Balzac, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Dante, Goethe, Nietzsche—Zweig wrote something substantial on them all, but he also penned shorter portraits of a range of less iconic Europeans, most of which have yet to find their way into English. Often these biographical studies seemed intricately bound to Zweig’s own destiny or came about in unforeseen ways.

This discovery led to yet another biography, even though Zweig professed to be tiring of the genre, having just completed the study of Erasmus in which he used the great humanist and theologian as a template to espouse his own convictions.

Like any writer, Zweig strongly identified with those who had passed before him on a similar path, and sensed a fraternal bond with these fellow travellers. In significant moments of upheaval in his life, it tended to be those harbouring a noble-minded, humanistic agenda, a unifying spirit, an inner belief in the betterment of man, who garnered Zweig’s admiration and support. The lone figure who shrank from sectarianism and struggled to remain true to his own values in epochs which seemed to foreshadow his own, drew Zweig’s avid attention.

Preceding this had been a volume containing studies of Dostoevsky, Balzac and Dickens (1920), and the series concluded with Casanova, Stendhal and Tolstoy in 1928.

More than any literary seduction, the stricken exile, so bereft of comradeship, was spiritually rewarded with a new-found friend, a fraternal counsellor speaking from a distance of four centuries, whose example chimed with Zweig’s ever more powerful inward convictions concerning personal freedom in the face of tyranny and the absolute necessity to remain true to oneself.

magnanimity

But ironically it was also his avid reading of Montaigne which contributed to Zweig’s decision to take his own life in February 1942.

eyrie,

mothballed.

febrile

Zweig always maintained he was not a collector for its own sake, that he did not amass objects to savour them in private; rather, he saw himself as a temporary guardian, whose thrill was in tracking down a key treasure and, by securing it, creating a spiritually ennobling ensemble with other treasures, a cultural edifice that furthered a humanist set of values. Even here Zweig was attempting unification, a harmonious realignment of elements: Of course I never considered myself the owner of these things, only their custodian… I was intrigued by the idea of bringing them together, making a collection into a work of art. I was aware that in this collection I had created something that in itself was worthier to last than my own works.

Then, like a man who during a long illness suddenly appears to recover for a moment and glow with renewed hope, Zweig carried Montaigne up from the cellar, and without delay set out to tell the world why this incomparable man of letters, four centuries dead, mattered now in moral terms and how, in an intolerable period of history, Montaigne showed better than anyone else that one could still remain free.

This impulsion began with his almost fanatical championing of the work of the Belgian poet Emile Verhaeren before the First World War. Zweig’s role was as committed servant, a willing mediator between master past and apprentice present, diligently escorting the chosen gilt minds across to new generations, tending their achievements on European soil in order to stimulate future harvests. This zealous talent scout of history revealed at the opportune moment the key elements of a subject’s character, their position in a particular epoch, the example they left, their heroism or heroic failure, elements which chimed with his own inward preoccupations, sustained his conception of solitary labour as artistic sacrifice, or lent credence to the trajectory of passionate engagement with life he sought to follow.

studiously re-examining the period in which the subject lived and their place in it.

oeuvre.

entreaties

Not only this but one of the foremost experts on Montaigne, Fortunat Strowski, also happened to be in Brazil at this time. Strowski gladly offered his services and his own books to Zweig, among them a work on Montaigne by André Gide.

In a letter to Friderike on 27th October 1941, Zweig says: To write something on Montaigne, whom I now read avidly and with such pleasure, has entirely seduced me; he is another (a better) Erasmus, a wholly consoling spirit. But here there is virtually nothing available on him and I have no idea if I can even find the books I need from America. The whole atmosphere of an epoch is indispensable if one is properly to understand the man who lived in it.

The book takes a more or less conventional biographical route, lingering on family background, detailing the radical humanist education of the prodigy, then moves into Montaigne’s mature years in the tower, an eleventh-hour dalliance with love, then on to perpetuity. But around this Zweig weaves the incredible tapestry with its repeated motif of Montaigne as exemplar of the free spirit, the man for all time, an exceptional example of moral certitude encapsulated within a single being.

