Mimesis (51 page)

Now at last comes the minor premise, not directly but as the conclusion of a subordinate syllogism, which runs as follows: the world changes constantly; I am part of the world; ergo, I change constantly. The major premise is furnished with illustrations, and the way in which the world changes is analyzed as being twofold: all things undergo the general change and each its own in addition. Then follows a polyphonic movement introduced by the paradox about stability which is likewise but a form of slower fluctuation. Throughout this polyphonic movement, which takes up the entire remainder of the paragraph, the minor premise of the second syllogism, as self-evident, sounds but faintly. The two themes here intertwined are the minor premise and the conclusion of the main argument: I am a creature which constantly changes; ergo, I must make my description conform to this. Here Montaigne is at the center of the realm which is peculiarly his own: the play and counterplay between I and I, between Montaigne the author and Montaigne the theme; turns of expression equally rich in meaning and sound, and referring now to the one I, now to the other, most often to both, flow from his pen. We are left to choose which we prefer to consider the most precise, characteristic, and true and to admire the most; that on natural drunkenness, that on depicting change, the one on external change (
fortune
) and inner change (
intention
), the quotation from Demades, the contrast between
s’essayer
and
se résoudre
with the beautiful image,
si mon âme pouvait prendre pied
. For each one and for all together what Horace said of completely successful works holds true:
decies repetita placebit
.

I hope this breaking up of the paragraph into syllogisms will not be found too pedantic. It shows that the structure of the thought in this lively passage, so rich in unexpected departures, is precise and logical; that the many movements which add, discriminate, go deeper, or sometimes even retreat concessively, serve to present the idea, as it were, in its practical application; that, furthermore, the order is repeatedly broken, that some propositions are anticipated, that others are altogether omitted so that the reader must supply them. The reader must cooperate. He is drawn into the movement of the thought, but at every moment he is expected to pause, to check, to add something. Who
les autres
are he must surmise; who the
particulier
is, likewise. The clause with
or
seems to take him far afield, and only after a time does he gradually understand what it is driving at. Then, to be sure, the essential point is presented to him in a wealth of formulations which carry away his imagination; but even then in such a way that he must still exert himself, for each of the formulations is so individualized that it has to be digested. None fits into a ready-made pattern of thought or discourse.

Although the content of the paragraph is intellectual and even rigorously logical, although what we have here is a keen and original intellectual effort to probe the problem of self-analysis, the vitality of the will to expression is so strong that the style breaks through the limits of a purely theoretical disquisition. I suppose anyone who has read enough of Montaigne to feel at home in the essays must have had the same experience as I. I had been reading him for some time, and when I had finally acquired a certain familiarity with his manner, I thought I could hear him speak and see his gestures. This is an experience which one seldom has with earlier theoretical writers as strongly as with Montaigne, probably with none of them. He often omits conjunctions and other syntactic connectives, but he suggests them. He skips intermediate steps of reasoning, but replaces what is lacking by a kind of contact which arises spontaneously between steps not connected by strict logic. Between the clauses
la constance mesme n’est autre chose …
and the following
je ne puis asseurer mon object
…, a step is obviously missing, a clause which ought to state that I, the object I am studying, being a fragment of the world, must likewise be subject to the double change mentioned. Later on he says this in
detail, but even here he has created the atmosphere which provisionally establishes the contact and yet leaves the reader actively intent. Occasionally he repeats ideas which he considers important over and over in ever-new formulations, each time working out a fresh viewpoint, a fresh characteristic, a fresh image, so that the idea radiates in all directions. All these are characteristics which we are much more used to finding in conversation—though only in the conversation of exceptionally thoughtful and articulate people—than in a printed work of theoretical content. We are inclined to think that this sort of effect requires vocal inflection, gesture, the warming up to one another which comes with an enjoyable conversation. But Montaigne, who is alone with himself, finds enough life and as it were bodily warmth in his ideas to be able to write as though he were speaking.

