception, unchecked passion, arrogance,; stubbornness,
bravado, and babble. In examining these and other obstacles*
it will be 3hown that Montaigne’s interest in communication
is far-reaching and his insights into communicative pro
cesses are often uncannily "modern.w
In one particularly revealing passage, Montaigne lists
ten typical manifestations of communication breakdowns. Sev
eral of these stem from amour-propre. which seeks its own
advantage rather than the truth. What matters is the saving
of face, the winning of an argument. Although these ten
categories are not all-inclusive, I will attach adjectival
or substantive markers to each one; since most of them re
occur throughout the Essais. these one-word descriptive
markers will have some convenience in the course of my dis-
86
87
cussion.
(1) Qui se prend a un mot et une
similitude;
(2) Qui ne sent plus ce qu’on luy
oppose, tant il est engagd en
sa course; et pense & se suy-
vre, non pas & vous.
(3) Qui, se trouvant foible de
reins, craint tout, refuse
tout, mesle des 1*entree et
confond le propos; ou, sur
1*effort de debat, se mntine
h se faire plat; par une igno
rance despite, affectant un
orgueilleux mespris, ou une
sottement modestie fuite de
contention;
(4) Pourveu que cettuy-ci frappe,
il ne luy chaut combien il se
descouvre.
(5) l*autre compte ses mots, et
les poise pour raisons.
(6) Celuy-la n'y emploie que l'ad-
vantage de sa voix et de ses
poulmons.
(7) En voila qui conclud contre
soy-mesme.
(8) Et cettuy-cy, qui vous as-
sourdit de prefaces et di
gressions inutiles!
(9) Cet autre s,arme de pures in
jures et eherche une querelle
d'Alemaigne pour se deffaire
de la society et conference d*un
esprit qui presse le sien.
(10) Ce dernier ne voit rien en la
raison, mais il vous tient as-
siege sur la closture dialec-
tique de ses clauses et sur les
formules de son art, (111,8,904).
quibbler
egocentric
spiteful
wrangler
sophist
brawler
blunderbuss
long-winded
swaggerer
casuist
In probing the psychologies underlying these ten character
istics, there seem to be two important traits which Montai-
88
gne is attacking: egocentricity (amour-propre) and the pe
dantic concentration on words and rhetorical devices to the
detriment of meaning and sense. Throughout the Essais. Mon
taigne puts great store by what we call good common sense
("la raison"). In the passage above, what emerges is the
fact that Montaigne sees truth as somehow self-evident (an
effect of "la raison") and therefore not dependent upon
words: truth is evident and communication about that truth
is possible only when the person can free himself from
blinding egocentricity and from the letter that kills the
spirit.
One of Montaigne's favorite subjects is eloquence and
"speechifiers." Rhetoric, one of the subjects of the
trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) in the medieval sys
tem of academic studies, remained an academic discipline
until the eighteenth century. Montaigne consistently de
nounces eloquence, except in Cicero's case, whose eloquence
"estant en si extreme perfection, se donne corps elle mesme"
(1,40,246). Similarly, he sees justification in Xenophon's
and Caesar's eloquence. Their deeds measure up to their
words, surpass them even: "Si les gestes de Xenophon et de
Caesar n'eussent de bien loing surpass^ leur eloquence, je
ne croy pas qu'ils les eussent jamais escris. Ils ont cher-
ch6 k recommander non leur dire, mais leur faire" (1,40,
243). What Montaigne opposes is eloquence for eloquence's
sake. This is pointed up neatly in the story (from Plu-
89
tarch) he recounts about the Athenians who were to choose
between two architects to build an important structure.
The first, more affected, came forward with a fine prepared
speech on the subject of the job to be undertaken, and as
he spoke he was clearly winning the people in his favor.
But the other, in just a few words, said: "Seigneurs Athe-
niens, ce que cetuy a diet, je le feray" (1,26,169). This
attitude is central to Montaigne's brand of communication:
human expression and interchange, in order to have meaning
and value, must be backed up by action. The word must re
flect the act and vice versa, and, ultimately, it is only
the act that counts. Montaigne relates how Dionysius the
Elder esteemed nothing so highly as his own poetry. Once,
at the time of the Olympic games, he sent poets and musi
cians to present his verses against a backdrop of elaborate,
tapestried tents and pavilions. "Quand on vint k mettre
ses vers en avant, la faveur et excellence de la prononcia-
tion attira sur le commencement 1'attention du peuple; mais
quand, par aprfes, il vint a poiser 1*ineptie de l'ouvrage,
il entra premierement en mespris" (11,17,619). The grace
and excellence of the pronunciation, enhanced by the d^cor,
had their merits, but they were to no avail once the inher
ent ineptitude of the work was perceived by the listeners.
Y/hat is particularly disconcerting with the orator
schooled in traditional rhetoric is that he is easily be
guiled by the effects of his own art: "1'Orateur, diet la
90
rethorique, en cette farce de son plaidoier s'esmouvera par
le son de sa voix et par ses agitations feintes, et se lair-
ra piper & la passion qu'il repr^sente" (111,4,816). He is
taught to identify with the passion he is portraying and
ends up being trick into actually feeling what he is por
traying. Montaigne compares him to those persons who are
hired at funerals to weep and mourn, and who "s'esbranlent
en forme empruntee, toutesfois, en habituant et rengeant la
contenance, il est certain qu’ils s'emportent souvant tous
entiers et reqoivent en eux une vraye melancholie" (816).
The borrowed emotions become real ones. Montaigne himself
had occasion to "borrow" emotions and apparently did so
with considerable effect: "Par fois m'advient il aussi de
representer le courrouss£, pour le reiglement de ma maison"
(11,31,698).
This investigation can lead one into the same dialec-
tics of 6tre versus naraitre as in Rousseau. There is what
men seem, and there is actually what they are. "Ce seroit
une grande simplesse a qui se lairroit amuser ny au visage,
ny aux parolles de celuy qui faict estat d'estre tousjours
autre au dehors Inaraitre] qu*il n'est au dedans [§tre]"
(11,17,631). Montaigne's greatest mission in life and con
sequently in the Essais was to make these two aspects of
his being one and the same: "Mes conditions corporelles
sont en somme tr&sbien accordantes h celle de l'ame" (11,17,
625). Among other things, purity of language was to accom
91
plish the dovetailing of these two aspects, and good commu
nication was the means. Montaigne "bemoaned the fact that
in judging a man, we judge him all wrapped up in a package:
"Pourquoy, estimant un homme, l'estimez vous tout envelopp^
et empaquet^?" (1,42,251). Such a man displays to us only
those parts that are not his own (naraitre) and hides from
us those (Stre) by which alone we could judge his true
value. "C'est le pris de l'esp^e que vous cherchez, non de
la guaine: vous n*en donnerez a 1*adventure pas un quatrain,
si vous l*avez despouille. II le faut juger par luy mesme,
non par ses atours" (1,42,251).
That we are so concerned with appearances comes from
the fact that we are disposed to live with reference to
others. Montaigne says that this does us more harm than
good, for we defraud ourselves of our own advantages to
make appearances conform with public opinion (111,9,932):
”11 ne nous chaut pas tant quel soit nostre estre en nous
et en effaict, comme quel il soit en la cognoissance pu-
blique" (932). Human vision is a feeble thing: "Noz yeux
ne voient rien en derriere. Cent fois du jour, nous nous
moquons de nous sur le subject de nostre voisln et detes-
tons en d’autres les defauts qui sont en nous plus claire-
ment" (111,8,908). So it is the inadequacy of human vision
that is to blame. Nature, contends Montaigne, has not
given kings— even less so, man in general, we could add—
a vision "pour discerner de la precellence, et perser nos
92
poitrines, ou loge la cognoissance de nostre volont£ et de
nostre meilleure valeur" (111,8,911). So, rather than siz
ing up others as they truly are, we can only sift them "par
conjecture et a tastons, par la race, les richesses, la doc
trine, la voix du peuple: tr&s-foibles argumens" (911).
Somewhat wistfully Montaigne concludes this paragraph say
ing what a perfect form of government we would have if
someone could find a way in which men could he judged hy
justice and chosen "par raison." It comes close to the
transparence so longed for hy Rousseau,^ a kind of communi
cative medium wherehy our hearts would he diaphanous, giv
ing us the possibility of reading each other with infalli
ble precision. In this connection, hut altogether in a
humorous vein, there is Montaigne’s story about Joanna,
Queen of Naples, and her bridegroom Andreasso. Visually,
Andreasso’s physical person (beauty, youth, and agility)
had instilled great expectations in Joanna. When, however,
in matrimonial duties, "elle ne luy trouvoit ny les par
ties, ny les efforts assez respondants A l'esperance qu’elle
en avoit conceuS" (111,5,864)» she strangled him with a
gold and silk cord woven by her own hand. It is a clear
case of failing to decode one another, of relying too hea
vily on what is communicated visually, of paying too much
attention to the "atours,” of not coming to terms with the
divorce between gtre and paraitre.
Professional jargon is one of the subjects which Mon
93
taigne attacks most frequently, especially the jargon of
medecine, pedagogy, and law: "Pourquoy est-ce que nostre
langage eomraun, si aise a tout autre usage, devient ohscur
et non intelligible en contract et testament?" (111,13,
1043). He criticizes architects who puff themselves out
with big words like "pilastres, architraves, corniches,
d’ouvrage Corinthien et Dorique" (1,51,294). Such magnifi
cent words make Montaigne’s imagination soar. It seizes on
the palace of Apollidon, whereas, in reality, he finds that
they only refer to "les chetives pieces de la porte de ma
cuisine" (294). He has something similar to say about
terms of rhetoric: "Oyez dire metonomie, metaphore, allego-
rie et autres tels noms de la grammaire, semble-t-il pas
qu'on signifie quelque forme de langage rare et pellegrin?
Ce sont titres qui touchent le babil de vostre chambriere"
(294).
His memories of school-masters are not very pleasant.^
For the most part they were lettre-ferits ("letter-struck"),
men wanting to exalt themselves and swagger around with the
great learning that is floating around on the surface of
their brain, but forever getting confused and tangled up in
their own feet. Montaigne recounts an amusing incident
that took place at his home one day when a lettre-ferit was
present. He tells how one of his friends invented for fun
a jargon of "galimathias, propos sans suite, tiasu de pieces
rapportees" (1,25,138), and thus kept the lettre-ferit busy
94
all day debating and always thinking he was answering the
objections that were made against him. Montaigne finishes
his story with a telling blow, using the same technique as
in the closing sentence of "Des cannibals": "Et si estoit
homme de lettres et de reputation, et qui avoit tine belle
robe" (138). How far apart the Stre and paraitre! Montai
gne finds that such people are very common and that most of
the time they understand neither themselves nor others.
Their jargon is an obstacle to communication.
It is through the senses that we have knowledge of
things: "Or toute cognoissance s'achemine en nous par les
sens" (11,12,572); "II n'y a sens qui n'ait une grande do
mination, et qui n'apporte par son moyen un nombre infiny
de connoissances" (574-75). But suppose our senses are
faulty, or we are sick, or excited, or angry, then what
happens? "[Les sens] mentent et se trompent h l'envy. Ce
que nous voyons et oyons agitez de colere, nous ne l'oyons
pas tel qu*il est" (580). Consequently, our very senses
can act as obstacles to communication. "Les sens sont nos
propres et premiers juges, qui n'appergoivent les choses
que par les accidents extemes" (111,8,908). Furthermore,
our senses as they are constituted do not always react to
external stimulii in the same way: "Les accidens des mala
dies, de la resverie ou du sommeil nous font paroistre les
choses autres qu’elles ne paroissent aux sains, aux sages
et k ceux qui veillent" (11,12,584). Montaigne proceeds to
95
deduce that since in anger, illness, madness, or sleep,
things appear to us otherwise than they appear when we are
calm, healthy, sane, and awake, it is not likely that our
normal state can also assign to things an essence corres
ponding to our condition, accommodating them to us as our
disordered states do: "Le desgoutd charge la fadeur au vin:
le sain, la saveur; l*altere, la friandise" (584). One of
Montaigne*s most ingratiating and intimate self-portraits
makes the same point:
J*ay le pied si instable et si mal assis,
je le trouve si ayse a croler et si prest
au branle, et ma veu@ si desregl£e, que h
jun je me sens autre qu’apr&s le repas; si
ma sant6 me rid et la clart^ d'un beau
jour, me voylh honneste homme; si j*ay un
cor qui me presse l*orteil, me voylh ren-
froign£, mal plaisant et inacessible. Un
mesme pas de cheval me semble tantost rude,
tantost aysd, et mesme chemin a cette heure
plys court, une autre fois plus long, et
une mesme forme ores plus, ores moins agre-
able. Maintenant je suis h tout faire,
maintenant a rien faire; ce qui m'est plai-
sir h cette heure, me sera quelque fois
peine. . . . Chacun k peu prfcs en diroit
autant de soy, s'il se regardoit comme moy,
(11,12,548-49).