Gallic

morsels,

apposite.

Zweig’s vision of Montaigne as a fraternal spirit, an existential soulmate, “eine Bruderschaft des Schicksales”,* formed at a moment of extreme vulnerability, cannot be underestimated. But Montaigne also stood in for those European friendships now in limbo. In a letter to Jules Romains, Zweig described his subject as “the good Montaigne, who in my solitude replaces my distant friends”. Montaigne is like an old friend who has called on him to provide wise counsel in a grave moment “nostra res agitur”.*

Zweig revels in Montaigne’s formidable independent spirit: “not a son and citizen of a race or a fixed place, but a citizen of the world, beyond any land or time”.

Listing the various ways Montaigne has been drily interpreted by scholars, Zweig firmly casts him as torch-bearer for preserving one’s inner authenticity, the man who rejected encroaching sectarianism and simply withdrew, both physically and mentally. “In him I see the ancestor, the protector and the friend of each ‘homme libre’ on earth, the most adept master at this new yet eternal science, the preserving of oneself above all other concerns.”

anchorite

Now Montaigne, who artfully slipped out of the grasp of factions, of warring groups, of the crowd, suddenly looms from the dark thicket of war, and for Zweig his undying lamp in the tower window becomes a beacon of hope. In Montaigne’s stand, his decision to disengage from the external, Zweig sees a way out, if only in the imagination, of his own increasing sense of disempowerment, the languorous nihilism of exile, the feeling that the epoch’s implications are just too overwhelming to resist.

“We too need to stand the test, to endure one of the most horrifying collapses of humanity, which follows directly one of its most magnificent periods of advancement.” With 1914 in mind, and the squandered glories of the enlightenment, Zweig laments the perennial blindness of men who only see what they have lost when it is too late. He recounts the dizzying rise of the Renaissance and humanism, then the subsequent fall into chaos and bloodshed, all echoing the loss of “the golden age” to the present cataclysm.

For Zweig, Montaigne is the archetypal man of tolerance who abhors all rigid thought and dogma, the great sceptic. He is, like Zweig, the man who builds bridges, who meanders rather than takes straight paths; above all he is the great conciliator, “der ideale Vermittler”, the man who is used by others to facilitate negotiations, since he stands apart from any faction.

It is this “experience” which for Zweig is paramount. Writing is only a means to an end, that of relishing life to the full: “He writes—but he is not a writer. Writing for him is only a substitute.”

He explores “the rich souls of times past” to correlate them with his own. He studies virtues, vices, flaws and merits, the wisdom and puerility of others. History is his great instruction manual, for, as he says, it is in his actions that man reveals himself.

poignant

For him books are not like men, who impose themselves and burden him with their chatter, and of whom it is hard to be rid. When you don’t call for them they stay put; you can just pick up this one or that, according to your whim: “Books are my kingdom. And here I seek to reign as absolute lord.” Books offer him their opinion and he responds with his own. They express their thoughts and arouse in him further thoughts. They do not disturb him when he is silent; they only speak when he questions them. Here is his realm. They await his delectation.

retinue.

eschewing

courtesans

Crucially, it was Montaigne who “assisted” Zweig’s suicide, particularly through the essay ‘A Custom of the Isle of Cea’, whose principal theme is the question of a willed death, the idea that it is more noble for a man of ideals to depart voluntarily when life becomes unbearable than to remain alive at all costs: The most just death is that which is most willed. Our lives depend on the will of others, but death on ourselves alone. There is nothing to which we should apply ourselves more than this. Reputation has no place here and it is folly to think of it. Life is servitude if we lack the freedom to die.

Saturated with vivid examples of men from antiquity who met the most gruesome and outlandish ends at their own hands, Montaigne’s essay is a persuasive account of the philosophical reasoning behind an early exit in order to avoid even worse pain, humiliation or the indignity of meaningless servitude to life for life’s sake. Arriving at the “propitious” moment, Zweig seized on the justifications within and in his depressed state felt that these historic precedents compared favourably with his own experience. After all, had Montaigne not “counselled” him on so many other areas of existence?

