How to Live

by Sarah Bakewell

  32 De-cluttering: Montaigne, Essays, ed. Honoria (1800).

  33 Charron: Charron, De la Sagesse. Relations of humans to animals: 72–86. On Charron, see Gontier, E., “Charron, Pierre,” in Desan, Dictionnaire 155–9. “Remake”: Bellenger 188. Charron, Petit traité de la sagesse (Paris, 1625).

  34 Bad copyist: Montaigne, Les Essais, ed. Gournay (Paris: Jean Camusat, 1635), Preface, cited Villey, Montaigne devant la postérité 162.

  35 Purified essences: L’Esprit des Essais de Montaigne (Paris: C. de Sercy, 1677). Pensées de Montaigne, propres à former l’esprit et les moeurs (Paris: Anisson, 1700), which includes “There are few books so bad”: 5.

  36 “Moby-Dick must have been difficult”: Ben Hoyle, “Publisher makes lite work of the classics,” The Times (April 14, 2007). “Every abridgment of a good book is a stupid abridgment”: III:8 872.

  37 “Diverse and undulating”: I:15. “Double within ourselves”: II:16 570.

  38 The subconscious, and Conley’s example: Conley. Montaigne’s remark that he knew of Rome before he knew of the Louvre: III:9 927. “Embabooned”: III:9 928. Conley refers to Cotgrave, R., A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues (London: A. Islip, 1611): embabouyner meant “to deceive, gull, ride, bring into a fools Paradise; to give sucke unto; to use like a child.”

  39 “Where we are to go, if we like”: I:26 140.

  40 “The hundredth commentator”: III:13 995. “See how Plato is moved”: II:12 538.

  41 “There has been enough about this book”: III:13 995. “An able reader”: I:24 112. “I have read in Livy”: I:26 140.

  42 “Minds are threaded together”: Woolf, V., A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, ed. M. A. Leaska (London: Hogarth, 1990), 178–9. Cited in Lee, H., Virginia Woolf (London: Vintage, 1997), 171.

  19. Q. How to live? A. Be ordinary and imperfect

  1 “I set forth a humble and inglorious life”: III:2 740.

  2 “I have at least this profit”: II:37 698. Also, on becoming habituated to the kidney-stone attacks and to his proximity to death: III:13 1019.

  3 “Down a gentle and virtually imperceptible slope”: I:20 76. See also III:13 1020, III:13 1030. “Is there anything so sweet”: III:13 1021.

  4 Finding pleasure in the midst of the attacks: III:5 775. “There is pleasure”: III:13 1019.

  5 “I am already growing reconciled”: II:37 697.

  6 “A silly and decrepit pride”: III:2 752.

  7 “Our being is cemented”: III:1 726–7.

  8 “Thickened and obscured” and “There is no need”: II:20 621–2.

  9 Montaigne’s letters to Henri IV are included in Montaigne, The Complete Works, tr. D. Frame, 1332–6. On his visitors: Frame, Montaigne 303–4.

  10 Léonor and her children: this daughter Françoise died in early adulthood, but another daughter of Léonor’s by a second marriage, Marie de Gamaches, grew up to inherit the Montaigne estate and to pass it on through the family for centuries. Frame: Montaigne 303–4. On the Gamaches family: Legros, A., “Gamaches (famille de),” Desan, Dictionnaire 425–6.

  20. Q. How to live? A. Let life be its own answer

  1 This account of Montaigne’s death is based mainly on Pasquier’s: Pasquier, Choix de lettres 48–9, cited Frame, Montaigne 304–6. “Pale and weeping servants”: I:20 81–2. Bernard Automne: Automne, B., Commentaire sur les coustumes généralles de la ville de Bourdeaux (Bordeaux: Millanges, 1621), cited Frame, Montaigne 305. A discussion of the precise causes of Montaigne’s death, hosted by the Société des Amis de Montaigne in 1996, concluded that a stroke may have finished him off: Eyquem, A. (et al)., “La Mort de Montaigne: ses causes rediscutées par la consultation posthume de médecins spécialistes de notre temps,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne, series 8, no. 4 (juillet–déc. 1996), 7–16.