Therefore, if the senses we have can sometimes deceive us,
perhaps we are even further deceived by the senses we do
not have. Montaigne makes this point in connection with
an apple:
Nous saisissons la pomme quasi par tous nos
sens; nous y trouvons de la rougeur, de la
polisseure, de l'odeur et de la douceur;
outre cela, elle peut avoir d’autres vertus,
comme d*asseicher ou restreindre, ausquelles
96
nous n'avons point de sens qui se puisse
rapporter, (574).
It is possible then, he reasons, that there are sensory
facilities which we lack, and because of this, the true es
sence of some things remains forever outside our knowledge:
"I^est-il pas vraysemblable qu'il y a des facultez sensi
tives en nature . . . et que le defaut de telles facultez
nous apporte 1*ignorance de la vraye essence de telles
choses?" (574). We produce a truth by the concurrence of
the five senses; but perhaps there are eight or ten senses
necessary "pour 1*appercevoir certainement et en son es
sence" (575). The fact remains that the senses are the
sovereign master of our knowledge; but Montaigne concludes
that they are "incertains et falsibliables h toutes circon-
stances" (576). Our great error in communication comes
from our smugness concerning the reliability of our sensory
faculties. If someone contradicts our observations, rather
than yield, if not to the adversary, at least to the inade
quacy of our senses, we resort to "l»opiniastretd, la teme
rity, l*impudence" (576). In conclusion, Montaigne says
that since our condition accommodates things to itself and
transforms them according to itself, we no longer know what
things are in truth. If we keep this in mind in the course
of human interrelationships, we will be less dogmatic and
find communication easier and richer in overtones. Of
course, we are-here at the very core of what becomes for
Montaigne full-blown Pyrrhonism. For my purpose, what is
important as far as communication is concerned is to see
that Montaigne viewed the senses as a possible stumbling
block in communicative processes. He is warning us to be
forever on guard, making allowances for errors in human
perception: "L'incertitude de nos sens rend incertain tout
ce qu'ils produisent" (584-). In realizing the shortcomings
of our senses, we will not be so peremptory and assertive
in affirming the information they communicate to us: "Au
moins devroit nostre condition fautiere nous faire porter
plus moderement et retenuement en noz changemens" (546).
We should bear in mind that whatever we receive into our
understanding, "nous y recevons souvent des choses fauces"
(547). Montaigne had first hand experience of such dogma
tists: his school masters and, later, fellow-magistrates;
and the religious wars had been ignited by heavy-handed
dogmatism.
Montaigne's own perspicacity did not prevent him from
seeing an obstacle to communication in an excess of perspi
cacity: "Cette clarte penetrante a trop de subtility et de
curiositd" (11,20,657). In ordinary uses of life and for
the service of public business, "les esprits commune et
moins tendus" (657) are found to be more fit. There is no
need, Montaigne continues, to light up affairs so thorough
ly and so subtly. One gets lost considering so many dif
ferent aspects: "Qui en recherche et embrasse toutes les
circonstances et consequences, il empesche son election"
98
(657). The danger cornea from the fact that the ingenious
mind can find in any subject "quelque air qui luy serve h
son poinct" (11,12,570). Even in the clearest and most
perfect writing, the imagination will be able to discover
a hundred meanings never intended. Montaigne's implicit
recommendation, then, is that we should withhold judgment
because far-reaching interpretation is a chancy pursuit.
"Ainsin il ne se peut establir rien de certain de l'un k
1'autre, et le jugeant et le jug£ estans en continuelle mu
tation et branle" (586).
I have already discussed Montaigne's overriding con
cern for the good health of Erance through a consolidated
K
society.-' Edward Sapir gives as one of the primary commu
nicative processes of society "a large and ill defined
group of implicit processes which grow out of overt beha
vior and which may rather vaguely be referred to as 'social
suggestion.' The imitation of overt behavior is essential
to a consolidated society. Such imitation while not com
municative in intent, has always the retroactive value of
a communication, for in the process of falling in with the
ways of society one in effect acquiesces in the meanings
that inhere in these ways."** Of this, Montaigne was only
too well aware. His concern for a consolidated Erance
necessarily implies that obedience to example and practice
is essential and that minds which are "weighted" and
"blunted" are more amenable in this respect than the per
99
spicacious and "high-strung" ones: "II les ties espritsl
faut appesantir et emousser pour les rendre plus oheissans
k l’exemple et a la pratique" (11,20,657). Montaigne
places a high premium on a good talker, hut his communica
tive skills are of little use if they are not well grounded
in the hard practicalities and realities of life and living.
To clinch his point, Montaigne mentions "un grand diseur et
trks-excellent peintre de toute sorte de mesnage, qui a
laiss£ hien piteusement couler par ses mains cent milie
livres de rentes" (657).
Related to the obstacle to communication inherent in
the "bon diseur" are those arising from loquaciousness.
Montaigne’s term for it is usually rather pejorative. One
of his favorites is babil: "Le monde n'est que babil, et ne
vis jamais homme qui ne die plustost plus que moins qu'il
ne doit; toutesfois la moicti£ de nostre aage s’en va lh"
(1,26,168). This is an indictment of all the years ("half
of our life") wasted at school in learning how to express
oneself.1 "On nous tient quatre ou cinq ans k entendre les
mots et les coudre en clauses; encores autant h en propor-
tionner un grand corps, estendu en quatre ou cinq parties;
et autres cinq, pour le moins, k les sgavoir brefvement
mesler et entrelasser de quelque fagon" (168). Let us
leave that, concludes Montaigne, to those who make a special
profession of it. He is convinced that if the student is
well equipped with substance, words will follow only too
100
readily. "Que nostre disciple soit t>ien pourveu de choses,
les parolles ne suivront que trop" (168).
Somewhat similar to the "bon diseur" is that human
type that too often chooses to talk about subjects unfamil
iar to him. A case in point is the magistrate, who, when
shown a study furnished with all sorts of law books and
many other kinds as well, found in it no occasion for com
ment. He did, however, comment "rudement et magistrale-
ment" (1,17,72) upon the barricade at the head of the wind
ing stairway which led to the study. Yet, Montaigne re
marks, a hundred captains and soldiers had seen the barri
cade but with never a comment. The experts on barricades
did not comment on the barricade; the expert on law did not
comment on law books. The story is suggestive of Montai
gne's enduring scorn for the language of magistrates and of
Q
his predilection for that of soldiers.
Montaigne recounts the above incident in Book I, Chap
ter 17, "Un traict de quelques ambassadeurs," one of the
very earliest chapters, dated 1572-74. In the opening sen
tence, he relates communication to learning; talking with
others is one of the finest schools there can be; "J'ob
serve en mes voyages cette practique, pour apprendre tous-
jours quelque chose par la communication d'autruy (qui est
une des plus belles escholes qui puisse estre), de ramener
tousjours ceux avec qui je confere, aux propos des choses
qu'ils sqavent le mieux" (71). One of the chronic problems
101
in communication is that people fail to talk about the
things they know best. This comes back again and again as
the central theme in this chapter. A little later, Montai
gne gives his reaction to historians, some of whom are
veritable writers by profession, some, doctors, and others,
lawyers. Here is the principle by which he decodes their
message:
A la lecture des histoires, qui est le sub
jet de toutes gens, j'ay accoustum^ de consi-
derer qui en sont les escrivains: si ce sont
personnes qui ne facent autre profession que
de lettres, j'en apren principalement le
stile et le langage; si ce sont medecins, je
les croy plus volontiers en ce qu'ils nous
disent de la temperature de l'air, de la
santd et complexion des Princes, des bles-
sures et maladies; si Jurisconsultes, il en
faut prendre les controverses des droicts,
les loix, l*establis3ement des polices et
choses pareille, (72).
Specialists simply feel compelled to extend their capaci
ties beyond their specialty. In the interest of good com
munication it is the decoder's role to keep in mind the
specialty of the sender and thus sort out the reliably
factual from the fancifully speculative. In such a vein
Montaigne assails his idol Caesar for having talked too
much of building bridges and machines. Not satisfied with
being an excellent captain, he wanted to make himself
known as an excellent engineer. This desire of over-ex-
tending oneself is a universal quality, a point Montaigne
makes by quoting Horace: "The slow ox wants the saddle,
the horse wants the plow." He finally gets to the title
102
of the chapter by mentioning an incident in French history
at the time of Charles V. Ambassadors were sent to the
king with reports to make. Rather than relate things in
fl.11 their detail, they disguised the greater part. Montai
gne finds this despicable. The ambassadors were after all
bearers of a message (the channel) from one king to another.
4
Here is what Montaigne thinks the role of the message-bearer
should have been: "Et m'eut sembld 1*office du serviteur
estre de fidelement representer les choses en leur entier,
comme elles sont adventies, affin que la liberty d'ordonner,
juger et choisir demeurast au maistre? (73 )• Between ser
vant and master, then, the communicative procedure is
clear: change nothing, disguise nothing, conceal nothing.
Montaigne wants the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Further, he advises any man to limit his conversation to
those things he knows best: an author, writing; a doctor,
medicine; a lawyer, legal matters. Working from this prem
ise, communication will be conducted on a reliable level,
fostering learning, which, in the opening sentence in this
chapter, is the primary aim. It is significant that Mon
taigne views his own role as slightly coercive. The chap
ter opens with his commenting on the conversational tech
niques he uses when traveling. He says he always steers
back ("ramener") those he talks with to the subjects they
know best. This implies superior discrimination and tact
on Montaigne's part and actually constitutes a tacit recom
103
mendation that such qualities he deployed in overcoming
this universal obstacle to communication, namely, man’s
tendancy to over-extend himself. Of course, there are a
few exceptional men (la Bo^tie was one and Adrianus Turne-
bus was another) whose knowledge is vast enough and whose
intellect is sound enough to permit them to converse on
any subject. In the following passage, we note that Mon
taigne, in a conversation with the great professor of elo
quence at the College Royal in Paris, rather than steering
him back to his specialized areas, deliberately launched
him on subjects far-removed from his practice:
J'ay veu Adrianus Turnebus, qui, n'ayant
faict autre profession que des lettres,
en laquelle c'estoit, a mon opinion, le
plus grand homme qui fut il y a mil' ans,
n’avoit toutesfois rien de pedantesque
que le port de sa robe. . . . Au dedans
c’estoit l’ame la plus polie du monde.
Je l’ay souvent k mon esciant jett6 en
propos eslongnez de son usage; il y
voyoit si cler, d'une apprehension si
prompte. d'un jugement si sain, qu’il
sembloit; qu’il n'eut jamais faict autre
mestier que la guerre et affaires d’Es-
tat. Ce sont natures belles et fortes
. . . qui se maintiennent au travers
d'une mauvaise institution, (1,25,139).
Here is a man who extends himself far out, but since his
reach is great, one cannot speak of over-extension. It is
with this kind of conversant that communication, such as
Montaigne conceived it and yearned for it, was free of all
obstacles, becoming, as we shall see in the next chapter,
ideal communication.
104
Before leaving this chapter 17» a word on the communi
cative resources that Montaigne uses in plying his art as
literary craftsman. The title, as usual, falls short of
indicating what the chapter is ahout; "Un traict de quel-
ques ambassadeurs." Actually, ambassadors are only brought
up in passing. "Traict" is really the key word, and a cer
tain "traict" at that, namely, one of not communicating the
whole truth. This chapter is typical of Montaigne's method.
He uses all the resources of his knowledge and experience
o
to bombard the reader with examples:
(1) Ancients quoted,
(a) Propertius
(b) Horace.
(2) Examples cited from Antiquity,
(a) Archidaraus and Periander
(b) Caesar
(c) Dionysius the Elder
(d) P. Crassus.
(3) Examples from his own life,
(a) Prom his travels
(b) Magistrate commenting on barricade
(c) Prom his readings in history.
(4) Examples from contemporary events,
(a) People who obey the king to the word
(b) Kings of Persia.
(5) General comments,
(a) Architects, painters, shoemakers
(b) Ambassadors "editing" what they tell
the king.
Actually, this method is designed not just to tell stories
and cite references which serve for example or authority.
105
Montaigne also has something else in mind; he sees his
stories and quotations as potential detonators,'1 ’ ® setting
off in the mind of the reader any number of ideas not re
lated to the original context— ideas which will stimulate
the processes of monadic communication once two-way com
munication (i.e., Montaigne/reader) has run its course.
