[In the following essay, Posner explores Montaigne's version of the ideal nobleman during a period when the political, social, and military power of the nobility was eroding.]

One of the more carefully elaborated Montaignian personæ we find in the Essais seems to be a direct response to the problems of Montaigne's historical moment. This is the neo-Stoic nobleman who, disillusioned with the ills of the age, accepts the vicissitudes of fortune with equanimity and spends his life preparing to faire une belle mort. Such a stance is hardly surprising; there is a clear link between the historical position of the sixteenth-century noblesse d'épée—a group which senses its feudal privileges and political strength slipping away as royal power increases, while its military role is being reduced by the changing nature of military strategy (gunpowder, increasing professionalism), and its economic power undermined by the expansion of a trade economy in which it cannot directly participate—and the discursive style it chooses to adopt. To a class thus threatened on all sides with loss of status, both real (politico-economic) and symbolic (honor and prestige vis-à-vis the Crown), it is certainly conceivable that an attitude of seeming indifference to the inevitable, and a corollary claim to real fulfillment in some inner realm, might have considerable appeal.¹ Montaigne's position relative to this class and to this model of noble behavior is, however, somewhat more complex, since Montaigne was a noble de robe anxious, like many of his counterparts, to be seen as a “true” noble, a noble d'épée. Rather than being himself a “real” Stoic, or even presenting this version of the noble self as a model to be emulated, it seems more probable that, even in such essays as “Que philosopher c'est apprendre à mourir” (I, 20), and “De la solitude” (I, 39), Montaigne is setting up something of a straw man, a hypothetical entity to be examined and discussed, but not necessarily imitated.² In this essay, I will try to discover just how seriously Montaigne takes this Catonian ideal, and to suggest how he uses it in his delineation of a practical model of noble identity.

“De la solitude” opens with an ill-humored attack on Ciceronian humanism, with its emphasis on public action, so dear to Erasmus and Italian civic humanists.

Laissons à part cette longue comparaison de la vie solitaire à l'active; et quant à ce beau mot dequoy se couvre l'ambition et l'avarice: Que nous ne sommes pas nez pour nostre particulier, ains pour le publicq, rapportons nous en hardiment à ceux qui sont en la danse; et qu'ils se battent la conscience, si, au rebours, les estats, les charges, et cette tracasserie du monde ne se recherche plutost pour tirer du publicq son profit particulier. Les mauvais moyens par où on s'y pousse en nostre siecle, montrent bien que la fin n'en vaut gueres. Respondons à l'ambition que c'est elle mesme qui nous donne goust de la solitude: car que fuit elle tant que la societé?³

If we are to believe this passage, Montaigne seems not to have been seduced by the Republican ideal of the humanist public man. Montaigne associates this ideal and its Ciceronian rhetorical style with the primary theater of political activity in late sixteenth-century France: the court, where “free” republican debate is out of the question. The Ciceronian mode is therefore linked (via the figure of Cicero himself) to courtly self-advancement. Montaigne is not fooled by “l'ambition et l'avarice” masquerading as disinterested civic virtue; he strips away the mask to reveal the truth, which inspires only disgust.

In a world where base self-interest is the sole motor, what is a virtuous man to do? Clearly, the alternatives are limited. “Il faut ou imiter les vitieux, ou les haïr” (I, 39, 238 A). And yet it does not seem possible to flee into the wilderness; one is compelled to live among humanity, repugnant though such a prospect may be. Therefore, given the necessity of living in society with “les vitieux,” an inner attitude of complete detachment from and indifference to worldly concerns appears to be the only solution: “Il faut avoir femmes, enfans, biens, et sur tout de la santé, qui peut; mais non pas s'y attacher en maniere que nostre heur en despende” (I, 39, 241 A).⁴ The true sage can rise above such trivial considerations, finding happiness in the private contemplation of pure virtue, while preparing for death; for, as Montaigne points out in a famous remark from “Que philosopher c'est apprendre à mourir”: “Le but de nostre carriere, c'est la mort, c'est l'object necessaire de nostre visée …” (I, 20, 84 A).⁵ And where does this activity of contemplation and preparation take place?

