Some people are so afraid of dying that they waste hundreds of hours trying to protect themselves against the normal risks of life. They fear catching the flu, falling from their bicycle, or eating too much meat; as a result, they restrain their lifestyle in the vain hope of living a little bit longer.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), after a long reflection, made the opposite choice. Instead of being paralysed by fear, he remained extremely active. Instead of worrying, he focused on his favourite activities.
I admire in particular his decision to travel to Paris after his fifty-fifth birthday, suffering from chronic kidney pain. Even in our century, few individuals at that age keep pushing resolutely to develop their careers, especially something as uncertain as a literary career.
In Paris, Montaigne met for the first time his admirer Marie de Gournay, who was twenty-three years old at that time. They hit it off immediately, intellectually, and Montaigne started to refer to Marie as “my adopted daughter.”
Montaigne was speaking metaphorically since he never took any steps to adopt Marie, nor had she asked for any adoption. Marie was the daughter of a minor aristocrat, who had passed away when she was twelve, leaving Marie, her sisters and their mother in a precarious financial condition.
Montaigne’s relationship to Marie de Gournay
The relationship between Montaigne and Marie de Gournay lasted three and a half years. I count those years as the happiest in Montaigne’s life.
Why? Because, for the first time since the death of his best friend Etienne de La Boetie, Montaigne had met a kindred soul, someone who understood him perfectly and with whom he could converse for hours on end.
Note that twenty-five years had elapsed between La Boetie’s death and the first time that Montaigne met Marie de Gournay. When meeting Marie in Paris, Montaigne was taken aback by the resemblance of their conversations (in terms of breadth and depth) with those he had held with La Boetie.
Despite their age difference, Montaigne and Marie shared a key personality trait: to a large extent, both were self-educated.
Montaigne had gathered in his manor a substantial number of books, and he had studied them repeatedly. Marie was well read in philosophy and ancient authors, which she had learned to read in Latin.
She had procured a copy of Montaigne’s essays in 1581 and had read them several times. She was only nineteen years old when she had first read Montaigne’s works, at the time that he was travelling in Germany and Italy, looking for a remedy for his kidney condition, to no avail.
When Montaigne visited Paris in 1585, Marie de Gournay was living with her sisters and mother in Gournay-sur-Aronde, a village located twenty-five kilometres north of Paris. When she heard that Montaigne was coming to Paris, she travelled on her own to meet him.
Michel de Montaigne’s last years
Historians have categorized the relationship between Marie and Montaigne as friendship, platonic love, or mentorship. I’m reluctant to believe that their relationship did not become any closer, but since I lack proof in this respect, I must stick to the official narrative.
After making arrangements to have the second edition of his essays printed in Paris, Montaigne returned to his manor in the south of France. Nonetheless, in the last three years of his life, he maintained a copious correspondence with Marie.
Montaigne kept making edits and additions (interpolations) in his essays after the second edition. He was planning to bring out a third edition in the near future.
In his correspondence with Marie, he kept her current on his latest work. I can only assume that he was looking forward to seeking her again the next time he travelled to Paris.
Montaigne had no problem maintaining correspondence on a regular basis with Marie, but did not go as far as inviting her to visit him in his manor in the south of France, where he was living with his wife and daughters.
Of course, he know that Marie’s visit would create a volatile situation at home, and possibly a social scandal. Nevertheless, if Montaigne had returned to Paris and met Marie for a second time, I wonder if he had taken the risk.
The third edition of Michel de Montaigne’s essays
Montaigne passed away in 1592, aged fifty-nine. His early biographers affirm that he died while he was attending mass in the chapel next to his manor. In view of Montaigne’s writings about religion, I find it hard to take this detail at face value.
Marie de Gournay lived too far away to attend his funeral. I doubt that she could have afforded the trip anyway. However, we do know that she had full access to the work performed by Montaigne in his last three years.
Montaigne had left written instructions that, upon his death, his extant, unpublished works should be delivered to Marie. It took her three years to organize and edit the material. In 1595, she published the third and final edition of Montaigne’s essays.
Marie de Gournay went to live another fifty-three years; she attained the age of eighty, which is an infrequent example of longevity in sixteenth-century France.
She wrote a few books of her own, but her place in history has been secured primarily by her relationship to Montaigne. I can only praise Montaigne’s determination to stay active and keep enjoying life until the very last minute.
If you are interested in putting rational ideas into practice in all sort of situations, I recommend you my book “Against all odds: How to achieve great victories in desperate times.”