Montaigne puts it this way:
Combien y ay-je espandu d'histoires qui ne
disent mot, lesquelles qui voudra esplucher
un peu ingenieusement, en produira infinis
Essais. Ny elles, ny mes allegations ne
servent pas tousjours simplement d*exemple,
d1 authority ou d'omement. Je ne les re
garde pas seulement par l*usage que j*en
tire. Elles portent souvent, hors de mon
propos, la semence d'une matiere plus riche
et plus hardie, et sonnent a gauche tua ton
plus delicat, et pour moy qui n'en veux
exprimer d'avantage. et pour ceux qui
rencontreront mon air,(1,40,245)*
The "numberless Essays" which the reader will ingeniously
produce will be the fruit of a kind of conversation that is
between him and himself in his own arriere boutique in very
much the same way as was Montaigne's in his.1^
Montaigne has much to say about bravado and anger as
impediments to communication. If someone undertakes to
plead his case by bravado, he is merely showing that it is
weak in reason; "Qui establit son discours par braverie et
commandement montre que la raison y est foible" (111,11,
1009)* For the discerning eye and ear, his overzealous
efforts unwittingly communicate what he is trying to mask,
namely, that his case is weak. Thus, there are people who
106
get angry and hurl insults if one doubts the truth of what
they are trying to say, "Je vois bien qu* on se courrouce,
et ne deffend on d'en doubter, sur peine d*injures execra-
bles. Nouvelle faqon de persuader. Pour Dieu mercy, ma
creanoe ne se manie pas k coups de poing" (1008). No real
communication is possible when one is confronted with such
bullying tactics. And all of France was in just such a
confrontation thanks to the Catholic and Protestant dogma
tists who believed, each group in turn, that supernatural
approbation sanctioned them. This privilege, says Mon
taigne, "ne doibt pas estre avily et communique legerement"
(1009). Similar to bravado is the quality of highhanded
ness, displayed by the man who is affronted if you balk at
following the advice he has given you. Such annoyance
leads Montaigne to break off with the man altogether: "Je
romps paille avec celuy qui se tient si haut k la main,
comme j'en cognoy quelqu'un qui plaint son advertissement,
s*il n*en est creu" (111,8,902-03). Vanity and stubborn
ness can be costly in communicative terms. We are so sure
of our own stand that we balk at criticism. Montaigne sees
the men of his times especially afflicted with this petty
attitude. He himself welcomes criticism of his Essais and
cheerfully surrenders to it: "Je preste l*espaule aux
reprehensions que l*on faict en mes escrits" (902). And
since his Essais were, among other things, to be a guide
book on how to achieve good communication, he even goes so
107
far as to incorporate— at his own expense— changes that his
critics had offered. One needs courage to suffer "being
corrected, the kind of courage that allows free exchanges
and fosters good communication. Montaigne had the example
of "good" Froissart in this connection: "Le bon Froissard •
. • a marchd en son entreprise d'une si franche nalfvet<5. .
• • C'est la matiere de l'Histoire, nue et informe" (11,10,
397)• The two adjectives are interesting and important.
"Nue" implies full exposure and devoid of all masks. It
underlines the kind of unimpeachable authenticity Montaigne
was aiming for in communication. "Informe" puts the stress
on lack of stylization and structuralization— human inter
ventions which often twist, mask, or disguise underlying
truths•
One of Montaigne's favorite images is that of the
mask. He sees his times marked by changing values. Among
the most highly honored ones is the "nouvelle virtu" of
hypocrisy and dissimulation: "Quant k cette nouvelle vertu
de faintise et de dissimulation qui est k cette heure si
fort en credit, je la hay capitallement" (11,17,630). For
Montaigne, this is to disguise ourselves and hide under a
mask: "s'aller desguiser et cacher sous tan masque" (630).
Montaigne saw virtue, when it existed, as intrinsic to a
person and compared it to strong dye in a fabric: "C’est une
vive et forte teinture, quand l'ame en est une fois abbre—
vee, et qui ne s'en va qu'elle emporte la piece" (11,1,
108
320). For those who lack virtue, it is possible to borrow
her mask ("on emprunte par fois son masque," 320), and Mon
taigne saw examples of this all around him. It was espe
cially common at court and surely was one of the main rea
sons that Montaigne renounced attending it. In a passage
on royalty he assumes momentarily the prince’s vantage
point. Viewing his subjects and courtiers, he laments,
"Tout ce qu’ils me dient et font, ce n’est que fard. . . •
Je ne voy rien autour de moy, que couvert et masqu<3" (1,42,
258). Here we see the direct connection in Montaigne’s
own mind between the mask and communication. All that the
courtiers say is powder and paint; all the king sees is
covered and masked. There is a total dislocation of real
communicative processes. Montaigne has something interest
ing to say in a passage on our fear of death:
Je croy k la verity que ce sont ces mines
et appareils effroyables, dequoy nous
l’entoumons [1’ = la mart] , qui nous
font plus peur qu'elle. ; • . II faut
oster le masque aussi bien des“clioses
que des personnes; ost6 qu’il sera, noqs
ne trouverons au dessoubs que cette mesme
mort, qu’un valet ou simple chambriere
passerent dernierement sans peur. Heu-
reuse la mort qui oste le loisir aux ap-
prests de tel equipage! (1,20,94-95)*
Part of our fear of death comes from the frightening death
bed scenes and all the accompanying mourning. This is all
so much ostentation and fanfare. The solution is to strip
the mask from things as well as from persons. Dying is
really not such a terrifying ordeal, to wit, the valet or
109
chambermaid who passed through it without fear not long ago.
The dreadful faces and trappings communicate fear, and once
stripped away, fear will diminish.
It is not necessary to say everything, maintains Mon
taigne: "11 ne faut pas tousjours dire tout, car ce seroit
sottise" (11,17*631). Rules of etiquette and common civili
ty are very important in the orderly workings of society.
There must by necessity be a certain amount of role-playing:
"II faut jouer deuement nostre rolle, mais comme rolle d*un
personnage emprunte" (111,10,989). The essential thing is
that one know that he is assuming a role, that his role is
borrowed and is not really his own. The usual error is to
make a real essence of the mask that one assumes: "Du mas
que et de l'apparence il n'en faut pas faire une essence
reelle" (989). Man's trouble is that he cannot distinguish
the skin from the shirt. "C'est asses de s'enfariner le
visage, sans s'enfariner la poietrine" (989).
Exactly what is this mask that is one of communica
tion's most formidable obstacles? It is dress. It is
social status and manner of speaking. It is carriage, mien,
presence, and, in general, all-round bearing. Men prefer
to hide behind these social accouterments and conceal their
real beings. An inept remark, for example, carries consid
erable authority if it is uttered by a wealthy man wearing
a grave expression and a magistrate's gown: "La gravity, la
robbe et la fortune de celuy qui parle donne souvent credit
110
& des propos vains et ineptes" (111,8,909). Pomp, osten
tation, and a show of learning are sufficient in themselves
to raise up ideas however inept they may he: "Nous ... es-
timons plates et "basses toutes celles que la doctrine ne
releve . . . [et nous] n'apercevons la richesse qu'en mon-
tre et en pompe. Nostre monde n'est form£ qu*& 1*ostenta
tion: les hommes ne s*enflent que de vent, et se manient h .
bonds, comme les balons" (111,12,1014).
Montaigne realizes that, in addition to words, facial
expression bears weight in communicative processes: "Non
settlement les mots, mais aussi les grimaces de ces gens 1&
se considerent et mettent en compte" (111,8,909). It is
not possible to have an ordinary conversation with these
people, for, if you offer them anything but reverence in
exchange, they will beat you down with the authority of
their experience: "S*il se rabaissent h la conference com
mune et qu'on leur presente autre chose qu'aprobation et
reverence, ils vous assomment de 1'authorit6 de leur ex
perience: ils ont ouy, ils ont veu, ils ont faict; vous
estes accabl^ d'exemples" (909). We are taken in by show.
The redoubtable personage, disdainful and supercilious,
with a large following, is invariably looked upon as abler
12
than this other man who bows to him at a distance. "Les
estrangers ne voyent que les evenmens et apparences ex-
temes; chacun peut faire bonne mine par le dehors" (11,16,
609). Montaigne wants his compatriots to go beyond the
Ill
"apparences externea" and not judge a man "& sa reverence,
son maintien et k ses bottes" (1,25,139). One must make
an effort to observe closely, paying attention to gesture
and involontary body movements. "A quant de fois tesmoi-
gnent les mouvemens forcez de nostre visage les pensdes que
nous tenions secrettes, et nous trahissent aus assistans"
(1,21,100). The shrugging of the shoulders, the placing of
a hand, the halting tongue— all these things demand inter
pretation, and, in a given context, can be more meaningful
than the words themselves, "la main se porte souvent ou
nous ne l'envoyons pas. La langue se transit et la voix se
fige k son heure" (100). Along these lines Montaigne comes
very close to formulating a theory of communication as sub
tle and "modem" as some of our twentieth-century minds
(Harold J. Vetter, Dell Hymes, Hernert Landar, and Edward
Sapir, among others” ^). He is aware that the message de
livered by language may be less important than the message
communicated by gesture, voice intonation, and involuntary
body movements in general. Ray Birdwhistell has estimated
that in a conversational situation between two people, less
than thirty-five percent of the social meaning is carried
verbally, the remainder being transmitted nonverbally.^
Montaigne also has something to say about our failure
to communicate with ourselves. There is often, so to speak,
a breakdown in communication between consciousness and the
(spontaneous) self. The obstacle here is self-blindnes3,
112
an unwillingness to spy on oneself, to peer searchingly in
to the inner mind. In speaking of the insatiability of cer
tain women, Montaigne says that there axe other women who
•s'en escrient et cerchent les causes de cette maladie en
elle" (III,5*864). What amazes Montaigne is that the crit
ics who find the "maladie” in women so "desnatur^e et in-
croyable," often accept it in themselves without being
appalled and calling it a miracle.
Pyrrho had made a science out of the suspension of
human judgment and he tried to make his life correspond to
his doctrine. Unable to take sides, he ended up consider
ing all things as indifferent and would always maintain the
same manner and countenance1^— hardly stimulating for ver
bal exchange and contrary to what Montaigne needs for his
kind of communication: "Je m*avance vers celuy qui me con-
tredit. . . . Je souffrirois estre rudement heurt^ par mes
amis. ... J'ayme, entre les galans hommes, qu'on s’ex
prime courageusement" (111,8,902). Pyrrho was so extreme
in applying his doctrine that "s*il avoit commence un pro-
pos, il ne laissoit pas de l'achever, quand celuy k qui il
parloit s*en fut alle" (11,29,684). It is quite obvious
that under such circumsatnces communication bogs down'alto
gether. Pyrrho's error was in insisting on fashioning a
consistent and solid fabric out of man, whereas inconsis
tency is his ruling quality. Even "bons autheurs" commit
this error, choosing one general characteristic, and,
113
"suyvant cette image, vont rengeant et interpretant toutes
les actions d’un personnage, et, s'ils ne les peuvent as3ez
tordre, les vont renvoyant S . la dissimulation1 1 (11,1,315).
So, failure to realize the basic inconsistent nature of man
accounts for inadequate and twisted truths— obvious ob
structions to good communication.
It is basically from human speech and its inadequacies
that many of our ills arise. Montaigne makes this point
with reference to his servants. He realizes that they are
all rather dull-witted, full of vices, prone to make mis
takes. Realizing this, he does not get upset when they make
mistakes. They were to be expected. But he does get upset
over something else: their language, what they say, how
they say it, why they say it. Let them make mistakes, but
when it comes to their asinine excuses, their defenses and
assertions, he is driven to despair:
Je ne m'esmeus pas une fois l*an des fautes
de ceux stir lesquels j'ay puissance; mais,
sur le poinct de la bestise et opiniastrety
de leurs allegations, excuses et defences
asnieres et brutales, nous sommes tous les
jours k nous en prendre h la gorge. Ils
n ♦ entendent ny ce qui se diet ny •pourquoy.
et respondent de mesme; c * est pour deses-
perer. Je ne sens heurter rudement ma
teste que par une autre teste, et entre
plustost en composition avec le vice de
mes gens qu'avec leur temerity, importuni
ty, et leur sottise. Qu’ils facent moins,
pourveu qu'ils soyent capables de faire:
vous vivez en esperance d’eschauffer leur
volontd; mais d’une souche il n’y a ny
qu'esperer, ny que jouyr qui vaille,
(111,8,906-07).
114
Montaigne is primarily upset by the stupidity of his people,
but it is the stupid remark, and not the stupid act, that up
sets him the most, language being for him the principle man
ifestation of their stupidity. We note in the sentence
italicized how the servants are hopelessly inept in both
the encoding and decoding aspects of communication.
What is it about language and its misuse that is- so
upsetting? Why should a broken promise excite us more than
a broken dish? One is the product of a careless mind, the
other of careless hands. One is mental, the other, physical.