Montaigne’s musings on ending his own life, when suffering the excruciating pain of kidney stones, are cited several times in Zweig’s essay.

When Zweig, on the eve of his death, respectfully returned to Feder the Montaigne volumes he had borrowed, he had underscored a line in the preface: “It is my opinion that you should lend yourself to others and give yourself only to yourself.” Zweig implied here and elsewhere that he had done enough of the former and not enough of the latter.

In order to recognize his true worth, you should not be too young, too deprived of experience and life’s deceptions, and it is precisely a generation like ours, cast by fate into the cataract of the world’s turmoil, to whom the freedom and consistency of his thought conveys the most precious aid.

Only he whose soul is in turmoil, forced to live in an epoch where war, violence and ideological tyranny threaten the life of every individual, and the most precious substance in that life, the freedom of the soul, can know how much courage, sincerity and resolve are required to remain faithful to his inner self in these times of the herd’s rampancy.

endearing

an artist who knew how to engrave his own signature on each phrase and each expression. But my pleasure remained solely literary, like that of a collector before a beautiful antique; it lacked the interior spark of passion, the electric arc which spans two kindred souls.

wayward

yellowed by time

What would I have done then with the judicious counsel of Montaigne, who warned against sacrificing oneself to ambition and committing oneself too ardently to the exterior world? What meaning could his gentle and insistent call for temperance, for tolerance, have on a hot-headed youth who did not want to be dispirited, who did not care for his calming message, who, without even being aware, only aspired to be inflamed by the vital effusion of youthful enthusiasm? It is the business of youth to recoil from the counsel of gentleness, of scepticism. Doubt becomes an obstacle, for a youth has need of faith and ideals to give free rein to the impetuosity borne within. And even the most radical, the most absurd illusions, as long as they inflame, would in his eyes have more importance than the most profound wisdom, which saps the strength of his will.

herald:

For one of life’s mysterious laws shows that we only notice the authentic and essential values when it’s too late: youth, once it has fled, health at the moment it abandons us, freedom of the soul, that most precious essence, at the very…

It is crucial then that we strive to understand the art of living, the wise way of living according to Montaigne, and to realize that this struggle leads to the discovery of “soi-même”,* the most crucial…

We too are to be torn from our hopes, from our experiences, our expectations and our enthusiasms, chased out from them as if under the whip, until we have only our naked selves left to defend, that unique being which is irreplaceable. It was only when destiny made us brothers that Montaigne granted me his aid, his consolation, his irreplaceable friendship; how indeed does his fate seem so very similar to our own! When Michel de Montaigne made his entry into the world, a great…

In the space of a single generation, the Renaissance had lavished on humanity a gift that enabled its artists, painters, thinkers, its seers and poets to reach a level of perfection none had anticipated. A century—no, centuries were opening up where creative power, step by step, wave on wave, was carrying dark and chaotic existence towards the threshold of the divine. All at once the world had become vaster, richer. With Greek and Latin, the scholars rediscovered antiquity and gave back to mankind the wisdom of Plato and Aristotle. Under the guidance of Erasmus, humanism promised a unified and cosmopolitan culture; the Reformation seemed, alongside the new scope of knowledge, to have founded a new religious freedom. Distances, borders between peoples were beginning to dissolve, for printing, which had just been invented, gave to each word, to each thought, the means to soar, to spread; that which had once been the reserve of a single people seemed now open to all; a spirit of unity was emerging beyond the bloody quarrels of kings, princes and armies. And another miracle: just like the spiritual world the terrestrial world was expanding in dimensions no one could have conceived. Across an ocean thought impassable emerged new shores, new countries, a great uncharted continent, promising a safe haven for future generations. The arteries of commerce experienced ever livelier pulsations, a wave of riches extended across old Europe leaving luxury in its wake, and in its turn the luxury left buildings, paintings, statues—a highly decorated, spiritualized world. And always when there is more space, the soul opens up. So it was at the beginning of our…

the miracles of technology have morphed into the most horrific elements of destruction, so elements of the Renaissance and humanism which at first seemed to offer salvation proved a lethal poison. The Reformation, which dreamt of bringing to Europe a new Christian spirit, provoked unrestrained barbarism in the wars of religion; the printing press did not diffuse culture but furor theologicus;* instead of humanism it was intolerance that spread. Across the whole of Europe, a murderous civil war devastated each country, while in the new world the bestial excesses of the conquistadors led…

