When things are falling apart and everything seems lost, we might just as well enjoy ourselves. Once we realize that our days are counted, there is little reason for stress. Every day that is left can delivery exhilaration and happiness
On his fifty-second birthday, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) must have come to the same conclusion. He had already exceeded the average lifespan, which had severely diminished in sixteenth-century France due to the religious wars.
Montaigne thought that, if he had a few more years to live, he might as well enjoy every minute. Thus, he decided to focus on the activities he loved, and drop everything else.
Strangely enough, most individuals will embrace an enjoy-every-day strategy only after going through intense trauma. It’s a fact that most people will only grasp their own mortality after seeing the writing on the wall.
Montaigne returned to his countryside manor when his four- year term as mayor of Bordeaux had come to the end. He was through with politics for the rest of his life. Despite his efforts and best intentions, he had achieved nothing of practical value.
Instead of embracing toleration, Catholics and Protestants in France had only grown to hate each other more intensely. The war had turned into ruthless savagery. Montaigne’s attempts to put his philosophy into practice had failed all the way.
Montaigne was however not crushed by his ineffectiveness. He knew enough of history to realise how hard it is to modify a harmful ideology. When disastrous ideas are set in motion, it can take a long time before the trend is broken.
Michel de Montaigne at the top of his faculties
He realized that he had little time left and that he would have to make a choice. Should he take it easy, take walks in the garden, ride his horse, and live a life of leisure? It did not take Montaigne long to make the opposite decision.
I call Montaigne’s later period “the pinnacle years” because he was at the top of his faculties. His four years in public office had interrupted his writing, but he returned to his daily routines with alacrity.
Montaigne resumed his daily work at his study in the tower of his manor. He did as though nothing had changed since he had started to write his essays thirteen years earlier.
Actually, the only change that Montaigne acknowledged is that hundreds of people had read the first edition of his essays, which he had published in 1580, before travelling through Italy and Germany and then becoming mayor of Bordeaux.
Readers had provided Montaigne feedback, mostly positive, but had also pointed to some inconsistencies and lack of clarity in the text. Montaigne had reread his essays and acknowledged that the criticism was accurate.
He thus determined to devote his remaining years to editing and expanding his essays. I must underline the difficulty of the editing process in the sixteenth century: It amounted to authors writing notes on the margin of their own works, interpolating a paragraph, rewording a sentence, or amending a quotation.
Montaigne’s style becomes more personal
Despite his kidney condition, Montaigne resolved to devote hundreds of hours to editing his essays, hoping that the printer of the next edition would manage to decipher his annotations and interpolations.
In addition, he wrote fresh essays, which expanded the first edition by approximately one third; the most notable difference between the previous essays and the new ones is that the latter contain more tangents, personal anecdotes and comments.
Montaigne must have concluded that he had drawn as much wisdom as possible from ancient classics. He had spend a full decade quoting Plutarch (46-120 AD), Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD) and Seneca (4 BC-65 AD). It was now high time for him to comment on how to apply their insights in real life.
One thousand days later, in 1588, Montaigne felt that he had enough material for a second edition of his essays; he hesitated whether to have the second edition printed in Bordeaux, like he had done for the first, but an extraneous factor prompted him to decide otherwise.
Montaigne’s decision to travel to Paris
The extraneous factor was Marie de Gournay (1565-1645), a Parisian woman who had written to Montaigne, expressing her profound admiration for his essays.
She was thirty-two years his junior, but in sixteenth-century France, a substantial age gap wouldn’t prevent a close personal relationship, let alone a literary friendship.
Montaigne was fifty-five when he travelled to Paris with the double objective of getting the second edition of his essays in print, and meeting Marie de Gournay.
From Montaigne’s manor, the distance to Paris is more than five hundred kilometres. With optimal weather, it was going to take him four days by carriage, longer otherwise.
Considering his chronic kidney condition, I can surmise that Montaigne must have been extraordinarily motivated to travel to Paris. He could have had the second edition of his essays printed in Bordeaux, at a distance of just sixty kilometres from his home.
Montaigne’s decision to travel to Paris proved auspicious in the literary and personal sense. It brought enormous joy to his remaining years and established a sound basis for his enduring influence.
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