[A] Il se faut reserver une arriere-boutique toute nostre, toute franche, en laquelle nous establissons nostre vraye liberté et principale retraicte et solitude. En cette-cy faut-il prendre nostre ordinaire entretien de nous à nous mesmes, et si privé que nulle acointance ou communication estrangiere y trouve place; discourir et y rire comme sans femme, sans enfans et sans biens, sans train et sans valetz, afin que, quand l'occasion adviendra de leur perte, il ne nous soit pas nouveau de nous en passer. Nous avons une ame contournable en soy mesme; elle se pcut faire compagnie; elle a dequoy assaillir et dequoy defendre, dequoy recevoir et dequoy donner: ne craignons pas en cette solitude nous croupir d'oisiveté ennuyeuse,

[B] in solis sis tibi turba locis.

[C] La vertu, dict Antisthenes, se contente de soy: sans disciplines, sans paroles, sans effects.

(I, 39, 241)⁶

So the stage on which the “vraye liberté” of the sage plays itself out is purely internal, wholly independent of and entirely sealed off from any “communication estrangiere”; the sage's self-sufficient “ame” needs no external stimuli whatsoever, and is both player and audience. It is surely not amiss to begin even here to wonder about the practical viability of this particular kind of solitude, or to become suspicious of the degree to which Montaigne actually believes—or hopes to persuade us that he believes—in the possibility of its realization. This is particularly true when we focus on what is perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this self-reflexive theater-in-the-round: its claim to be able to subsist outside of language, “sans paroles”. It is tempting to seize upon this as a kind of Rousseau-esque yearning for an unspoiled, prelapsarian universe, in which there exists only pure, unmediated interaction between persons, untainted by the corruptions of language.⁷ Terence Cave and others have pursued the general implications of such a reading of the Essais,⁸ and it would be straightforward to show how, in this particular case, the very language in which this ideal of self-sufficiency is enunciated denies the possibility of its realization.

However, we shall focus instead on something more specific. The word “paroles” in this context means not so much language per se, in a global sense, but rather an excess of language, a superfluity of words—especially the wrong kinds of words, words that are misleading, confusing, or outright false. Montaigne's self-proclaimed distaste for rhetorical display and deceptive language⁹ is manifested in several places, such as “De la vanité des paroles” (I, 51), as well as in the essay immediately following “De la solitude,” “Consideration sur Ciceron” (I, 40).¹⁰ There, Montaigne discusses at length the form of “parole” appropriate to a person of his station; the backbone of his argument is the famous Senecan dictum (which he cites in a C-text addition, p. 251): Non est ornamentum virile concinnitas. While attacking Cicero (with Pliny the Younger as a corollary figure) for his vanity and ambition in life, and for his correspondingly vain and pompous style of writing, he holds up Seneca (and Epicurus) as a model both of Stoic virtue in life and of concision, directness, and plenitude in letters.

… encore ne sont ce pas lettres vuides et descharnées, qui ne se soutiennent que par un delicat chois de mots, entassez et rangez à une juste cadence, ains farcies et pleines de beaux discours de sapience, par lesquelles on se rend non plus eloquent, mais plus sage, et qui nous apprennent non à bien dire, mais à bien faire. Fy de l'eloquence qui nous laisse envie de soy, non des choses; si ce n'est qu'on die que celle de Cicero, estant en si extreme perfection, se donne corps elle mesme.