Montaigne. At no moment in his life did he see reign in his country, or the world at large, peace, reason or tolerance, all those higher spiritual forces to which he had devoted his inner calling. When he opens his eyes to look out on the world and then lowers his gaze, he turns aside, like us stricken with horror at this…

The child witnesses how men in their hundreds are tortured to death, hanged, impaled, quartered, decapitated, burnt; he watches the crows, for days on end, wheeling around the gibbets, feeding on the burnt, half-putrefied flesh of the victims. He hears the cries of the martyred…

The Chambre Ardente sends the Protestants to the stake, the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre consumes…

Armed bands attack castles and travellers at will, not bothering to distinguish between Protestant and Catholic. A ride on horseback through the neighbouring wood is no less dangerous than a journey to the West Indies or to the lands of the cannibals. No one knows any more if his house and possessions are still his, or if come the morrow he will be alive or dead, prisoner or free man, and at the end of his life, in 1588, an aged Montaigne writes: In this bedlam in which we have found ourselves for the last thirty years, every Frenchman, whether privately or in wider terms, may find himself at any given moment at a point where he suffers a complete reversal of his fortunes.

Nothing is assured any more on this earth: this fundamental feeling is inescapably reflected through the spiritual intuition of Montaigne. One must seek another certitude beyond the world, beyond the homeland; one must refuse to join the chorus of the demoniacal and create one’s own homeland, one’s own world, outside the present time.

Beneath my gaze the country lies a wasteland, and I see no other course of action than exile, to abandon my house and go wherever fate decrees. For long now the fury of the gods has exhorted me to flee and reveals to me the vast and free lands across the ocean.

In such epochs where the highest values of life—our peace, our independence, our basic rights, all that makes our existence more pure, more beautiful, all that justifies it—are sacrificed to the demon inhabiting a dozen fanatics and ideologues, all the problems of the man who fears for his humanity come down to the same question: how to remain free? How to preserve the incorruptible lucidity of my spirit faced with all the threats and dangers of sectarian turmoil? How to keep humanity intact in the throes of bestiality? How to escape the tyrannical demands that the state and Church seek to impose on me? How to protect that unique part of my soul against enforced submission to rules and measures dictated from outside? How to safeguard the deepest region of my spirit and its matter which belongs to me alone, my body, my health, my thoughts, my feelings, from the danger of being sacrificed to the deranged prejudices of others, to serve interests which are not my own?

It is for this love of liberty that he observes himself, watches over, experiences and criticizes every movement and every sensation.

If we love and honour him today more than any other, it is because he devoted himself more than any other to the most sublime art of living: “rester soi-même”.*

But all that seems relevant now and occupies my thoughts on Montaigne today is this: how, in a time so reminiscent of our own, did he liberate himself inwardly and how, in reading him, can we fortify ourselves by his example?

He has nothing of the forceful tirades or lofty outbursts of a Schiller or a Byron, nothing of the pugnacity of a Voltaire. He may have permitted himself a rueful smile at the idea of wanting to impose something as deeply personal as inner freedom on individuals, let alone on the masses, and he profoundly detested professional reformers, theoreticians and peddlers of ideology. He knew only too well the colossal task represented by this simple idea: to safeguard one’s independence at the core of oneself. His fight limits itself to the defensive, to defend this most intimate bastion, which Goethe named the “citadel”, where entry is forbidden to all other men. His tactic was to be as inconspicuous as possible, to attract the minimum of attention through outward appearance, to travel the world as if wearing a mask, to seek out only the path that would lead to himself.

He never offended anyone, because he never pushed himself forward, never sought an audience or endorsement. Seen from the outside, he appeared to be a model citizen, a functionary, a married man, a Catholic, a man who discreetly paid his dues to the world.