Montaigne resolves this dialectic by his oft-cited question
about the lame body as opposed to the lame mind: "Voyre
mais, pourquoy, sans nous esmouvoir, rencontrons nous quel-
qu*un qui ayt le corps tortu et mal basty, et ne pouvons
souffrir le rencontre d'un esprit mal reng<3 sans nous mettre
en cholere?" (111,8,907). It is the dialectic of form ver
sus matter all over again. The deformed body is the sub
stance; the mind is the form. For Montaigne, form is sub
ject to improvement, something to be worked on, exercised,
and "essayed.w And what infuriates him about the ill-or
dered mind is that no effort has been made to amend it.
The mind, as form, is kinetic and malleable, whereas the
lame body, as substance, is static and inalterable. A bro
ken dish and clumsy hands, well, they belong to the physical
realm and are tolerable, but the clumsy excuse is the pro
duct of a clumsy mind, and that is intolerable.
But that is not Montaigne's final word on the subject.
As usual, he now turns inward and appraises himself, and if
he likes to be treated roughly by others, he treats himself
likewise. In this instance, he ends by accusing himself.
Not just the servants say stupid and inconsistent things
day after day: "Combien de sottises dis-je et respons-je
tous les jours, selon moy; et volontiers donq combien plus
frequentes, selon autruy!" (111,8,907). In effect, he turns
against himself exactly what he had said about his servants,
or what he could say about his neighbors: "Noz yeux ne
voient rien en derriere. Cent fois du jour, nous nous mo-
quons de nous sur le subject de nostre voisin et detestons
en d'autres les defauts qui sont en nous plus elairement"
(111,8,908). Our anger, our stupid replies, our defenses
and excuses, he reduces them all to absurdities: ”11 n'est,
a la verite, point de plus grande fadese, et plus constante,
que de s'esmouvoir et piquer des fadeses du monde" (907).
When he has to scold his valet, he scolds him with all his
heart: "Quand je tance avec mon valet, je tance du meilleur
courage que j'aye, ce sont vrayes et non feintes impreca
tions" (1,58,230). However, when the heat of anger passes,
let the valet need Master Montaigne's help— he is only too
glad to do him a service. No quality, he contends, embraces
us purely and universally: "Nulle quality nous embrasse
purement et universellement" (230). It happens, he says,
that he looks sometimes coldly, sometimes warmly, on his
116
wife; and whoever "estime que l'une ou 1*autre soit feinte,
il est un sot" (230). His appeal is that in the decoding
processes of communication we would be making a mistake to
try to compose a continuous body out of the succession of
feelings that we perceive in another: ”... voulans de
toute cette suite continuer un corps, nous nous trompons"
(231). It is a return to the theme that pervades all the
Essais: "Certes, c'est tin subject merveilleusement vain,
divers et ondoyant, que l’homme. II est malaise d*y fonder
jugement constant et uniforme" (1,1,13).
This takes us back to the ideal paradigm of communica-
17
tion described above, where self-knowledge is crucial.
Those who do not know themselves, those who are incapable
of "spying on themselves," are outside of the truth (being)
and cannot therefore have communication with what is:
"Estant hors de l'estre, nous n'avons aucune communication
avec ce qui est" (1,3,20). Moving out of the truth
(l’estre) contained within the self (natural light and
reason, both divine in origin, according to stoic and neo
stoic theory), one crosses into the area of non-being—
again the threat of the external, of otherness, the loss of
the self and truth, both sensed as interdependent. This
brings one to reflect on the relationship of the Stoic and
the Skeptic to the entire question of communication. How
can Montaigne be a stoico-skeptic, that is, one who sets up
rational barriers and defenses against the attacks of For-
117
tune and others, and still care for communication, viewed
as a link between the self and others? One can speak of
an evolution in Montaigne, who first writes for himself as
a means of control (typically stoic and skeptic) and ends
up ambiguously espousing the implications and hopes of his
deepest nature, the need to make contact and the possi
bility of it.
■^See Robert J. Brake, "On 'Speechifiers Well Snubbed'
... .," pp. 205-13*
p
Jean Starobinski. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. La trans
parence et 1'obstacle (Paris: librairie PIon, 1957).
3Ibid.
^"Je croy . . . que le mepris des maltres d'^cole
vient de leur mauvaise fagon de se prendre aux sciences;
et qu*h la mode dequoy nous sommes instruicts, il n*est pas
merveille si ny les escholiers, ny les maistres n'en de-
viennent pas plus habiles, quoy qu'ils s'y facent plus
doctes. De vray, le soing et la despence de nos peres ne
vise qu'a nous meubler la teste de science; du jugement
et de la vertu, peu de nouvelles" (1,25,135).
5See supra, pp. 19-20, pp. 23-24.
^Edward Sapir, Communication, p. 76.
7
"En mon pays, et de mon temps, la doctrine amande
assez les bourses, rarement les ames. Si elle les ren
contre mousses, elle les aggrave et suffoque, masse crue
et indigeste; si desliees, elle les purifie volontiers,
clarifie et subtilise jusques h 1'exinanition" (111,8,905).
8
"Le parler que j'ayme, c'est un parler simple et
naif, . . . un parler succulent et nerveux, court et serr6,
. . . non pedantesqie, non fratesque. non pleideresque.
mais plustost soldatesque" (I, 26,171). §e e aTs o “ ITT, 13,
I575\
^"Si suis je trompd. si guere d'autres donnent plus a
prendre en la matiere; er, comment que ce soit, mal ou
bien, si nul escrivain l'a semee ny guere plus materielle
ny au moins drue en son papier" (1,40,245).
118
■^Hugo Friedrich writes: "Montaigne est un des auteurs
classiques que l*on relit, parce qu'il remplit le fond de
ce qu'il dit de possibility inexprimdes ou k peine sugg£-
r<3es que l'on peut chaque fois imaginer diff^rentes," p. 33.
^"En eette-cy [ arriere boutique ] faut-il prendre nos-
tre ordinaire entretien de nous & nous mesme. ... Nous
avons une ame contouraable en soy mesme; elle se peut faire
eompaignie" (1,39,235).
12
In matters of love, however, Montaigne let himself be
swayed by titles and retinues, admitting that he was like
the courtesan Flora, "qui ne se prestoit k moins que d'un
dictateur ou consul ou censeur, et prenoit son deduit en la
dignity de ses amoureux. Certes les perles et le brocadel
y conferent quelque chose, et les tiltres et le trein"
(111,3.804). In all fairness to Montaigne, it must be
added that he prefaced this confession with: "des erreurs
de ma jeunesse" (804).
13
'Harold J. Vetter, Language Behavior and Communica-
tion (New York: F.E. PeacockPublishers. Inc., 1969). Dell
Hymes, Language in Culture and Society (New York: Harper
and Row, 1964;• Herbert Landar. Language and Culture (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1966)“ Edward Sapir,Select
ed Writings of Edward Sapir in Language. Culture and Person
ality (Berkeley: University of California Pres3. 1949).
^DeVito, Communication: Concepts and Processes, p. 89.
IS
'"Ce n'est pas estre amy de soy . . . de se suivre
incessamment et estre si pris a ses inclinations qu'on n'en
puisse fourvoyer" (111,3,796).
^"Je donne & mon ame tantost un visage, tantost un
autre, selon le cost6 ou je la couche. Si je parle diver-
sement de moy, c'est que je me regarde diversement. Toutes
les contrairietez s'y trouvent selon quelque tour et en
quelque faqon" (11,1,319).
1 7
'See supra, p. 7.
CHAPTER V
IDEAL COMMUNICATION: "le
visage et le coeur ouvert"
Nostre intelligence se conduisant par la
seule voye de la parolle, celuy qui la
fauce, trahit la society publique. C'est
le seul util par le moien duquel se com-
muniquent nos volontez et nos pensdes,
c’est le truchement de nostre ame: s'il
nous faut, nous ne nous tenons plus, nous
ne nous entreconnoissons plus. S’il nous
trompe, il rompt tout nostre commerce et
dissoult toutes les liaisons de nostre
police, (11,18,650).
Again we turn to the crucial essay, "Du ddmentir," in
the Second Book. Again Montaigne takes up justification of
his plan of depicting himself, and it is no accident that
it is in this chapter that he "broaches the problem of lying.
Looking at the quotation above, we note that mutual under
standing ("nostre intelligence") is brought about solely by
words. He who breaks his word, betrays human society, and
thus, the obvious value of language in preserving social
and political cohesion. Montaigne’s view is that lying in
the Erance of his time had reached appalling proportions,
that it had, in fact, almost become a virtue: "On s’y
forme, on s’y fagonne, comme h un exercice d’honneur; car
la dissimulation est des plus notables qualitez de ce
siecle" (649). He tells how Salvian of Marseilles (5th
century) wrote that for the French "le mentir et se parjurer
13.9
120
n'est pas vice, mais une faqon de parler" (649)• One could
almost speak of a semantic aphasia in Montaigne's time, in
which a disastrous perversion of communication skills was
doing just the opposite of what language was really intend
ed to he (i.e., "le truchement de nostre ame").
In no time during the nearly sixty years of Montaigne’s
life was France entirely free of the religious and civil
conflict between Catholic and Protestant, and he came hack
from Germany convinced that words were the root of it all:
J'ay veu en Alemagne que Luther a laiss<3
autant de divisions et d'altercations qur
le douhte de ses opinions, et plus, qu'il
n'en esmeut sur les escritures sainctes.
Nostre contestation est verbale. ... La
question est de narolles. ... On es-
change uh mot pour un autre mot, et sou-
vent plus incogneu, (111,13,1046).
In the "Apologie de Raimond Sehond," Montaigne writes:
"Nostre parler a ses foihlesses et ses defauts, comme tout
le reste. La plus part des occasions des troubles du monde
sont Grammairennes" (11,12,508). The grammatical troubles
in question here are not those caused by plain, everyday
schoolmasters legislating over rules of gender and number;
they are caused by the inadequate language of the conven
tions and treaties of agreement between heads of state;
they are also caused by the interpretations of the great,
but dogmatic, theologians. Montaigne proceeds to illus
trate this point by reminding us of all the quarrels pro
duced in the world by the word Hoc The dogmatists had
121
had a field-day with the word, turning language into a so
phistic tool. Likewise, with the philosophic sects, their
dissensions often boil down to mere verbal quibbles: "Les
dissentions des sectes Philosophiques, en ce cas, sont ver-
bales" (1,20,80). It was this corrupted and abusive lan
guage that Montaigne was condemning, for it was the main
cause and perpetrator of Prance's troubles.
Words were cutting off and isolating, causing more
misunderstandings than they prevented. People had no more
hold on each other, no more knowledge of each other. Mon
taigne's goal would be like that of the Athenians: "h ra-
battre 1*imposture des mots captieusement entrelassez"
(1,25f142). He, with his Essais. would serve as a sort of
palace guard sworn to defend language, or rather, a certain
use of language. He would tell the truth, the whole truth,
about himself, about his world, about how he viewed his
place in that world; and, in so doing, he would create a
set of values in an age of crisis and disorder, and this,
"non sans dessein de publique instruction" (11,18,648).
Others had tried to correct the world's morals by new
ideas, but that was only to correct superficial vices.
Montaigne would try to correct them through communication
as he set about rescuing language, repairing words, putting
them back in shape, restoring them to accuracy, making them
faithful again to the commands of the mind and the heart.
"Un coeur genereux ne doit point desmentir ses pens^es;
122
il se veut faire voir jusques au dedans" (11,17,630). Mon
taigne had no new revolutionary idea to share, for, the law
of honesty, howsoever neglected in the France of his time,
is an ancient one. "Parler avec toute franchise" (630) was
Aristotle's recommendation— a recommendation which Montaigne
takes in depicting himself and so implies in the preface,
"Au lecteur": "Je veus qu'on m'y voie en ma faqon sample,
naturelle et ordinaire, sans contantion et artifice." In
asmuch as slander and reproach are obvious impediments to
good communication, they should be answered with openness
and frankness in confession, which have the advantage of
weakening them: "La confession genereuse et libre enerve le
reproehe et desarme 1'injure" (111,9,958). Speaking in all
frankness of oneself means that one is willing to speak of
the good along with the bad. When one speaks of one's ac
complishments, one need not apologize as did Tibertius
when he reminded his fellow senators that he had held a
certain honorable office at Rome, adding that he did not
say so out of ostentation. Montaigne considers this a lit
tle "mean-spirited," because "n'oser parler rondement de soy
a quelque faute de coeur" (111,8,921). A man with good
judgment should be able to speak frankly about himself as
about a third party. We cannot accuse Montaigne of disre
garding this principle in writing his essays. It is in the
name of truth and liberty that he often favors dispensing
with bothersome rules of common civility: "II faut passer
123
par dessus ces regies populaires de la civilitd en faveur de
la verity et de la liberte" (921). He also observes this
principle in the business of receiving and entertaining
2
guests, waiving many of the ordinary rules. Too much ci
vility, like other excesses, is to be avoided: "J'ay veu
souvent des hommes incivils par trop de civility, et impor-
tuns de coutoisie" (1,13,49)•
But too much emphasis on the powers of language as a
social and political panacea would be to displace Montai
gne's own emphasis. Society is composed of individuals and
Montaigne's first concern was with the individual, or ra
ther, more particularly with himself as a private individual
and yet as a member of society, as reflected in an earlier
quotation: "L'erreur particuliere faict premierement l'er-
reur publique" (111,11,1005). Therefore, it is communica
tion between individuals, as well as communication with him
self, that Montaigne focuses on: if the individual's lin
guistic house is in order, the whole community will be in
order. Although good judgment is indeed a prerequisite for
frankness, it is never a matter of simply being honest, but
of forming oneself to honesty.