(I, 40, 252 A)¹¹

For Montaigne, there is a close correlation between character and language; even if he does not completely subscribe, as Gérard Defaux claims, to the Erasmian view that “[h]abet animus faciem quamdam suam in oratione velut in speculo relucentem,”¹² at least he is willing to accept its utility on a provisional basis; for, as he remarks in “Des menteurs”: “Nous ne sommes hommes, et ne nous tenons les uns aux autres que par la parole” (I, 9, 36 B).¹³ If one's verbal style gives the reader or hearer indications as to one's personal stile, then Ciceronian rhetoric, more interested in its own beauty and persuasive power than in conveying solid truth as simply as possible, clearly indicates that its user is not to be trusted; his parole is, in every sense, unreliable. In “Des menteurs,” as well as in “De l'institution des enfans,” from which the following citation is taken, Montaigne associates this type of parler with a particular group of people, and a particular sphere of activity, namely the court; and he sees such corruption of language as an inevitable consequence of being a courtisan:

Un courtisan ne peut avoir ny loi ni volonté de dire et penser que favorablement d'un maistre qui, parmi tant de milliers d'autres subjects, l'a choisi pour le nourrir et eslever de sa main. Cette faveur et utilité corrompent non sans quelque raison sa franchise, et l'esblouissent. Pourtant void on coustumierement le langage de ces gens-là divers à tout autre langage d'un estat, et de peu de foy en telle matiere.

(I, 26, 155 C)

The parole of the courtier is here shown to be unreliable not only because it conceals “l'ambition et l'avarice,” but also because it involves a sacrifice of independence and franchise (that very franchise which is the essential defining quality of the arriere-boutique), a sacrifice entailing in turn a loss of the ability to speak freely. It is not just that the courtier cannot speak his own mind; he is no longer able even to speak the same language as the rest of us. Instead, he speaks a language of deception, dissimulation, and concealment, a language which, says Montaigne in “Des menteurs,” is worse than no language at all:

Un ancien pere dit que nous sommes mieux en la compagnie d'un chien cognu qu'en celle d'un homme duquel le langage nous est inconnu. «Ut externus alieno non sit hominis vice.» Et de combien est le langage faux moins sociable que le silence.

(I, 9, 37 B)

Earlier in the same passage, Montaigne remarks scornfully on “ceux qui font profession de ne former autrement leur parole, que selon qu'il sert aux affaires qu'ils negotient, et qu'il plaist aux grands à qui ils parlent” (I, 9, 36 B). Montaigne tells us, in “De la præsumption,” that nothing is more repugnant to a noble soul (in this case, his own):

[A] Plustost lairrois je rompre le col aux affaires que de tordre ma foy pour leur service. Car, quant à cette nouvelle vertu de faintise et de dissimulation qui est à cet heure si fort en credit, je la hay capitallement; et, de tous les vices, je n'en trouve aucun qui tesmoigne tant de lácheté et bassesse de coeur. C'est un' humeur couarde et servile de s'aller desguiser et cacher sous un masque, et de n'oser se faire veoir tel qu'on est. Par là nos hommes se dressent à la perfidie: [B] estants duicts à produire des parolles fauces, ils ne font pas conscience d'y manquer. [A] Un coeur genereux ne doit desmentir ses pensées; il se veut faire voir jusques au dedans. [C] Ou tout y est bon, ou aumoins tout y est humein.

Aristote estime office de magnanimité hayr et aimer à descouvert, juger, parler avec toute franchise, et, au prix de la verité, ne faire cas de l'approbation ou reprobation d'autruy.

[A] Apollonius disoit que c'estoit aux serfs de mantir, et aux libres de dire verité.

(II, 17, 647)

Liberté, franchise, magnanimité, générosité; and their inverses, servilité, bassesse, lâcheté, couardise; all the code-words are there. Montaigne is enunciating—and carefully aligning himself with—an ideal of the noblesse d'épée, combining features of the feudal model with quasi-stoic elements appropriate to the new, incipiently disenfranchised situation of sixteenth-century nobility. His reference to “cette nouvelle vertu de faintise et de dissimulation” also links him to a degree with the contemporary current of anti-Machiavellian thought, as exemplified in such works as the Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner (popularly known as the Anti-Machiavel) of Innocent Gentillet (1576). However, Montaigne has too much respect for the Florentine to lend himself wholeheartedly to such polemics; later in the same essay, while discussing the unprovability of political arguments in general, he remarks:

Les discours de Machiavel, pour exemple, estoient assez solides pour le subject, si y a-il eu grand aisance à les combattre; et ceux qui l'ont faict, n'ont pas laissé moins de facilité à combatre les leurs.