He left the rest to prattle on, to move with the herd, to get borne aloft, to preach and parade; he left the world to follow its chaotic crazed paths and only concerned himself with one thing: to be rational within himself, to remain human in an inhuman time, to remain free in the vortex of pandemonium. He let them have their say, those who mockingly accused him of indifference, indecision and cowardice; he let others relish their surprise at seeing him relinquish his duties and honours. His nearest and dearest, who knew him best, never doubted the perseverance, the clearsightedness and the subtlety with which, in the shadow of public affairs, he applied himself to the sole aim to which he was committed: to live his own life, and not simply to live.

unswerving

And while now the theological tracts and philosophic digressions of his century seem to us somewhat bizarre and anachronistic, he remains our contemporary; the man of today and of all time, and his struggle has remained the most present of all. A hundred times, page after page, I have the impression when I turn to Montaigne that nostra res agitur, the sense that here has been thought, with far more clarity than I could ever muster, all that occupies the most profound recesses of my soul at this moment.

This is not a book I hold in my hands, this is not literature or philosophy, but a man to whom I am a brother, a man who counsels me, consoles me, a man whom I understand and who understands me. When I pick up the Essais, the printed paper dissolves in the half-light of the room. Someone breathes, someone lives in me, a stranger has approached me, and now he is no longer a stranger, but an intimate, a friend.

Why let yourself be so torn and traumatized by the inanity and depravity of the epoch in which you are obliged to live? All of that can only graze your skin; it cannot reach the interior self. The outside world can take nothing from you and cannot unhinge you, as long as you do not allow yourself to be disturbed. The events of your time remain impotent before you, as long as you refuse to take part in them, and the madness of the epoch does not constitute a real danger, as long as you conserve in yourself a purity of spirit.

More than ever, we owe our knowledge to the ones who reinforce in us the sense of being human in an inhuman epoch like ours, those who exhort us not to abandon what is ours by right, what we cannot imagine losing, our deepest selves. Only the man who remains free from all and everything augments and sustains freedom on this earth.

For such a sum his great-grandfather had purchased the chateau of Montaigne from the bishops of Bordeaux on 10th October 1477, but because his grandson, Montaigne’s father, had not obtained authorization to add his name to that of the property, Michel’s middle-class ancestors were called simply by the name Eyquem. Only Michel de Montaigne, the sceptical and intelligent connoisseur of the world, knew the importance of having a name which rang clear: “Having a beautiful name, which one pronounces and recalls with ease.” So, at his father’s death, he did away with all the parchments and old documents referring to the family name. It is owing to this quirk of history that we now search through world literature for the name of the author of the Essais not under E for Eyquem, but under M for Montaigne.

What was, for his ancestors, mere lust for gain and cupidity, for him becomes a higher spiritual ideal. He obtains the first volumes of a magnificent library; he attracts learned men to his house, humanists and professors.

infirmity

But it is only the son who will seal the rise, only he who will be the instructor of Shakespeare, counsellor to kings, the glory of his language, the patron saint of all thinkers on this earth.

this absence of the mother throughout the oeuvre is often attributed to Montaigne’s desire to veil and conceal his Jewish origins. Despite all his sagacity, Montaigne suffered something of an unsavoury infatuation with the nobility, which is why, no doubt, in his will he asks to be buried “in the tomb of my ancestors”, when in truth only his father was ever buried at Montaigne.

His image of the world was forged according to the antique model, where the wife bears no relation to the spiritual world. And this is why we know nothing of any specific inclination or specific aversion of the Eyquem grandson for the granddaughter of Mosche Paçagon.

ANOBLE NAME HARBOURS the unconscious will for its preservation and perpetuation across the generations.

following the death of two girls at a young age, the long awaited son was born, our Michel de Montaigne.