Keeping one's word is Montaigne most inviolable prin
ciple: "J'aymeroy bien plus cher rompre la prison d'une rau-
raille et des loix que de ma parole" (III,9f944). Promises
should not be given lightly, he continues. In his own case,
he feels that if he says what he plans to do, he prescribes
124
it far himself: "II me semble que je le promets quand je le
dy" (944). For a man who so shuns obligations of any kind,
it is natural that he does not like to be bound by promises;
to avoid them, he merely avoids "airing" his plans: "Ainsi
j*evente peu mes propositions" (944). And of course, the
coin has two sides: unwilling to make commitments to others,
he does not expect others to do so to him either: "Mes
cognoissants, et au dessus et au dessous de moy, sqavent
s'ils en ont jamais veu de moins chargeant sur autruy"
(947).3
Ideally speaking, actions, as exempla.^ have greater
communicative powers than words, and best results are
achieved when acts and words are in harmony. There is the
supreme example of Seneca’s wife, Paulina, who wanted to die
with her husband: "Je ne veux pas que vous pensiez que les
vertueux exemples de vostre vie ne m’ayent encore appris h
sqavoir bien mourir" (11,35,727). She did not speak of his
"discours" or of his "paroles": it was the "exemples" which
counted. In the last analysis, it was through the "exemptLed*
that something was communicated: "montrer, non plus par dis
cours . . . mais par effect" (726). What one says is with
out value, if it cannot find its counterpart perfectly re
flected in what one does. Montaigne, in his own life,
found it prudent to promise a little less than what he
could do: "Je promets volontiers un peu moins de ce que je
puis et de ce que j'espere tenir" (111,10,1002). There is
125
the other supreme example of Paetus' wife, Arria, who, to
make her husband commit suicide in honorable Homan fashion
had to show him— not tell him— how it was done: "Pais ainsi,
Paetus, . . . il ne m'a point faict mal" (11,55,725).
It is in the chapter on education that Montaigne makes
some of his most explicit statements on ideal communication.
He thinks that tutors talk too much and never listen. Good
communication is two-way, and there must he feedback: "iLe
gouvemeur] ne cesse de criailler & nos oreilles. . . . Je
ne veux pas qu'il invente et parle seul, je veux qu'il es-
coute son diciple & son tour" (1,26,149). Yet, the student
should not be allowed to prattle permissively about every
thing. Silence and modesty are very good qualities in stim
ulating interpersonal communication: "le silence et la mo-
destie sont qualitez tres-coramodes h la conversation" (153).
Ideally, one should not enter a discussion or argument ex
cept with someone worthy of him, and then it is important
to choose one's arguments with care, "aymant la pertinence,
et par consequent la briefvet4” (154). Throughout Montai
gne's elaboration of the ideal educational program, he
stresses those things that will prepare the student for
social intercourse, as for example, his advice that unre
strained bookishness should be discouraged, for "cela les
[pupils] rend ineptes & la conversation civile" (163).
Likewise, the student should not be fastidious and finical
because "toute estranged et particularity en nos meurs et
conditions est evitable comme ennemie de communication et
de soci£t^ et comme monstrueuse" (166). Especially should
he avoid fastidiousness in speech. Montaigne considers it
pettiness to seek attention "by using novel phrases and
little-known words. It is naturalness that one should aim
for. He even goes so far as to recommend the speech that
one hears in the markets of Paris on the tongue of "une
harangiere du Petit-pont" (169). "le parler que j'ayme,
c*est un parler simple et naif; . . . un parler succulent
et nerveux, court et serr6, non tant delicat et peigne
comme vehement et brusque" (171). The ideal speech is one
in which the substance stands out, so striking the mind of
the listener that he will have no memory of the words: "Je
veux que les choses surmonte et qu'elles remplissent de
fa$on 1'imagination de celuy qui escoute, qu'il n'aye au-
eune souvenance des mots" (171). The eloquence that diverts
us to itself harms its content.
Too much has been made over Montaigne's retirement
c
from the world. He was first and foremost a social animal,
and in no real sense can his withdrawal be interpreted as a
renunciation of society. The experiences and readings on
which he constantly draws are nearly always in a social con
text. The "arriere boutique" was after all a back-shop,
and retire though he did to his tower library, he constant
ly re-emerged whether to take a 17-month journey to Rome,
to spend four years as mayor of Bordeaux, or to go on numer
127
ous trips to Paris and elsewhere. Moreover, he did much
visiting in the neighborhood, and he tells us that his home
has long been open to men of letters.
Montaigne gives many suggestions on ways to communicate
most effectively in social circumstances as well as in do
mestic ones. To open up another man’s speech, he recom
mends an open way of speaking: "Un parler ouvert ouvre un
autre parler et le tire hors, comme faict le vin et 1*amour"
(111,1,771). It is the the soul with multiple-levels that
Montaigne most admires;^ it is he who communicates with
greatest success, for he is able to move from one level to
another according to the level of his interlocutor. This
sometimes involves affecting ignorance, for in Montaigne’s
opinion,"c*est h . . . bien faire le sot que de faire l'en-
tendu entre ceux qui ne le sont pas" (111,3,799). Montai
gne admits to a handicap in this general area, confessing
envy for those who "sgavent s’aprivoiser au moindre de leur
suitte et dresser de l’entretien en leur propre train" (799).
Je louerois un* ame k divers estages, qui
sqache et se tendre et se desmonter, qui
soit bien par tout ou sa fortune la porte,
qui puisse deviser avec son voisin de son
bastiment, de sa chasse, et de sa querelle,
entretenir avec plaisir un charpentier et
un jardinier, (799).
This desire of his to speak casually and familiarly with
the humblest causes him to reject Plato’s advice, always to
talk to our servants in masterful terms: "II est inhumain
et injuste de faire tant valoir cette telle quelle preroga
128
tive de la fortune" (799). Montaigne has some words of ad
vice on how to achieve good communication with one's ser
vants, and this advice is apparently levelled at his wife
who seems to have resorted to "la criaillerie temeraire et
ordinaire" (II,31f697) in dealing with household servants.
His recommendation is to hushand anger and not expend it at
random: "Celle [colere] que vous employez contre un servi-
teur pour son larqin, ne se sent point, d'autant que c'est
eelle mesme qu'il vous a veu employer cent fois contre luy,
pour avoir mal rinse un verre ou mal as3is une escabelle"
(697). This admonishment also includes not "getting angry
in the air": "Qu'ils ne se courroussent point en l'air, et
regardent que leur reprehension arrive k celuy de qui ils
se plaignent: car ordinairement ils orient avant qu'il soit
en leur presence, et durent a crier un siecle apr&s qu'il
est party" (697). There are indeed times when a show of an-
ger is to he exploited,1 hut for it to have real communica
tive value, it must he appropriate and carefully measured.
As much as Montaigne favors self-control, he does not recom
mend it to the expense of one's peace of mind: "Je con-
seille qu'on donne plustost une buffe h la joue de son va
let un peu hors de saison, que de geiner sa fantasie, pour
representer cette sage contenance" (697). And with uncanny
perception of the mechanics of verbal masochism, he adds:
"II vait mieux que leur I passions] poincte agisse au dehors
que de la plier contre nous" (697). To summarize his ideas
129
on anger, aside from its therapeutic value just mentioned,
Montaigne considers a show of it effective in getting one's
point across on the condition that it is directed sparingly,
knowingly, and selectively, and he himself even simulated
it with good results. With fellow-conversants, he offers
a rather ideal solution, in a quid pro quo gesture, to the
problem of handling anger in arguments:
Je marchande ainsin avec ceux qui peuvent
contester avec moy: "Quand vous me senti-
rez esmeu le premier, laissez moy aller h
tort ou h droict; j'en feray de raesme h
mon tour." la tempeste ne s'engendre que
de la concurrence des choleres qui se pro-
duisent volontiers l'une de 1'autre, et ne
naissent en un point. Donnons & chacune
sa eourse, nous voylh tousjours en paix,
(11,31,695).
This sensible offer of Montaigne's, if accepted and fol
lowed, has the effect of re-establishing order, which is,
of course, one of the basic requisites of any discussion.
In Montaigne's set of values, it has priority over the sub
ject matter, over which opinion wins, and over the strength
and subtlety of the participants' arguments: "II me chaut
peu de la matiere, et me sont les opinions unes, et la vic-
toire du subject h peu pr3s indifferente. Tout un jour je
contesteray'paisiblement, si la conduicte du debat se suit
avec ordre. Ce n'est pas tant la force et la subtility que
je demande, comme 1'ordre" (111,8,903). The important point
here is that Montaigne prefers order or sociability or sim
ply order to Truth. At this end of the spectrum (order-
130
Truth), Montaigne "becomes the precursor of a very unchris
tian philosophy, setting the City of Man over the City of
God; he is a precursor of Ehilinte (Molifere), La Rochefou
cauld, and Voltaire. What needs to be stressed at this
point is Montaigne's oscillation between order and Truth,
both of which are essential to his construct of ideal
communication.
If we are to believe Montaigne, outside the framework
of friendship, we cannot offer him as a model for ideal
communication, except perhapsin negotiations and dealings
with the great and, in certain circumstances, within his
household. It is thought that the deciding factor in his
becoming mayor of Bordeaux was that he was the only satis-
8
factory candidate to all the various parties. He was often
called on to negotiate between the warring princes, and what
he says about his techniques ih these affairs shows why he
was a favorite, and more importantly for our purposes,
points up some fundamental ingredients in.an ideal communi
cation construct. Aware that professional negotiators
usually conceal their thoughts and make every effort to
feign a conciliatory attitude, Montaigne adopts quite the
opposite approach, emphasizing foremost his own moral in
tegrity; "Moy, je m'offre par ilies opinions les plus vives
et par la forme plus mienne. Tendre negotiateur et novice,
qui ayme mieux faillir h l'affaire qu'& moy!" (111,1,769).
Rather than hiding behind a mask of moderation, he freely
131
says anything, however grave or burning, that must be said.
This freedom in speech obviously frees him from any suspi
cion of dissimulation which naturally inspires trust. As
free as his speech is, he does recommend order and a degree
of moderation: "Toutesfois ceux encore qui s'y engagent
tout k faict, le peuvent avec tel ordre et attremnance que
1'orage devra couler par dessus leur teste sans offence”
(770). Ideally then, one should be open, willing to be
morally involved and straightforward in expressing one's
position. We gather that Montaigne was successful in his
use of these techniques: "C'a est£ pourtant jusques k cette
heure avec tel heur (car certes la fortune y a principalle
part) que peu ont pass<3 de main k autre avec moins de soub-
qon, plus de faveur et de privaut^" (769). He sums up his
techniques as "pure naturalness and truth”: "la nalfvety et
la verity pure, en quelque siecle que ce soit, trouvent en
core leur opportunity et leur mise” (769).
Montaigne is suspicious of the credibility of any mes
sage intended for large-scale consumption, especially when
it has been prepared in advance. Only those things tossed
off extemporaneously in intimate company are most reliable.
When he tells us that he liked reading Cicero's Letters to
Atticus. we note that his interests are directed more
towards discovering Cicero's "personal humors" than follow
ing his historical accounts: "Je voy aussi vclontiers les
Epitres 'ad Atticum.' non seulement par ce qu’elles con-
132
tiennent une tr&s-ample instruction de l'Histoire et af
faires de son temps, mais beaucoup plus pour y descouvrir
ses humeurs privies" (11,10,394). The reason that Montai
gne is wary of most such writings is that he knows that the
authors in question realized that they were on the stage of
the world as they wrote. Naturally they would only show
their best side, which makes our task of judging the whole
man impossible. Our attention should then turn to judging
his capacity: ".II faut bien juger leur suffisance. mais non
pas leurs meurs ny eux, par cette montre de leurs escris
qu'ils ^talent au theatre du monde" (394). As much as Mon
taigne regrets the loss of Brutus' hook on virtue, "car il
faict beau apprendre la theorique de ceux qui sqavent la
practique" (394), he is quite content to read what Plutarch
has to say about him, assuming that Brutus' own writings
would have been full of his harangues to the army and his
activities "au theatre du monde." These public messages
are not revealing of the real man; ideal communication can
not take place in the public arena. If one is to know the
real man, he must be followed into his study and his cham
ber; if one is to know him, one must be present at the con
versations held in his tent with his intimates: "Je choi-
siroy plutost de sgavoir au vray les devis qu'il tenoit en
sa tente & quelqu'un de ses privez^ amis, la veille d’une
bataille, que les propos qu'il tint le lendemain a son ar-
m6e; et ce qu'il faisoit en son cabinet et en sa chambre,
133
que ce qu’il faisoit emmy la place et au Senat" (394-95).