This is related to the manner in which he endeavors to apprehend his subject, himself—the very manner, that is, which he describes in our paragraph. It is a ceaseless listening to the changing voices which sound within him, and it varies in elevation between reticent, slightly self-satisfied irony and a very emphatic seriousness which fathoms the ultimate bases of existence. The irony he displays is again a mixture of several motifs: an extremely sincere disinclination to take human beings tragically (man is
un subject merveilleusement vain, divers et ondoyant
, 1, 1, p. 10:
autant ridicule que risible
, 1, 50, p. 582;
le badin de la farce
, 3, 9, p. 434); a faint note of proudly aristocratic contempt for the writer’s craft (
si j’étais faiseur de livres
, 1, 20, p. 162, and again, 2, 37, p. 902); finally, and this is the most important point of all, an inclination to belittle his own particular approach. He calls his book
ce fagotage de tant de diverses pièces
(2, 37, p. 850),
cette fricassée que je barbouille icy
(3, 13, p. 590), and once he even compares it to an old man’s feces:
ce sont icy
…
des excremens d’un vieil esprit, dur tantost, tantost lasche, et toujours indigeste
(3, 9, p. 324). He never tires of emphasizing the artless, personal, natural, and immediate character of his writing, as though it were something he must apologize for, and the irony of this form of modesty does not always come out as clearly and completely as it does in the second paragraph of our text, which we shall analyze below. So much, for the present, on Montaigne’s irony. It gives his style an extremely delightful flavor, and a flavor perfectly suited to his subject; but the reader should beware of becoming too entangled by it. He means it seriously and emphatically when he says that his representation, however changeable and diverse it is, never goes astray and that though perhaps at times he contradicts
himself, he never contradicts the truth. Such words mirror a very realistic conception of man based on experience and in particular on self-experience: the conception that man is a fluctuating creature subject to the changes which take place in his surroundings, his destiny, and his inner impulses. Thus Montaigne’s apparently fanciful method, which obeys no preconceived plan but adapts itself elastically to the changes of his own being, is basically a strictly experimental method, the only method which conforms to such a subject. If one wishes to produce an exact and factual description of a constantly changing subject, one must follow its changes exactly and factually; one must describe the subject as one found it, under as many different experimental conditions as possible, for in this way one may hope to determine the limits of possible changes and thus finally arrive at a comprehensive picture.

It is this strict and, even in the modern sense, scientific method which Montaigne endeavors to maintain. Perhaps he would have objected to the pretentiously scientific-sounding word “method,” but a method it is, and two modern critics—Villey (
Les Sources et l’Évolution des Essais de Montaigne
, 2nd edition, Paris, 1933, 2, 321) and Lanson (
Les Essais de Montaigne
, Paris, n.d., 265)—have applied the term to his activity, albeit not quite in the sense here envisaged. Montaigne has described his method with precision. In addition to our passage there are others worthy of note. Our paragraph makes it very clear that he is forced, and why he is forced, to adopt his procedure—he must adapt himself to his subject matter. It also explains the meaning of the title
Essais
, which might fittingly though not very gracefully be rendered as “Tests upon One’s Self” or “Self-Try-Outs.” Another passage (2, 37, p. 850) emphasizes the developmental principle which his procedure is intended to bring out and has an extremely characteristic conclusion which is by no means exclusively ironical:
Je veux representer le progrez de mes humeurs, et qu’on voye chaque piece en sa naissance. Je prendrois plaisir d’auoir commencé plus tost, et à recognoistre le train de mes mutations
. … Je me
suis envieilly de sept ou huict ans depuis que je commençay. Ce n’a pas esté sans quelque nouvel acquest. J’y ay pratiqué la colique, par la liberalité des ans: leur commerce et longue conversation ne se passe aysément sans quelque tel fruit
. … A still more significant passage (2, 6, pp. 93-94) states quite unironically and with that calm yet insistent earnestness which marks the upper limits of Montaigne’s style—he never goes beyond this in stylistic elevation—how highly he thinks of his venture:
C’est
une espineuse entreprinse, et plus qu’il ne semble, de suyvre une allure si vagabonde que celle de nostre esprit; de penetrer dans les profondeurs opaques de ses replis internes; de choisir et arrester tant de menus airs de ses agitations; et est un amusement nouveau et extraordinaire qui nous retire des occupations communes du monde, ouy, et des plus recommandées. Il y a plusieurs années que je n’ay que moy pour visée à mes pensées, que je ne contrerolle et estudie que moy; et si j’estudie autre chose, c’est pour soudain le coucher sur moy, ou en moy. …