From the hour of his birth, the father aspires to the highest of destinies for his son. In the same way that Pierre’s education, intellectual refinement and social standing have overtaken his…

In an isolated chateau in Gascony, in the middle of the sixteenth century, 250 years before Jean-Jacques Rousseau and three centuries before Pestalozzi, an old soldier, grandson of a fish merchant, ponders lengthily over the education he will give his son. He seeks the counsel of his erudite humanist friends and deliberates with them over the best methods of raising his son, right from his earliest childhood, to a higher level in the human and social dimension;…

The child is very quickly torn from the maternal breast and, instead of employing a nursemaid, as was the custom in aristocratic houses, they put him at a distance from the chateau of Montaigne and place him with people of a humble position, poor woodcutters in a small hamlet within the fiefdom of Montaigne. In doing this, the father not only wants to accustom the child to “austerity and frugality”, in order to strengthen him, he wants to “bond him to the people from the outset and for him to experience the situation of…

Also he wanted to prevent his son picking up from early childhood the sense of being “top brass”, a member of an entitled elite; on the contrary, he would quickly learn to “turn to those who lend us an arm, rather than those who turn their back”. Physically, Montaigne seems to have stood the test of frugality and the spartan upbringing in the wretched hut of the charcoal-burner, and he reports that he was so accustomed to a rudimentary diet during childhood that he always prefers simple fare and, in place of sugary things, jams and biscuits, “brown bread,…

Plucked from the plebeian milieu, as if from hot to cold, the young Michel is suddenly plunged into the world of humanism. From the very start, the ambitious Pierre Eyquem decided that his son would not be an indolent gentleman idling away his time in the frivolous pursuits of dice, wine and hunting, nor would he be a merchant or money-grubber. Rather he must be solely concerned with the highest spheres, must be of that minority who, through their sagacity and their culture, direct the destiny of their epoch through the…

comedy. At considerable cost, the father hires a German scholar, chosen deliberately since he knows not a word of French, plus two no less scholarly assistants, who are forbidden to address the child in any language bar Latin. The words and phrases that the four-year-old learns are in Latin and, to ensure that he does not absorb French, his mother tongue, at the same time, and so as to retain the purity and perfection of the Latin, they draw an invisible ring around little Michel. When the father, the mother or the servants want to say something to the child, they must first acquire for themselves a few snatches of Latin from the masters. And in the chateau of Montaigne, a truly comic situation emerges: due to a pedagogic experiment, an entire household, relatives and…

by the age of six, the future master of French prose could not pronounce a single word in his mother tongue, but without books, without grammar, without coercion of any kind, without the threat of the cane or any tears, he learnt to speak Latin in the purest and most faultless manner. The ancient universal language is his original native tongue, so much so that, for his whole life, he will always take more pleasure in reading Latin than…

In contrast to the brutal schooling favoured at the time, where strict principles are hammered home under the blows of the cane, here the child was to develop according to his own inward predilections. The humanist advisors expressly stated to this concerned father the need, as Montaigne later writes, “to allow me to savour science and duty through free will and my own…

Apparently, one of the private tutors claimed that what troubles the “tender brain of the child” is when he is “woken with a violent start” from sleep. So was invented a curious system to safeguard the nerves of the young child from this shock, however minimal. Each day in his little child’s bed, Michel de Montaigne is woken by music. Around his bed, flautists and string players wait for the signal to commence the soft melody that will draw the sleeping Michel from his dreams of yesterday, and…

was evident in the stubborn refusal to submit to any authority, to bend before any discipline, which ultimately caused a certain atrophy of the will. This peculiar childhood gave Montaigne, for all the years to come, the unfortunate habit of evading as much as possible any overly insistent or powerful tension, all that was problematic, routine or an obligation, and of always giving in to his own desire, to his own caprice. This “mercurialness”, this “insouciance” which he laments so often, perhaps have their origin in these formative years, but so too does his obstinate will to remain unfettered, never to be the slave of one opinion or another.

But it’s also lucky for him that it comes to an end before it is too late. To appreciate freedom, one must have known constraint, and the chance falls into Montaigne’s lap when, at the age of six, he is sent to the college of Bordeaux, where he will remain until his thirteenth year. Not that this son of the wealthiest citizen and mayor of the city is exactly treated with any firmness or harshness: the one and only time he receives the rod, it is administered “very gently”.