This attitude relates to the theme of gtre and paraitre as
presented in Chapter IV above, and which is succinctly
summed up here as: "c’est autre chose le presche que le
prescheur" (394).
There, had always been "escrivaillerie," and Montaigne
saw his times as particularly infested with it: "I’escri-
vaillerie semble estre quelque simptome d’un siecle desbor-
de . . . " (111,9*923). Y/ritten channels of communication
had become glutted. Montaigne complains that a man who
wants to circulate a scrap of knowledge he has learned about
a river will undertake to write the whole of physics. A to
pographer who has seen Palestine will want to write a book
on the whole world. Ideally, each man should limit himself
to giving an account of what he actually knows: "Je voudroy
que chacun escrivit ce qu’il sqait, et autant qu'il en
sqait ..." (I,31»203). Those who do this, Montaigne has
found, are usually simple and crude (we recall his own fond
ness for Froissart). It is to such a man that he gives
great credence in his accounts of the New World: "Cet homme
que j'avoy, estoit homme simple et grossier. qui est Tine
condition propre k rendre veritable tesmoignage; . . . il
faut un homme tr&s-fidelle. au si simple qu’il n’ait pas
dequoy bastir et donner de la vray-semblance a des inven
tions fauces" (202). This attitude is correlative to his
general admiration— with the passing years— of the "pauvres
134
gens."'*’ 0 In the following: passage, the word "simple" reoc
curs "but in the substantive form: "La moins desdeignable
condition de gens me 3emble estre celle qui par simplesse
tient le dernier rang, et nous offrir un commerce plus
regie. Les meurs et les propos des paysans, je les trouve
commencement plus ordonnez selon la prescription de la vraie
philosophic, que ne sont ceux de nos philosophes" (11,17,
644).
We have already discussed the mask and the general area
of role-playing as they relate to obstructing communication.
We have also considered the problems of communication as
they affect the sick or the dying. Montaigne's great inter
est in the mask and in death stems from the fact that it is
precisely in face of death that role-playing is dispensed
with, that the mask is stripped away. It is then that the
worth of one's words is tested. "Voylh pourquoy se doivent
h ce dernier traict toucher et esprouver toutes les autres
actions de nostre vie" (1,19,78). It is "the last act of
the comedy" and there is no more need to pretend: "A ce
dernier rolle de la mort et de nous, il n'y a plus que
faindre, il faut parler Francois. il faut montrer ce qu'il
y a de bon dans le fond du pot" (78). Face to face with
death, only plain French will do. It is the one time in
every man's life that his words are true and pure and re
vealing. Communication becomes transparent and thus ideal.
Throughout the Essais there is much on death scenes, Mon-
135
taign© taking special pains to relate the victim's final
words almost as if they had something holy about them in the
purity he ascribed to them. He tells us about a particular
register he would publish if he were a book-maker:
Aussi ay-je pris en coustume d'avoir, non
seulement en 1'imagination, mais conti-
nuellement la mort en la bouche; et n'est
rien de quoy je m'informe si volontiers,
que de la mort des hommes: quelle parole,
quel visage, quelle contenance ils y ont
eu; ny endroit des histoires, que je re-
marque si attantifvement. II y paroist
k la farcissure de mes exemples, et que
j'ay en particuliere affection cette ma-
tiere. Si j'estoy faiseur de livres, je
feroy tin registre comments des morts di-
verses, (1,20,88).
To return to Montaigne's emphasis on the importance of
preparing the student for social intercourse, he makes a
very significant statement about "la science de l'entregent":
"Elle est, comme la grace et la beaute, conciliatrice des
premiers abords de la society et familiarity: et par conse
quent nous ouvre la porte h nous instruire par les exemples
d'autruy, et a exploiter et produire nostre exemple. s'il
a quelque chose d'instruisant et communicable" (I,13,49)«
This passage brings together many of the points which I have
already raised separately. Montaigne views sociability,
which is possession of good communication skills in a social
situation, as useful in the first approaches of "society et
familiarity" (which in turn lead to intimacy). Once agree
able social contact has been established, learning can take
place by the examples of others. Montaigne's use of the
156
words exemple and communicable in close juxtaposition leave
no doubt that he considered exempla as primarily and inher
ently communicable, and correlatively therefore, his own
example as communicable.^
In what Montaigne says about the usefulness of social
dexterity and the subsequent accruement of benefits, there
is one very important contingency more or less self-evident
at this point in our discussion: Montaigne’s paradigm for
ideal communication calls for "vigorous and orderly minds."
Just as we gain with them, we lose with the "mean and sick
ly minds": "Comme nostre esprit se fortifie par la communi
cation des esprits vigoureux et reiglez, il ne se peut dire
combien il perd et s’abastardit par le continuel commerce
et frequentation que nous avons avec les esprits bas et ma-
ladifs. II n’est contagion qui s’espands comme celle-lh"
(III,9»900—01). A second contingency is selectivity, since
the good minds must be sorted out from the sick ones; and,
since the latter far outnumber the former, the selection
process will have to be long and painstaking. As we have
seen, Anthony Wilden says that the goal of the Essais is
expressed in the words by which Montaigne characterizes
TP
La Bo^tie: "un’ame pleine." This "ame pleine," also re
ferred to a3 "une ame de la vieille marque," is naturally
in possession of the "vigorous and orderly mind," which Mon
taigne demands for ideal communication.
In the area of desireable qualities in the facilitation
137
of sociability, there is one highly favored by Montaigne
which is not intrinsically communicative in nature: that of
beauty. Its value, like that of social dexterity, derives
from its great usefulness in opening up channels of communi
cation, capable as it is of prepossessing one’s favor. "Je
ne puis dire assess combien j'estime la beauts quality puis-
sante et advantageuse. . . . Nous n'en avons point qui la
surpasse en credit. Elle tient le premier rang au commerce
des hommes; elle se presente au devant, seduict et preoccupe
nostre jugement avec grande authority et merveilleuse im
pression" (111,12,1035). Of course, superficial quality
that it is, its primary advantage is its visibility. It
merely attracts prospective friends and predisposes them in
one’s favor, helping to initiate communication and nothing
more. That Montaigne did not really think of it as essen
tial to ideal communication is amply shown by the fact that
la Boetie himself was evidently rather deficient in physi
cal beauty. His ugliness was not a deformed kind, and Mon
taigne makes a distinction between it and a lesser ugli
ness: "II y a une laideur desnatur^e et difformit^ de mem-
bres. Mais nous appellons laideur aussi une mesavenance au
premier regard, qui loge prineipallement au visage, et sou-
vent nous desgoute par bien legeres causes: du teint, d'une
tache, d'une rude contenance, de quelque cause inexplicable
sur des membres bien ordonnez et entiers. La laideur qui
revestoit une ame trfes belle en La Boetie estoit de ce pre
158
dicament" (1035). He did consider beauty in selecting ser
vants and animals but referred to it as wholesomeness, or
rather as "something that does not come tinder the headings
of beauty and ugliness" (1036). His general conclusion is
as follows: "C'est une foible garantie que la mine; toutes-
fois elle a quelque consideration" (1036). He considered
himself blessed with a favorable bearing, a quality which
saved his life as we saw in an earlier chapter. Early in
Book I, Montaigne recounts an amusing incident where this
favorable bearing of his would, according to a great doctor,
have sufficient visual impact ^ on a rich old consumptive
to cure his illness, or, at least improve his constitution:
Simon Thomas estoit un grand medecin de son
temps. II me souvient que, me reneontrant
un jour chez un riche vieillard pulmonique,
et traitant avec luy des moyens de sa gua-
rison, il luy dist que e’en estoit l’un de
me donner occasion de me plaire en sa com-
pagnie, et que, fichant ses yeux sur la fres-
cheur de mon visage et sa pens^e sur cette
allegresse et vigueur qui regorgeoit de mon
adolescence, et remplissant tous ses sens de
cet estat florissant en quoy j'estoy, son
habitude s’en pourroit amender, (1,21,95).
But, if Montaigne's youth and exuberance would help in cur
ing the old man, what would the old man's antiquity and
illness do to Montaigne? That, the doctor forgot to men
tion: "Mais il oublioit h dire que la mienne s'en pourroit
empirer au3si." What would be ideal communication for one,
could be debilitating for the other.
There are a few additional peripheral qualities that
159
should be mentioned, which, like beauty, while being non-
communicative in thrust, are nevertheless inducive to set
ting up communication. More aptly, they have to do with
the ideal interlocutor. Montaigne puts great store by
variety and adaptability: "Les plus belles ames sont celles
qui ont plus de variety et de soupplesse" (111,3,796). This
is very much in line with his admiration for a "soul with
different levels," already quoted and discussed above. Any
number of traits could be included under these two blanket
terms, traits such as relaxation and affability: "Le re-
lachement et facilite honore, ce semble, a merveilles et
sied mieux a une ame forte et genereuse" (111,13,1089). He
considers Scipio, as grandfather, delightful in the way he
plays on the beach picking up shells and running races with
Laelius. His ideal of social intercourse is that of good
will, where men speak candidly but affably and where reason
alone guides their minds and thus their speech. Hostile to
such qualities as obstinacy^ and contentiousness, he is
very partial to the man who is capable of confessing the
flaw he discovers in his own argument, though it be un
noticed by others: "que se raviser et se corriger, aban-
donner un mauvais party sur le cours de son ardeur, ce sont
qualitez rares, fortes et philosophiques" (1,26,154). Such
then, are the qualities that Montaigne favors in the ideal
interlocutor— all qualities, one must surmise, that were
incarnated in the person of La Boetie.
There is, of course, no one construct of ideal communi
cation for Montaigne. But, in conclusion, one can make the
following general points: (1) great care in the choice of
words, coupled with hohesty and "franchise," would lessen
the ill effects of the semantic aphasia with which six
teenth-century France was "beset; (2) in moving towards good
communication within the society at large, there is the
realization that it must start with the individual, and
that individual should endorse the principle of harmony
"between the word and the act; (3) learning to speak well
and to listen well should be part of the educational pro
gram of the youth, based not on traditional rhetoric but on
a common-sense type of spirited conversation that teaches
and exercises the mind at the same time; (4) general recom
mendations include naturalness in speech, order, "un parler
ouvert," moral involvement, and straightforwardness; (5) ad
ditional qualities which help, without however being requi
site, are beauty, variety, adaptability, relaxation, affa
bility, good will, and generosity in confessing one's er
ror; (6) ultimately, however, ideal communication for Mon
taigne is only possible in intimacy with a vigorous and or
derly mind ("ame de la vieille marque"), and it is La Bo^tie
whom he has in mind from first to last.
■^It was around the interpretation of this word in
Christ's phrase, "Hoc est corpus meum," that clustered the
endless bickerings over transubstantiation between Catho
lics and Protestants.
141
2See I, 13,48.
-*The sentence that immediately follows quotation lends
support to my observation (Chapter I. above) that despite
all of Montaigne*s modesty, he anticipated some exemplum
value in his Essaig: "Si je le puis au delh de tout escemple
moderne. etc. " ( 947).
4See supra, p. 22, infra, pp. 135-36.
-*"Je suis sociable jusques a excez" (111,9,960); "II
n*est rien h quoy il semble que nature nous aye plus ache-
mine qu'h la soci^td" (1,28,182).
^"Je louerois un* ame a divers estages" (111,3,799).
7II,31,698; 111,10,999.
Q
See Chapter 2III in Plattard's Montaigne et son temps
(Paris: Boivin, 1933), pp. 237-51.
%his word "privez" underscores one of the most essen
tial ingredients to ideal communication. It naturally re
occurs in the substantival form: "Aussi ne connoy-je guiere
d*hommes avec telle privaut^ qu*il faut pour en pouvoir ju-
ger" (11,17,642).
^"Car le paisant et le cordonnierf vous leur voiez
aller simplement et nalfvement leur tram, parlant de ce
qu*ils soavent" (1,25,138).
^See supra, p. 22, p. 124.