(II, 17, 655 A)

Before discussing in more detail Montaigne's exact relationship to this class ideal, however, let us pursue further his view of language.

Despite the great danger posed to the “free” individual by participation in the world of affairs, Montaigne does not intend that his wise man, in rejecting the deceptions of courtly discourse, should entirely abandon the cultivated use of language. The sage, too, has his characteristic discursive style; his language is as sound and authentic as his actions are disinterested and virtuous. Montaigne describes this mode of using language, whether written or performed, in “De l'institution des enfans”:

[A] Le parler que j'ayme, c'est un parler simple et naif, tel sur le papier qu'à la bouche; un parler succulent et nerveux, court et serré, [C] non tant delicat et peigné comme vehement et brusque:

Haec demum sapiet dictio, quae feriet,

[A] plutost difficile qu'ennuieux, esloigné d'affectation, desreglé, descousu et hardy: chaque lopin y face son corps; non pedantesque, non fratesque, non pleideresque, mais plutost soldatesque, comme Suetone appelle celuy de Julius Caesar; [C] et si sens pas bien pour quoy il l'en appelle.

(I, 26, 171-72)¹⁴

The practitioners of this style are not courtiers but “real men,” whose unconstrained words are at one with their heroic deeds; and Montaigne is extremely eager to be counted as one of their number.¹⁵ An important part of doing so is demonstrating that he is not really a writer, since such activity is beneath the dignity of a true gentleman. We have already seen how, in “Consideration sur Ciceron,” he roundly criticizes Cicero and Pliny not only for their excessive focus on matters of style but also for their unseemly eagerness to be known as men of letters; he uses the examples of Scipio and Laelius to show that “la perfection du bien parler” does not “apporter quelque gloire sortable à un grand personnage” (I, 40, 249-50 A), and goes on to point out that “[c]'est une espece de mocquerie et d'injure de vouloir faire valoir un homme par des qualitez mes-advenantes à son rang …” (I, 40, 250 A).¹⁶ In fact, he says, being known as a writer is so embarrassing to a man of quality that some persons of his acquaintance will do almost anything to avoid it:

J'ay veu de mon temps, en plus fortes termes, des personnages qui tiroient d'escrire et leurs titres et leur vocation desadvoüer leur apprentissage, corrompre leur plume et affecter l'ignorance de qualité si vulgaire et que nostre peuple tient ne se rencontrer guere en mains sçavantes: se recommandant par meilleures qualitez.

(I, 40, 250 C)

Montaigne is himself very eager indeed to avoid the label of “escrivailleur”; far more important, he says in “De la ressemblance des enfans aux peres,” is to be known as someone who acts:

Quel que je soye, je le veux estre ailleurs qu'en papier. Mon art et mon industrie ont esté employez à me faire valoir moy-mesme; mes estudes, à m'apprendre à faire, non pas à escrire. Voylà mon mestier et mon ouvrage. J'ay mis tous mes efforts à former ma vie. Je suis moins faiseur de livres que de nulle autre besoigne.

(II, 37, 784 A)¹⁷

However, since he is, after all, still writing, he goes to even greater lengths to show (again, in “Consideration sur Ciceron”) that his own style is as close as possible to that appropriate to the “real man.” First, a disclaimer to show that he really doesn't even want to discuss the question of style:

Je sçay bien, quand j'oy quelqu'un qui s'arreste au langage des Essais, que j'aimeroye mieux qu'il s'en teust. Ce n'est pas tant eslever les mots, comme c'est deprimer le sens, d'autant plus picquamment que plus obliquement.