He is irritated to find that the schoolmasters make him learn by rote facts and figures, laws and systems—it’s not without reason that in this period his schoolmasters were labelled pompous prigs—and that they wanted to impose on him a “bookish opaqueness”.

“As when plants suffocate for too much moisture, and lamps from too much oil, so the action of the spirit is suffocated by an overload of study and matter.” Such knowledge is a burden on the mind, not an action of the soul: “To know by heart is not to know, it is to keep what they have given you and store it in your memory.”

should judge the aptitude of a child not by his memory but by the testimony of his life… Let the young man read and sift and verify, not just accept the authority in good faith. A rich variety of opinions must be presented to him. He will make his choice, and if he cannot, then he will remain in doubt. He who sheep-like follows another follows nothing. He discovers nothing, because he seeks nothing.

Certainly, his tendency to cast a piercing gaze over things was already formed, but only, so to speak, in an embryonic and fleeting manner: “What I saw, I saw clearly, and beneath this sluggish facade, opinions and an audacious imagination were gestating at a level well above my age.”

“In me the spirit was slow to emerge, and could only move as far forward as it was led; my perception was delayed; my inventiveness dulled, and above all I suffered an incredible weakness of memory.”

Once, like Louis Lambert, he was won over to the enchantment of reading freely, he could not stop. The young Montaigne reads with great enthusiasm the Metamorphoses by Ovid, the Aeneid by Virgil, the dramas of Plautus in their original language, which is his true mother tongue. And this knowledge of the classics, together with his oral mastery of Latin, sets the record straight in unconventional fashion for this seemingly discredited and sluggish pupil. One of his masters, George Buchanan—who will later play a pivotal role in the history of Scotland—is also the author of highly esteemed Latin tragedies, in which Montaigne appears, as he does in school productions of other Latin dramas, with admirable success. He surpasses all his colleagues through the modulations of his voice and through his mastery of Latin, acquired so early in life.

By the time he is thirteen, this ineducable pupil has already achieved his exterior education; from now on, and for the remainder of his life, Montaigne will be his own master and his own pupil.

Following school and college, it seems that the young man of thirteen years spent a period of relative repose in the paternal home, before enrolling as a student of law at the university of Toulouse, or perhaps Paris. He himself insists that by the age of twenty his education is definitively at an end: It is my belief that by the age of twenty our souls are resigned to what they have become and they have achieved whatever they are able to… I am…

Montaigne was, like his father, surprisingly modest in stature, which he himself views as a deficiency and which he deplores, since this failure to meet the norm draws attention to him and diminishes his standing. But there is still enough to exhibit the proud allure of a young gentleman. A robust and healthy body, a finely chiselled face, narrowly oval-shaped, a delicate nose, with harmonious curves, a prominent brow, arched eyebrows, a full mouth set in the little chestnut beard, which seems to darken with some secret intent—such is the image Montaigne presents to the world. The eyes, striking through the power and keenness of their…

Of dexterity and skill, I am lacking… for music, singing, playing I have neither the voice, which has always been inept, nor the ability to master the instruments. In dance, ball games, wrestling, I have only learnt the basics; in swimming, fencing, racing and jumping, nothing at all. My fingers are so clumsy I can hardly read what I have written, or even fold the letter properly; I can barely…

His soul is more drawn to sociability, and it is to this domain he devotes himself, always with an eye for the ladies, who, he confesses, deeply attracted him from the first. His lively imagination enables him to grapple quickly with all problems. Without being a dandyish figure—he observes, with that particular insouciance his character affords him, that he is one of those men on whose melancholy shoulders rich gowns may be draped—he seeks out the affairs and camaraderie of others. His true passion is discussion, but discussion as fencing foil, rather than through pugnacity or rage.…

Montaigne, who has a horror of all brutality, and who is nauseated by vulgarity, feels himself “physically tortured” at the first sight of suffering. The young Montaigne, before the stage of conceived and learned wisdom, can only draw on…

The death of his father leaves him as sole heir, and a rich one at that. As the eldest son he is heir to the title, along with a private income of 10,000 livres, but also the onerous responsibility of the entire domain. His mother receives her dowry, and Montaigne, major domus, head of the clan, must apply himself to administering the daily accounts and the hundred and one petty demands of the estate, he who is so reluctant to take responsibility and is answerable to himself alone. And nothing aggrieves Montaigne more than a mundane occupation which demands a sense of duty, perseverance, tenacity, attention to detail—that is to say, highly methodical qualities. He openly admits his lack of interest in domestic affairs right into middle age.