12
Anthony Wilden, "Par divers moyens . . . ," p. 588.
u
■^Elsewhere Montaigne refers to this phenomenon: "II
s*est trouve des hommes h qui la seule veuS de la Medecine
faisoit 1*operation" (1,21,102).
■^His abhorrance to obstinancy is second only to lying:
"La menterie seule et, un peu au-dessous, 1'opiniastret^ me
semblent estre celles desquelles on devroit a toutes in
stance combattre la naissance et le progrez" (1,9,37).
c o n c l u s i o n ’
”Je cherche k vendre des perles,
je cherche des perles k vendre”
(1,35,220).
The vocal-auditory communication system of man dates
back to around the beginning of the Pleistocene Age, about
a million years ago at which time the voice came to be used
as a tool. Singling out for special attention a familiar
phenomenon, like communication, which has been with us for
so long a time, always seems somewhat artificial. Yet, if,
for the hominids of the Pleistocene Age, language was a
tool, it will be that and much more for Montaigne, for whom
communication is the most effective means by which we may
know one another. Despite all his love for privacy, Montai
gne wanted very badly to be known— to be correctly and truly
known, and, for him, knowing someone means knowing how he
will react, what stand he will likely take, and what lan
guage he will use. It is as a humanist that he is concerned
with ways of using language and ways of living and with how
the one reflects the other. It is within the context of
this overriding concern that he attempts to convey a state
ment in print to match the inner truth he feels: one is to
be a perfect reflection of the other.
Ideally the language of social intercourse should be
as windowglass, serving as the ”truchement de l’Sme."
142
143
In Montaigne's own life, we have seen how this ideal "became
reality through the friendship and communication which he
enjoyed with Etienne de La Bodtie and how the Essais can be
looked upon as a quest to recapture that ideal. Transpar
ency had characterized the communication in their friend
ship, enabling them to decode one another with unfaltering
precision, Montaigne could immediately find the motive for
no matter what laBoetie did: "Aucune de ses actions ne me
sqauroit estre presentee, quelque visage qu'elle eut, que
je n'en trouvasse incontinent le ressort" (1,28,188). Along
with the transparency, what stands out in Montaigne's theory
of friendship is the idea of unity, of indivisibleness:
"Nos ames ont charrid si uniement ensemble" (188); "cette
parfaicte amitie, dequoy je parle, est indivisible. . . .
Cette amitie qui possede l'ame et la regente en toute
souverainetd, il est impossible qu'elle soit double" (190).
To illustrate what he means, he explains that any secret
which he has promised to keep can be told to his friend in
all good conscience; after all, a friend is "celuy qui n'est
pas autre: c'est moy," and friendship is "la chose la plus
une et unie" (190). La Boetie is therefore a double ("autre
moitie") that creates being for Montaigne. La Boetie gone,
Montaigne doubles with himself through withdrawal and intro
spection: "je m'estudie." Self-study is the ostensible aim
in the Essais when he first begins to write, and it is the
theme that he will constantly return to. But underlying
144
the avowed aim is the real theme: unity in friendship and
communication. In the last analysis then, the Essais them
selves become Montaigne's double, and the reader, his imag
inary double: all men bear the form of the human condition,
and the other is like me; know me in all detail, and I am
doubled and witnessed in the reader's mind.
To recapitulate then, it is only after La Bottle's
death that Montaigne turns to writing, finding in it a sub
stitute for the ideal communication which he had lost. One
could speak of a Fall in Montaigne, a Fall from a state of
grace and an attempt to regain the quality and pleasure of
an ideal, verbal communication through the written word.1
This effort bring him to reflect not only on the processes
of communication in the affairs of man in general but also
on the expressivity of written language, its potentialities
and limitations. It helps perhaps to explain as well his
attempt to make the written word come as closely as possible
to resemble the conversational and gesticulative elements
of oral communication with a vastly comprehending, interest
ed (even in small detail) friend.
In this light, communication becomes the ideal mode of
expressivity where mind meets mind on a ground of truth:
"La cause de la verity devroit estre la cause commune a l'un
et k l'autre" (111,8,902). Writing, as the form of communi
cation Montaigne uses as perhaps a last resort, becomes the
"artistic" attempt to retrieve that ideal mode. I use the
145
word "artistic" with caution since, on the face of it, it
contradicts Montaigne's consistent stand on writing natu
rally. Of coursej the truth of the matter is that he ex
pended enormous artistic energy in making the written word
appear natural. Yet it must he remembered that, according
to classical and medieval tradition, art imitated nature and
played the iconographic role of subservient monkey. The
Essais imitates an inner nature and seek the stylistically
(that is, "artfully") "natural" to express it. Written ex
pression is therefore, for Montaigne, twice removed from
what he ideally wants: an oral expression and a perfectly
2
natural one. Because of the "fall" writing inevitably
"communicates" in a secondary and imperfect sense. As with
Rousseau, art (or writing) becomes necessary only because
some initial "natural" and "truer" mode of interpersonal be
havior has been lost. After several years of writing, it is
the lost state that Montaigne still yearns for: "S'il y a
quelque personne . . . en France ou ailleurs . . . h qui
mes humeurs soient bonnes, . . . il n'est que de siffler en
paume, je leur iray fournir des essays en cher et en os"
(111,5,821). There can be no clearer statement first, on
the primacy of communication in Montaigne's life on the in
terpersonal level, and secondly, on the reality of the sub
stitution of the less perfect mode (the Essais) for the
more perfect mode ("des essays en cher et en os").
Montaigne, like his contemporaries, is face to face
146
with the dilemna of the transition from medieval solidarity
to the new concept of the isolated self in the Renaissance.
The dilemna 'becomes complicated in his own lifetime hy the
Wars of Religion which severed relationships "between men in
all domains: social, political, religious * and linguistic,
intensifying the new feeling of isolation and incommunica-
"bility to the straining point. Thanks to his own personal
quest for ideal communication, to his ’ •commerce1 ’ with the
Ancients, and thanks to his travels, his curiosity, and his
experiences in general, Montaigne acquired invaluable know
ledge about human interaction. He saw the need to restore
purity, and consequently truth, to the word. To achieve
this, one needed a method, which Montaigne possessed and
which he wanted to communicate to the world. It is not so
much what ("matikre”) we say to one another that sparks off
our communication problems, but how we say it ("mani&re”):
Quand vous gaignez l'avantage de vostre
proposition, c'est la verite qui gaigne;
quand vous gaignez l'avantage de l'ordre
et de la conduite, c'est vous qui gaignez
. . • car nous sommes sur la maniere, non
sur la matiere du dire . . • Tout homme
peut dire veritablement; mais dire ordon-
nement, prudemment et suffisamment, peu
d'hommes le peuvent, (111,8,906).
The two key words associated with the ’ ’ maniere” are order
and method. What one says should be studied, ordered, and
be given good form. In an argument certain guidelines
should be followed. Straightforwardness is the cardinal
virtue ("parler le coeur ouvert”); lack of order and form is
the cardinal sin. Montaigne says he could argue peaceably
a whole day if the debate were conducted with order: wTout
tin jour je contesteray paisiblement, si la conduicte du de
bat se suit avec ordre. Ce n’est pas tant la force et la
subtilite que je demande, comrne l'ordre" (903). Essential
ly, what he wants to communicate is how to communicate.
There must be order and there must be method. But neither
of these qualities must be conspicuous. For this, there is
no precise system that one can offer, and the Essai3 do not
really give one. They do imply one, however, and it is
somehow felt by the time the Essais have been read through.
Gide says that "il y a chez Montaigne moins une doctrine
qu'une mdthode." A doctrine obviates a body of principles—
something which is fixed and consistent. A method merely
implies procedure, and, in turn, order. Montaigne's order
is of course not clearly discernable to the eye of the
mind. He deliberately conceals it beneath a camouflage of
studied "nonchalance." He knows exactly what he is going
to say, and he even knows how to make it sound eloquent.
But when he finally utters it, it will sound extemporaneous,
and whatever eloquence it may have will seem purely acci
dental. Let us not forget that he maintains that he writes
as he speaks. The seeming carelessness of the Essais con
firms this. After all, our thoughts come to us most often
in random fashion with underlying associative links. Since
Montaigne's primary aim is to communicate his being as it
148
truly is— "ondoyant, vains et divers"— his style or way of
communicating must correspond to the reality of his being.
Our thoughts come to us in careless fashion, therefore, our
style must be careless. Floyd Gray points out that for Mon
taigne, "le style est un refus d'arranger la pensee dans un
ordre logique."^ Since thereiis often no obvious order to
thought, and if one is to communicate one’s true nature, it
can be done neither in an orderly fashion nor logically.
This is how Montaigne proceeded and this is certainly his
supreme achievement and contribution to literature, antic
ipating what we refer to in the twentieth century as the
stream of consciousness techniques.^
Scholarship has' long since accepted Strowski's and
Villey's categorization of the change and development of
Montaigne's ideas: stoical period (1572-74), skeptical
crisis (1576), epicurean period (1578-92). More or less
parallel to this evolution is another. Out of his initial
chapters, where the compilation of anecdotes (drawn primar
ily from his readings of the Ancients) is most characteris
tic, there grows the vision of the Essais as a vehicle for
the transmission of the wisdom of Antiquity, Montaigne, as
it were, acting as mediator between his readings and his
(potential) readers.-* But he is not just a simple mediator,
for, in the encoding processes he adds and deletes, reinter
prets and passes judgment, and, in the process, refracts the
original message as a prism refracts light. In addition to
149
this organic change in Montaigne*s philiosophy and in the
composition of the Essais. there is a third change. Moving
from the first two hooks to the third one, the prism shifts
positions and picks up a new light. That of the Ancients
is not altogether eliminated— it merely becomes mitigated
and diffused, withdrawing to the penumbra. What Montaigne
now focuses on is not the wisdom of a Seneca, or an Aris
totle, or a Cato, but on nles pauvres gens," who, he has
found, have much to communicate if we only learn to decode
their "language."
Regardons k terre les pauvres gens que
nous y voyons espandus, la teste penchante
apres leur besonghe, qui ne sqavent ny
Aristote ny Caton, ny exemple, ny pre-
cepte; de ceux IS. tire nature tous les
jours des effects de Constance et de
patience, plus purs et plus roides que
ne sont ceux que nous estudions si
curieusement en l'escole, (111,12,1017).
What he especially admires about these people is their lan
guage: "Les noms mesme de quoy ils appellent les maladies
en adoucissent et amollissent l'aspret^; la phtisie, c*est
la tous pour eux; la dysenterie, devoyement d*estomac; un
pleuresis, c*est un morfondement; et selon qu'ils les nom-
ment doucement, ils les supportent aussi" (III*12,1017).
What better proof than this last sentence that Montaigne
understood the power of the word, its overtones, its
effects, and thus, its abiding and crucial importance in
communication processes.
The change from the relaying of the classical voices
150
to the increasing reliance on popular ones is important.
Paradoxically, though Montaigne, in "De 1*experience"
praises "incuriosity et ignorance," he praises them in a
"t6te hien faite," that is, already stored with learning.
Montaigne becomes the learned mediator (prism) of the un
tutored wisdom of the people and of their communicative
processes, without becoming, however, a simple reflector of
popular language howsoever much he likes it.
In view of Montaigne's enumeration of the qualities he
sought in a friend and of their reoccurence throughout the
Essais. and inasmuch as his greatest need is communication
— a need which had been perfectly fulfilled at one time in
his life— the Essais can be interpreted as advertisements
for himself, or a "want-ad," to use the vernacular— a some
what ludicrous comparison on the purely literary level, but
here I am speaking only of intent as related to Montaigne's
quest for "un'ame pleine," i.e., La Bottle's replacement.
The idea of a classified advertisement is of course anach
ronistic to Montaigne's age, but his father had conceived
of something astonishingly similar to it; and Montaigne, by
his comments, obviously approved of the idea wholeheartedly:
Feu mon pere • • . m'a diet autrefois
qu'il avoit desire mettre en train qu'il
y eust 6a villes certain lieu designe,
auquel ceux qui auroient besoin de quel-
que chose, se peussent rendre et faire
enregistrer leur affaire h un officier
estably pour cet effect, corame: Je
cherche a vendre des perles, je cherche
des perles a vendre. Tel veut compaig-
151
nie pour aller k Paris; tel s'enquiert
d'un serviteur de telle quality; tel
d*un maistre; tel demande un ouvrier,
qui cecy, qui cela, chacun selon son
besoing. Et semble que ce moyen de
nous entr'advertir apporteroit non
legiere commodity au commerce pub-
lique; car k tous coups, il y a des
conditions qui s * entrecherchent, et,
pour ne s'fentr'entendre, laissent les
hommes en extreme necessity, (1,35,
220).