  2 Brach’s account: Pierre de Brach to Justus Lipsius, Feb. 4, 1593, cited Villey, Montaigne devant la posterité 350–1, and Millet 64–6.

  3 “His heart was placed”: Montaigne, Le Livre de raison, entry for Sept. 13. On his burial in the church, see Legros, A., “Montaigne, Saint Michel de,” and Balsamo, J., “Tombeau de Montaigne,” in Desan, Dictionnaire 683–4 and 983–4 respectively.

  4 The Feuillants: Balsamo, J., “Tombeau de Montaigne,” in Desan, Dictionnaire 983–4. Montaigne on the Feuillants: I:37 205.

  5 Inscriptions on tomb: cited Millet 192–3; translated in Frame, Montaigne 307–8.

  6 Posthumous adventures of Montaigne’s remains: Frame, Montaigne 306–7, and Balsamo, J., “Tombeau de Montaigne,” in Desan, Dictionnaire 983–4. Revolutionary reburial: Nicolaï, A., “L’Odyssée des cendres de Montaigne,” Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne, series 2, no. 15 (1949–52), 31–45.

  7 “Life should be an aim unto itself”: III:12 980. Virginia Woolf: in her diary, she wrote, “More & more do I repeat my own version of Montaigne ‘It’s life that matters.’ ” Woolf, V., Diary III:8 (entry for April 8, 1925). She said much the same in two other entries: II:301 (May 5, 1924) and IV:176 (Sept. 2, 1933), and in her essay on Montaigne: Woolf, V., “Montaigne,” in Essays IV: 71–81.

  8 No longer any need for Montaigne? For an early postwar discussion of this possibility, see Spencer, T., “Montaigne in America,” The Atlantic 177, no. 3 (March 1946), 91–7. We cannot gratify heaven or earth by committing murder: I:30 181.

  SOURCES

  Works written, translated, or edited by Montaigne

  La Boétie, E. de, La Mesnagerie de Xenophon, Les regles de mariage de Plutarque, Lettre de consolation de Plutarque à sa femme. Ed. M. de Montaigne (Paris: F. Morel, 1572 [i.e. 1570]).

  Montaigne, M. de, Oeuvres complètes. Ed. A. Thibaudet and M. Rat (Paris: Gallimard, 1962). (Old Pléaide edition)

  ——The Complete Works. Tr. C. Cotton, ed. W. Hazlitt (London: J. Templeman, 1842).

  ——The Complete Works. Tr. and ed. D. Frame (London: Everyman, 2005). (Originally published Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1943)

  ——Le Livre de raison de Montaigne sur l’Ephemeris historica de Beuther. Ed. J. Marchand (Paris: Compagnie Française des Arts Graphiques, 1948). (A facsimile edition of Montaigne’s family diary)

  ——Essais (Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1580).

  2nd edn (Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1582).

  3rd edn (Paris: J. Richer, 1587).

  “5th edn” (Paris: A. L’Angelier, 1588).

  A facsimile edition of the annotated “Bordeaux” copy of this edition was published as Montaigne: Essais. Reproduction en fac-similé de l’exemplaire de Bordeaux de 1588. Ed. R. Bernouilli (Geneve: Slatkine, 1987).

  Ed. M. de Gournay (Paris: A. L’Angelier, 1595).

  Ed. P. Coste (London: J. Tonson & J. W. Watts, 1724).

  Ed. P. Coste (La Haye: P. Gosse & J. Nealme, 1727).

  Ed. P. Villey and V.-L. Saulnier (Paris: PUF, 1965).

  Ed. A. Tournon (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1988).

  Ed. J. Balsamo, M. Magnien, and C. Magnien-Simonin (Paris: Gallimard, 2007) (Pléiade).