I do not know the difference between one strain and another, whether in the field or in the granary, unless it is blindingly obvious; nor even between the cabbages and lettuces in my kitchen garden. I cannot name the most basic household tools, nor the most rudimentary principles of agriculture, things a child would know; not a month goes by when I am not caught out, having no idea that sourdough is used to make bread, or what actually happens when they stir the wine in the vat.

For him the inheritance was most fortuitous; he cherished this nest egg only because it assured him an interior independence. But he would rather just enjoy it without worrying about it: “I would far rather the losses and dissensions in my business affairs remain hidden from me.” Before his daughter is even out of the cradle, he dreams of a son-in-law to assume the burden of all these trials and labours.

He realizes that possession is an arbitrary gift which must be defended day by day, hour by hour: “I would have been quite content to descend into poverty, to exchange all this for a simpler life, one free from the relentless encroachment of business affairs.”

For some fifteen years, he has been assessor in the lower chamber of parliament but proceeded no further in his career. Now, with his father dead, he chances his destiny. Having been tenth assessor of the Chambre des Enquêtes, he seeks promotion to the higher chamber. But, on the 14th November 1569, the chamber snubs his overtures, arguing that his father-in-law is the president and his stepbrother one of the counsellors. This decision is a real blow, but in a higher sense proves fortuitous, for in it Montaigne finds a reason, a pretext, to bid farewell to public service. He resigns his post; or better…

The Protestants were taking up arms and the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre loomed. Like his friend La Boétie, Montaigne only conceived of his political activity as a medium for tolerance and conciliation. His nature placed him as the logical mediator between opposing factions, and his real action in public life had always centred around negotiating covert conciliations. But that time had now passed; he had to choose one way or the other. France must become Huguenot or Catholic. The coming years impose huge responsibilities around the fate of his homeland, and Montaigne is…

In his thirty-eighth year, Montaigne enters retirement. He no longer wishes to serve anyone but himself. He is weary of politics, of public life and business affairs. It is a moment of disillusion. In his social prestige, in his position in life, he is inferior to his father. He has been a worse civil servant, a worse husband, a worse custodian. What exactly is he then? He has the sense that up to this moment his life has been a sham; he yearns to live properly, to reflect…

And to cut himself off in some sense from any return to the world, he engraves this inscription in Latin on the wall of his library: In the year of Our Lord 1571, at the passing of his thirty-seventh year, on the eve of the month ofMarch, on this the anniversary of his birth, Michel de Montaigne, so long repelled by the servitude of his heart to public duties, feeling himself in robust health, comes to rest against the chaste breast of the Muses. Here, in calm and security, he will see out the declining days of a full life—in the hope…

Until now he has lived for others—now he wants to live for himself alone. Until now he has done what his occupation, the court, his father demanded of him, now he wants to do only what is pleasurable to the self. When he wanted to help, he achieved nothing; when he aspired to something, they barred his way; when he sought to counsel, they ignored his advice. He has amassed experiences, now he wants to establish their meaning and harvest their flowering. Michel de Montaigne has…

There is his wife, his mother, his children, who do not hold much importance—in a rather odd passage, he even confesses to not knowing exactly how many of his children are dead—there are the servants, the farmers, the peasants, and he has to take all of them into account. The family does not always exist in a state of harmony; the house is filled with people…

What Montaigne seeks is his interior self, that which cannot submit to state, to family, to time, to circumstances, to money, to property; this interior self, which Goethe labelled…

Today, it is difficult to imagine how the chateau of Montaigne must have once appeared, for it has experienced any number of reconstructions, and in 1882 a fire swept through the building, totally gutting it, with the happy…