(I, 40, 251 C)

Having thus insulated himself (he hopes) from the kinds of attacks he himself has aimed at Cicero, he goes on to describe, not without immodesty, his own style, both literary and otherwise, carefully aligning it with the Senecan model he has just discussed and praised (in the passage on “lettres vuides et descharnées” cited above). He first mentions, via an uncharacteristically maladroit use of a form of disclaimer familiar to all readers of Renaissance texts, that his own letter-writing abilities are not far inferior to those of, say, Seneca: “Sur ce subject de lettres, je veux dire ce mot, que c'est un ouvrage auquel mes amys tiennent que je puis quelque chose” (I, 40, 252 B). He then continues:

J'ay naturellement un stile comique et privé, mais c'est d'une forme mienne, inepte aux negotiations publiques, comme en toutes façons est mon langage: trop serré, desordonné, couppé, particulier; et ne m'entens pas en lettres ceremonieuses, qui n'ont autre substance que d'une belle enfileure des paroles courtoises. Je n'ay ny la faculté ny le goust de ces longues offres d'affection et de service. Je n'en crois pas tant, et me desplaist d'en dire guiere outre ce que j'en crois. C'est bien loing de l'usage present: car il ne fut jamais si abjecte et servile prostitution de presentations; la vie, l'ame, devotion, adoration, serf, esclave, tous ces mots, y courent si vulgairement que, quand ils veulent faire sentir une plus expresse volonté et plus respectueuse, ils n'ont plus de maniere pour l'exprimer.

Je hay à mort de sentir au flateur: qui faict que je me jette naturellement à un parler sec, rond et cru qui tire, à qui ne me cognoit d'ailleurs, un peu vers le dedaigneux. [C] J'honnore le plus ceux que j'honnore le moins; et, où mon ame marche d'une grande allegresse, j'oublie les pas de la contenance. [B] Et m'offre maigrement et fierement à ceux à qui je suis. [C] Et me presente moins à qui je me suis le plus donné: [B] il me semble qu'ils le doivent lire en mon coeur, et que l'expression de mes paroles fait tort à ma conception.

[C] A bienvienner, à prendre congé, à remercier, à salüer, à presenter mon service, et tels complimens verbeux des loix ceremonieuses de nostre civilité, je ne cognois personne si sottement sterile de langage que moy.

(I, 40, 252-53)

This long and important passage brings together many of the critical issues we have thus far discussed. Montaigne begins with a focus on literary style, but the focus quickly expands to take in the spoken word and the theater in which it is deployed. If we find it impossible to separate the written and the spoken, the inscribed and the performed, it merely illustrates the intimate connection between the two in Montaigne's discursive universe.¹⁸ Literary style and “personal style” are, for Montaigne, one and the same.

As self-evident as this point may seem, it is worth emphasizing, because it has extremely significant ramifications. Montaigne expands the role of language beyond the literary to the social. Language becomes a means not only of communication, of conveying information, but also of defining and revealing social identity. The franc parler of Montaigne's hypothetical nobleman defines a class, limiting its membership to “real men” in the sense discussed above, and excluding those whose parole does not measure up. It functions as a kind of veil, through which only the initiated may pass; those who are unable to “lire dans [son] coeur,” penetrating behind his allegedly inadequate and sterile language, are rigorously excluded. This claim of linguistic inadequacy seems something of a paradox, since the language of the true nobleman is also supposed to be a language of plenitude and transparency. The solution lies in the exact location of that inadequacy; it is a language which is inadequate only and precisely where the language of the court proliferates most overwhelmingly, in the public display of “lettres ceremonicuses,” “presentations,” and so forth.¹⁹ Likewise, the language of the true nobleman is perfectly transparent to those not blinded by the smokescreen of courtly discourse, whose prolixity acts as an opaque barrier concealing its own emptiness. This verbal over-luxuriance and opacity is the locus of true linguistic sterility; when the courtisan wants to express something real and true, to go beyond his hyperbolic formules de politesse, he finds himself without a language corresponding to his thoughts. His vocabulary and credibility, linguistic and social, are exhausted. The language of the private sphere, of the arriere-boutique, is the revealer of the true self, the carrier of truth; public language, the language of the theater of the court, can produce only an endlessly self-replicating duplicity.