  ——Essayes. Tr. J. Florio (London: V. Sims for E. Blount, 1603). Tr. J. Florio (London: Everyman, 1915–21).

  ——Essays. Tr. C. Cotton (London: T. Basset, M. Gilliflower, W. Hensman, 1685–86). Tr. C. Cotton, ed. W. Hazlitt and W. C. Hazlitt (London: Reeves & Turner, 1877).

  ——Essays, Selected from Montaigne with a Sketch of the Life of the Author. Ed. Honoria (London: T. Cadell, W. Davies & E. Harding, 1800).

  ——The Complete Essays. Tr. M.A. Screech (London: Penguin, 2004). (Originally published London: Allen Lane, 1991).

  ——Journal de voyage. Ed. M. de Querlon (Rome & Paris: Le Jay, 1774). Ed. F. Garavini (Paris: Gallimard, 1983). Ed. F. Rigolot (Paris: PUF, 1992).

  ——“Travel Journal,” in The Complete Works (ed. D. Frame), 1047–1270.

  Sebond, R. de, Théologie naturelle. Tr. M. de Montaigne (Paris: G. Chaudière, 1569).

  Other works

  Arnould, J.-C. (ed.), Marie de Gournay et l’é
dition de 1595 des Essais de Montaigne. Actes du colloque (1995) (Paris: H. Champion, 1996).

  Bailey, A., Sextus Empiricus and Pyrrhonian Skepticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002).

  Bellenger, Y., Montaigne: une fête pour l’esprit (Paris: Balland, 1987).

  Blum, C. and Moreau, F. (eds), Études montaignistes en hommage à Pierre Michel (Paris: Champion, 1984).

  Blum, C. and Tournon, A. (eds), Editer les Essais de Montaigne. Actes du colloque tenu à l’Université Paris IV∼Sorbonne les 27 et 28 janvier 1995 (Paris: H. Champion, 1997).

  Boase, A. M., “Montaigne annoté par Florimond de Raemond,” Revue du XVIe siècle, 15 (1928), 237–278.

  ——The Fortunes of Montaigne: A History of the Essays in France, 1580–1669. (London: Methuen, 1935).

  Bouillier, V., La Renommée de Montaigne en Allemagne (Paris: Champion, 1921).

  Brunschvigg, L., Descartes et Pascal, lecteurs de Montaigne (Neuchâtel: La Baconnière, 1942).

  Buffum, I., Studies in the Baroque from Montaigne to Rotrou (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957).

  Bulletin de la Société des Amis de Montaigne.

  Burke, P., Montaigne (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1981).

  Butor, M., Essais sur les Essais (Paris: Gallimard, 1968).

  Cameron, K. (ed.), Montaigne and His Age (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1981).

  Cameron, K. and Willett, L. (eds), Le visage changeant de Montaigne/The Changing Face of Montaigne (Paris: H. Champion, 2003).

  Charron, P., De la Sagesse livres trois (Bordeaux: S. Millanges, 1601).

  ——Of Wisdome: Three Bookes, tr. S. Lennard (London: E. Blount & W. Aspley [n.d.—before 1612]). (Also in facsimile: Amsterdam: Theatrum Orbis Terrarum; New York: Da Capo, 1971)

  Clark, S. Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe. New edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

  Cocula, A.-M., Étienne de La Boétie (Bordeaux: Sud-Ouest, 1995).

  Coleman, D. G., Montaigne’s Essais (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987).

  Compagnon, A., “Montaigne chez les post-modernes,” Critique, 433–4 (juin-juillet 1983), 522–534.

  Conley, T., “A suckling of cities: Montaigne in Paris and Rome,” Montaigne Studies, 9 (1997), 167–186.

  Crouzet, D., Les Guerriers de Dieu (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1990).

  Cunningham, A. and Grell, O. P., The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

  Davis, N. Z., Society and Culture in Early Modern France (London: Duckworth, 1975).

  ——“A Renaissance text to the historian’s eye: the gifts of Montaigne,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 15 (1985), 47–56.