These sentences are also significant because they indicate what limits Montaigne had set to his undertaking, because they state not only what he intends to do but also what he intends not to do, that is, to investigate the outer world. That interests him only as the setting and occasion for his own movements. With this we come to another form of his deceptive and reserved irony: his frequent asseverations of his ignorance and irresponsibility in regard to everything related to the outer world, which he likes best to designate as
les choses: A peine respondroys-je à autruy de mes discours qui ne m’en responds pas à moy … ce sont icy mes fantasies, par lesquelles je ne tasche point à donner à connoistre les choses, mais moy
. … (2, 10, p. 152). These “things” are for him only a means of self-testing; they serve him only
à essayer ses facultés naturelles
(
ibid
.) and he does not feel it in any way his duty to take a responsible stand toward them. This too can best be stated in his own words:
De cent membres et visages qu’a chaque chose, j’en prens un. … J’y donne une poincte, non pas le plus largement, mais le plus profondément que je sçay
…
sans dessein, sans promesse, je ne suis pas tenu d’en faire bon, ny de m’y tenir moy mesme, sans varier quand il me plaist, et me rendre au doubte et à l’incertitude, et à ma maistresse forme qui est l’ignorance
… (1, 50, p. 578). This passage alone suffices to show what this ignorance amounts to. Concealed behind self-irony and modesty there is a very definite attitude which serves his major purpose and to which he adheres with the charmingly elastic tenacity which is his own. Elsewhere he reveals to us even more clearly what this ignorance, his
maistresse forme
, means to him. For he conceives of an
ignorance forte et genereuse
(3, 11, p. 493) and values it more highly than all factual knowledge because its acquisition requires greater wisdom than the acquisition of scientific knowledge. It is not only a means of clearing the way for him to the kind of knowledge which matters to him, that is, self-knowledge, but it also represents a direct way of reaching what is the ultimate goal of his quest, namely, right living:
le grand et
glorieux chef d’œuvre de l’homme, c’est vivre à propos
(3, 13, p. 651). And in this animated personality there is such a complete surrender to nature and destiny, that he considers it useless to strive for a greater knowledge of them than they themselves grant us to experience:
Le plus simplement se commettre à nature, c’est s’y commettre le plus sagement. Oh! que c’est un doux et mol chevet, et sain, que l’ignorance et l’incuriosité, à reposer une teste bien faicte!
(3, 13, p. 580); and a little before that he says:
… je me laisse ignoramment et negligemment aller à la loy generale du monde; je la sçauray assez quand je la sentiray. …

Deliberate ignorance and indifference in regard to “things” is part of his method; he seeks in them only himself. This one subject of his he tests by innumerable experiments undertaken on the spur of the moment; he illuminates it from every direction; he fairly encircles it. The result is not, however, a mass of unrelated snapshots, but a spontaneous apprehension of the unity of his person emerging from the multiplicity of his observations. In the end there is unity and truth; in the end it is his essential being which emerges from his portrayal of the changing. To track oneself down by such a method is in itself a way leading to self-possession:
l’entreprise se sent de la qualité de la chose qu’elle regarde; car c’est une bonne portion de l’effect, et consubstantielle
(1, 20, p. 148). At every moment of the continual process of change Montaigne possesses the coherence of his personality; and he knows it:
Il n’est personne, s’il s’escoute, qui ne descouvre en soy une forme sienne, une forme maistresse
(3, 2, p. 52); or, in another passage:
les plus fermes imaginations que j’aye, et generalles, sont celles qui, par maniere de dire, nasquirent avec moy; elles sont naturelles et toutes miennes
(2, 17, pp. 652-653). To be sure, this
forme sienne
cannot be put into a few precise words; it is much too varied and too real to be completely contained in a definition. Yet for Montaigne the truth is
one
, however multiple its manifestations; he may contradict himself, but not truth.