That he visualized personal utility in such a plan beyond
the mere acquisition of servants or workmen is strikingly
brought out intthe paragraph that follows:
J'entens, avec une grande honte de nostre
siecle, qu'a nostre vetie deux tres-excel-
lens personnages en sqavoir sont morts en
estat de n'avoir pas leur soul a manger:
lilius Gregorius Giraldus en Italie, et
Sebastianus Castalio en Allemagne; et
croy qu'il y a mil'hommes qui les eus-
sent appellez avec tres-advantageuses
conditions, ou secourus ou ils estoient,
s'ils l'eussent sqeu, (220).
That a book could act as a "want-ad," i.e., as intermediary
between him and a prospective ffciend, one has only to recall
what had been the means of his acquaintanceship with La
Bo^tie: "La Servitude Volontaire a servy de moyen a nos-
^ tre premiere accointance. Car elle me fut montr^e longue
piece avant que j ’ e l'eusse veu, et me donna la premiere
connoissance de son nom, acheminant ainsi cette amitie que
nous avons nourrie" (I,28,lb2). Montaigne, then, first
knew La Bodtie by way of his work before he knew him "in
flesh and bones." A passage from the Essais. quoted
above,® sets forth an analogous situation: "S'il y a quel-
152
que personae • . . en Prance ou ailleurs, . . • je leur
iray fournir des essa.vs en cher et en os" (111,5,821)* To
complete the analogy, La Boytie's La Servitude Volontaire
was thought of as an essai "by Montaigne: "C'est un discours
auquel il donna nom La Servitude Volontaire. . * . II
l'escrivit par maniere d'essay" (1,28,182)* Therefore, his
hook in the form of essays would hopefully acquire for him
a friend "de la vieille marque" just as La BoetLete work, an
essay, had done for him. Furthermore, in the Essais. Mon
taigne makes several statements, the language of which has
all the earmarks of that of the "want-ad": "Les hommes de
la soci^te et familiarity desquels jje suis en queste
..." (111,3,802); "Je suis tres-capable d'acquerir et
maintenir des amitiez raxes et exquises" (798); "En la vraye
amitiy, de laquelle je, suis expert . . ." (111,9,954); "Je
ne sgay rien si bien faire qu'estre amy" (1,9,55); "Je
courrois d'un bout du monde k 1'autre chercher un bon an de
tranquillity plaisante et enjouee, moy qui n'ay autre fin
que vivre et me resjouyr" (111,5,821); "Jamais homme ne se
laissa aller plus plainement et plus lachement au soing et
gouvernement d'un tiers que je fairois, si. .i'avois k qui"
(111,9,930). In chapter nine of Book III, there is a state
ment whose language is very explicit: "Outre ce profit que
je tire d'escrire de moy, j'en espere cet autre que, s'il
advient que mes humeurs plaisent et accordent k quelque
honneste homme avant que je meure, il.recherchera de nous
153
.ioindre: je luy donne beaucoup de pays gaigne, car tout ce
qu'une longue connoissance et familiarite luy pourroit avoir
acquis en plusieurs annees, il le voit en trois jours en ce
registre, et plus seurement et exactement" (959)* Though
there can be little doubt as to his goal after such a
statement as this* I cannot help concluding my proof with a
passage one short line of which is uniquely lyrical and as
resonant with pathos as Shakespeare's "My kingdom for a
horse": "Si a si bonnes enseignes je sqavois quelqu'un qui
me fut propre, certes je l'irois trouver bien loing; car la
douceur d'une sortable et aggreable compaignie ne se peut
assez acheter h mon gr6. 0 un amy! Combien est vraye cette
ancienne sentence, que l'usage en est plus necessaire et
plus doux que des elemens de l'eau et du feu!" (959). And
this is not in his chapter, "De l'araitid," but in one of
his last ones, "De la vanite," which dominates the Third
Book, containing as it does Montaigne's most eloquent
statements on human nature (i.e., the basic principle in
man's philosophy should be to conform to nature). Even the
writing of the Essais had been a vanity but he had put in
them all he could of what constitutes communication, its
obstacles and pitfalls along with its facilitation and
transparency, the latter being ideally achieved in the un
ity of friendship. There was always the hope, the^that
these Essais would fall into the right person's hands. To
a limited extent his hope was fulfilled in his last years
154
in the person of Marie le Jars de Gournay, whom he came to
call his "fille d'alliance." For it was indeed through the
Essais that their friendship came into being. Although
Montaigne's concept of ideal communication was man to man,
it seems rather clear that Mademoiselle de G-ourney brought
him considerable solace as his life drew to a close. De
spite the fact that Villey among others doubts the authen
ticity of the glowing tribute Montaigne makes to her in
chapter 17 of Book II, ^ he nevertheless visited her in
Picardy several times, spending about three months in all.
The point to note is that his book was the means of their
acquaintanceship, and the following line is presumably a
reference to it: "Telle faveur gratieuse que la fortune
peut m*avoir offerte par l'entremise de cet ouvrage eust
O
lors rencontr^ une plus propice saison" (111,12,1054).
He got pleasure from communication— that is clear, but
what is the nature of this pleasure principle; i.e., self-
control, self-molding, restoring social cohesiveness, etc.;
and all these things may cause a personal pleasure. Can we
find something that will hold true for all these goals (and
pleasures)? One underlying need? or anxiety? or fear?
Doesn't Montaigne seem always caught between fear of the
world (otherness, pain, sickness, death, the things that
deprive him of autonomy of selfhood and freedom) and the
need for a presence or a witness, a need for otherness? In
the monadic stage of communication, he makes of himself, or
155
of one part of himself, an otherness; in the later phase,
he reintegrates himself, through the written word, into a
larger social context. He can drop his mask and yet main
tain an aesthetic distance from all otherness— possibly
even from himself.
The Essais as a whole then embody this paradox: that
they are born of a stoico-skeptic, who uses language as a
tool of self-awareness and as a means of keeping the self
protectively encircled within its realm of authentic being.
Yet other impulses are at work within Montaigne and slowly
he emphasizes another aspect of the neo-stoic tradition:
its naturalism, the idea that following nature is good
(moral) and nature— inner and outer— is conceived as move
ment. To follow it, for Montaigne, and here he is original,
is to remain flexible and responsive (not to everything of
course, but to what is natural and therefore true). He re
sponds, in the end, more indulgently to himself and to
others, and this is paralleled by his new faith in communi
cation. The ideal (oral, personal), which he had had with
La Bo^tie, is never again realized, but he never gives up
its quest. Friendship had consisted in giving of himself,
in being open and generous, and in having perfect communica
tion. The Essais may then be understood as a substitute for
communication within the context of friendship, or, to be
more exact, not only as a substitute for friendship, but as
a friendship itself. Ultimately, it is the reader who be
156
comes Montaigne*s friend— which is eloquent and lasting
testimony to just how successful he was in writing a good
"want-ad," or, to use his words, in selling his pearls and
in acquiring new ones.
■^Anthony Wilden speaks of "the nostalgia for a para
dise which is a paradise lost," "Par Divers Moyens . .
p. 580.
2
The fact that he gives preeminence to oral expression
over written is brought out in this statement: "Ainsi les
paroles en [ de mon esprit] valent mieux que les escripts"
(1,10,41)•
^le Style de Montaigne, p. 49.
^One of the Heading practitioners of this technique,
Virginia Woolf, who, as a faithful reader of the Essais.
concludes that Montaigne*s chief aim in writing them was
to "communicate the soul": "To communicate is our chief
business; society and friendship our chief delights; and
reading, not to acquire knowledge, not to earn a living,
but to extend our intercourse beyond our own time and pro
vince. • . .These essays are an attempt to communicate
a soul. On this point at least he is explicit. It is not
fame he wants; it is not that men shall quote him in years
to come; he is setting up no statue in the market-place;
he wishes only to communicate his soul. Communication is
health; communication is truth; communication is happi
ness," The Common Reader (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1948),
pp. 92-W.
•'"S*assimilier 1*esprit de la sagesse antique, faire
revivre cette sagesse dans l’Sme moderne, ce sera justernent
un des premiers objets de Montaigne dans les Essais."
Villey, les Essais de Montaigne, p. 22.
^See supra, p. 145*
7P. 645.
Q
Inasmuch as Montaigne was fifty-five years old when
he met Mile Gournay, he is here regretting that he had not
written and published the Essais when he was much younger.
A SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Works on Communication and Related Areas
Berio, David K. The Process of Communication: An In
troduction to Theory and JPractice. Hew York: Holt,
Hinehart and Winston, i960.
Burling, Robbins. Man*s Many Voices: Language in it3
Cultural Context. Hew York: Holt; Hinehart and Wln-
ston, I970.
Cherry, Colin. On Human Communication. Cambridge,
Massachusetts: The M.I.5P* Press, 1966•
Communication: Concepts and Processes. Ed. Joseph A.
DeVito. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall,
Inc., 1971*
Eisenson, Jon et al. The Psychology of Communication.
New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963.
Hymes, Dell. Language in Culture and Society. New
York: Harper-ana Row, 1964.
Landar, Herbert. Language and Culture. New York:
Oxford Univ. Press,l9o6.
Sapir, Edward. Culture. Language, and Personality.
Ed. David G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
Univ. of California,Press, 1957.
Sapir, Edward. Selected Writings of Edward Sapir in
Language. Culture and Personality^ Berkeley: Univ.
oT, ' 8alSffeaa_K?ess,' 1949'.------
Vetter, Harold J. Language Behavior and Communication.
New York: P.E. Peacock Publishers, Inc. 1959. ’
II. Works on Montaigne
Armaingaud, Arthur. "Montaigne etait-il ondoyant et
divers? Montaigne ^tait-il inconstant?" Revue du
seizieme si&cle, 10 (1923), 35-56.
157
Armaingaud, Arthur. "Montaigne, Socrate et Epicure"
Nouvelle revue. 4th ser. 42 (July 15, 1919), 97-104;
(Aug. 1, 1919), 215-24; (Aug. 15, 1919), 509-18.
Armaingaud, Arthur. "Y a-t-il une evolution dans les
Essais?" Bulletin de la society des amis de Mon
taigne . lsi ser., No. 2, 1513, pp. ll^-60; No. 5,
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Armaingaud, Arthur. Montaigne namnhletaire; l'dnigme
du Contr'un. Paris!mchetiefl510.-----------
Auerhach, Erich. "L’Humaine Condition," Mimesis: The
Representation of Reality in Western Literature.
Willard R. tfraslk Itr.). Princeton: ferinceton Univ.,
1955, P P . 285-511.
Ballaguy, Paul. "la sincdritd de Montaigne." Mercure
de France. No. 245 (Aug. 1, 1955) pp. 547-75.
Bespaloff, Rachel. Instant et la libertd chez Mon
taigne." Deucalion. 5 (1950), 65-107.
Bonnefon, Paul, la Bo&tie. In: Oeuvres de la Boetie.
Ed. Paul Bonnefon. Bouan, 1892Ti
Bonnefon, Paxil. Montaigne et sea amis. 2 vols. Paris
Colin, 1898.
Brake, Robert J. "On 'Speechifiers Well Snubbed*:
Some Rhetorical Viewpoints of Montaigne." Quarterly
Journal of Speech. 5b, 205-15.
Buff urn, Imbrie. Studies in the Baroque from Montaigne
to Rotrou. New Haven, Conn.: Tfale Univ. Press,
1957.
Buffum, Imbrie. 1*Influence du voyage de Montaigne
sur les Essais. I&rince t on: Srinceton Univ., 1946.
Butor, Michel. Essais sur les Essais. Paris:
Gallimard, 1966.
Citoleux, Marc. Le vrai Montaigne, thdologien et sol-
dat. Paris: leihielleux, 1957.
Croll, Morris W. "Attic Prose in the Seventeenth Cen
tury," Studies in Philology. 18 (1921), 79-128.
Dezeimeris, Reinhold. Plan d*execution d*une Edition
critique des Essais de Montaigne. Bordeaux:
Cadoret, 1905*
159
Drdano, Marurin. La Pengee religieuse de Montaigne.
Angers: Beauchesne, 1952*
Duviard, Ferdinand, "La Revision du cas Montaigne,"
"La Delivrance mdeonnue des critiques." Ndophilo-
logus. 34 (1950), 1-9, 129-41.
Emerson, Ralph W. "Montaigne; or, the Skeptic,"
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Creator Jones, Robert Franklin (author)

Core Title The Theme Of Communication In The "Essais" Of Montaigne

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program French

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Literature, Modern,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Buchanan, Michelle (committee chair), Arnold, Aerol (committee member), Berkey, Max Leslie, Jr. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c18-755210

Unique identifier UC11363129

Identifier 7400923.pdf (filename),usctheses-c18-755210 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 7400923

Dmrecord 755210

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Jones, Robert Franklin

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