  Dédéyan, C., Montaigne chez les amis anglo-saxons (Paris: Boivin, 1946).

  Delumeau, J., La Peur en Occident, XIVe—XVIIIe siècles (Paris: Fayard 1978).

  Desan, P., “Montaigne en lopins ou les Essais à pièce décousues,” Modern Philology, 88, no. 4 (1991), 278–291.

  ——Montaigne dans tous ses états (Fassano: Schema, 2001).

  ——Portraits à l’essai: iconographie de Montaigne (Paris: H. Champion, 2007).

  ——(ed.), Dictionnaire de Montaigne (Paris: H. Champion, 2004); new edn 2007.

  Descartes, R., Discourse on Method and the Meditations, tr. F. E. Sutcliffe (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998). (Translation of Discours de la méthode, 1637 and Meditationes de prima philosophia, 1641)

  Diefendorf, B., Beneath the Cross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  Dréano, M., La Renommée de Montaigne en France au XVIIIe siècle (Bordeaux: Editions de l’Ouest, 1952).

  Eliot, T. S., “The Pensées of Pascal,” in his Selected Prose (London: Faber, 1975).

  Emerson, R. W., “Montaigne; or, the Skeptic,” from Representative Men (1850), in Collected Works, ed.

  W. E. Williams and D. E. Wilson, Vol. IV (Cambridge, MA & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987), 83–105.

  Faguet, E., Autour de Montaigne (Paris: H. Champion 1999).

  Fleuret, C., Rousseau et Montaigne (Paris: A.-G. Nizet, 1980).

  Fogel, M., Marie de Gournay: itinéraires d’une femme savante (Paris: Fayard, 2004).

  Frame, D., Montaigne in France, 1812–1852 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1940).

  ——Montaigne’s Discovery of Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955).

  ——Montaigne: A Biography (London: H. Hamilton, 1965).

  Friedrich, H., Montaigne, tr. D. Eng, ed. P. Desan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). (Translation from the German: Montaigne, 1947)

  Gardeau, L. and Feytaud, J. de, Le Château de Montaigne (Paris: Société des Amis de Montaigne, 1984).

  Gournay, M. de, Oeuvres completes, ed. J.-C. Arnould, É. Berriot, C. Blum et al. (Paris: H. Champion, 2002).

  ——Apology for the Woman Writing and Other Works, ed. and tr. R. Hillman and C. Quesnel (Chicago & London: Chicago University Press, 2002).

  ——Le Proumenoir de Monsieur de Montaigne (Paris: A. L’Angelier, 1594).

  ——“Préface” (1595 version), in her edition of Montaigne, Essais (Paris: A. L’Angelier, 1595).

  ——Preface to the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. By his adoptive daughter, Marie Le Jars de Gournay, tr. and ed. R. Hillman and C. Quesnel, based on the edition by F. Rigolot (Tempe, Arizona: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998).

  ——Égalité des hommes et des femmes (Paris, 1622).

  ——Apologie pour celle qui escrit (1626 version), and Peincture des moeurs, in L’Ombre de la demoiselle de Gournay (Paris: J. Libert, 1626).

  ——Apologie (1641 version), in Les advis ou Les présens de la demoiselle de Gournay,3rd edn (Paris: T. du Bray, 1641).

  Gray, F., Le Style de Montaigne (Paris: Nizet, 1958).

  Greengrass, M., Governing Passions: Peace and Reform in the French Kingdom, 1576–1585 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

  Guizot, G., Montaigne: études et fragments, ed. M. A. Salles (Paris: Hachette, 1899).

  Hadot, P., Philosophy as a Way of Life, ed. Arnold I. Davidson, tr. M. Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).

  Hale, J., The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance (London: HarperCollins, 1993).

  Hartle, A., Michel de Montaigne: Accidental Philosopher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).

  Haydn, H., The Counter Renaissance (New York: Scribner, 1950).

  Hazlitt, W., “On the periodical essayists.” Lecture V in Lectures on the Comic Writers (London: Taylor & Hessey, 1819), 177–208.

  Hoffmann, G., Montaigne’s Career (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

  Holt, Mack P., The French Wars of Religion, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

  Horowitz, M. C., “Marie de Gournay, editor of the Essais of Michel de Montaigne: a case-study in mentor–protégée friendship,” Sixteenth Century Journal, 17 (1986), 271–284.

  Ilsley, M. H., A Daughter of the Renaissance: Marie le Jars de Gournay, Her Life and Works (The Hague: Mouton, 1963).

  Insdorf, C., Montaigne and Feminism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1977).

  Jeanneret, M., Perpetuum mobile (Paris: Argô, 2000).

  ——Perpetual Motion: Transforming Shapes in the Renaissance from da Vinci to Montaigne, tr. N. Pollet (Baltimore & London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).

  Kapitaniak P. and Maguin, J.-M. (eds), Shakespeare et Montaigne: vers un nouvel humanisme (Montpellier: Société française Shakespeare, 2004).

  Keffer, K., A Publication History of the Rival Transcriptions of Montaigne’s Essays (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen, 2001).

  Knecht, R. J., The French Civil Wars, 1562–1598 (Harlow: Longman, 2000).

  ——The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France (London: Fontana, 1996); new edn: Oxford: Blackwell, 2001.

  La Boétie, E. de, Mémoire sur la pacification des troubles, ed. M. Smith (Geneva: Droz, 1983).

  ——De la Servitude volontaire, ou, Contr’un, ed. M.
Smith (Geneva: Droz, 1987).

  ——Slaves by Choice, tr. M. Smith (Egham, Surrey: Runnymede Books, 1988).

  ——“Of Voluntary Servitude,” tr. D. L. Schaefer, in Schaefer (ed.), Freedom Over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boétie, and On Voluntary Servitude (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), 189–222.

  Lacouture, J., Montaigne à cheval (Paris: Seuil, 1996).

  La Croix du Maine, François Grudé, seigneur de, “Messire Michel de Montagne,” in Premier volume de la Bibliothèque du sieur de la Croix-dumaine (Paris: Abel L’Angelier, 1584), 328–330.

  Lamartine, A., Correspondance, 2e série (1807–29) ed. C. Croisille and M.-R. Morin (Paris: H. Champion, 2004).

  Langer, U. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Montaigne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

  Lazard, M., Michel de Montaigne (Paris: Fayard, 1992).

  Legros, A., Essais sur poutres. Peintures et inscriptions chez Montaigne (Paris: Klincksieck, 2000).

  Léry, J. de, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, tr. J. Whatley (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). (Translation of Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil, 1578).

  Lestringant, F., Cannibals: The Discovery and Representation of the Cannibal from Columbus to Jules Verne, tr. R. Morris (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997). (Translation of Le cannibale, 1994)

  Levin, H., The Myth of the Golden Age in the Renaissance (London: Faber, 1970).

  Lüthy, Herbert, “Montaigne, or The Art of Being Truthful,” in H. Bloom (ed.), Michel de Montaigne (New York: Chelsea House, 1987), 11–28. (Originally published in Encounter, Nov. 1953, 33–44)

  Macé-Scaron, J., Montaigne: notre nouveau philosophe (Paris: Plon, 2002).

  Magnien, M., Etienne de la Boétie (Paris: Memini Paris, CNRS Éditions, 1997).

  Magnien-Simonin, C., Une Vie de Montaigne, ou Le sommaire discours sur la vie de Michel Seigneur de Montaigne (Paris: H. Champion, 1992).

  Malebranche, N., The Search After Truth, tr. and ed. T. M. Lennon and P. J. Olscamp (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). (Translation of La Recherche de la verité, 1674)

  Marcetteau-Paul, A., Montaigne propriétaire foncier: inventaire raisonné du Terrier de Montaigne conservé à la Bibliothèque municipale de Bordeaux (Paris: H. Champion, 1995).