Throughout this passage, Montaigne strives mightily to distance himself as greatly as possible from the language and persona of the courtisan. One strategy he adopts, both here and elsewhere, is a kind of temporal separation. He often associates himself with his favorite figures from antiquity, “ceux qui ne vivent qu'en la memoire des livres,” as we have seen him do in comparing himself to Seneca and Epicurus; the implication, of course, is that he (or at least his language) is too noble for such corrupt times as these. He is also fond of situating himself in another historical period, chronologically closer to his own time, but equally remote, in a discursive sense, from the age of the courtier (and indeed from any historical reality that ever existed—a point to which we will return): the “good old days” of the old nobility, when men were men, and discourse was still untainted by the nefarious influence of the Italians. The discursive style of this period, a style with which Montaigne is careful to identify his own, is, we are told, “bien loing de l'usage present”. In “De la præsumption,” Montaigne reinforces this point, reemphasizing his own unsuitability for the courtly life in particular, and late sixteenth-century France in general:

Les qualitez mesmes qui sont en moy non reprochables, je les trouvois inutiles en ce siecle. La facilité de mes meurs, on l'eut nommée lácheté et foiblesse; la foy et la conscience s'y feussent trouvées scrupuleuses et superstiteuses; la franchise et la liberté, importune, inconsiderée et temeraire. A quelque chose sert le malheur. Il fait bon naistre en un siecle fort depravé; car, par comparaison d'autruy, vous estes estimé vertueux à bon marché. Qui n'est que parricide en nos jours, et sacrilege, il est homme de bien et d'honneur …

(II, 17, 646 A)

Not only these otherwise unexceptionable virtues but also Montaigne's seemingly unconscious pridefulness in laying claim to them are coded links to an old-nobility, épée ideology. Montaigne is, on one level, simply complaining about the barbarousness and corruption of his times; but he is also articulating a specific political position, associated with a particular class to which he is eager to be seen to belong.²⁰

That he does not come by this position as naturally as he would have us believe is also apparent in the densely packed passage from “Consideration sur Ciceron”. He remarks rather emphatically that he dislikes being perceived as participating in the discourse of the court; therefore, he says, “… je me jette naturellement à un parler sec, rond et cru qui tire, à qui ne me cognoit d'ailleurs, un peu vers le dedaigneux” (I, 40, 253 B). This dédain²¹ is meant to be part and parcel of the rude honesty of the true nobleman; and in “De la præsumption,” Montaigne expends considerable energy demonstrating that he comes by this quality honestly, naturally, and unconsciously.

Il me souvient donc que, des ma plus tendre enfance, on remarquoit en moy je ne scay quel port de corps et des gestes tesmoignants quelque vaine et sotte fierté. J'en veux dire premierement cecy, qu'il n'est pas inconvenient d'avoir des conditions et des propensions si propres et si incorporées en nous, que nous n'ayons pas moyen de les sentir et reconnoistre. Et de telles inclinations naturelles, le corps en retient volontiers quelque pli sans nostre sçeu et consentement.

(II, 17, 632-33 A)

Later in the same essay, he links this allegedly genetic quality to his public behavior, claiming for himself—in phraseology with which we are by now familiar—the qualities of liberté and franchise we have been discussing, and insisting that these qualities force him (and/or give him license) to speak the (truth-bearing) language of the private sphere, the arriere-boutique, even in public:

[A] Or, de moy, j'ayme mieux estre importun et indiscret que flateur et dissimulé.

[B] J'advoue qu'il se peut mesler quelque pointe de fierté et d'opiniastreté à se tenir ainsin entier et descouvert sans consideration d'autruy; et me semble que je deviens un peu plus libre où il le faudroit moins estre, et que je m'eschaufe par l'opposition du respect. Il peut estre aussi que je me laisse aller apres ma nature, à faute d'art. Presentant aux grands cette mesme licence de langue et de contenance que j'apporte de ma maison, je sens combien elle decline vers l'indiscretion et incivilité. Mais, outre ce que je suis ainsi faict, je n'ay pas l'esprit assez souple pour gauchir à une prompte demande et pour en eschaper par quelque destour, ny pour feindre une verité, ny assez de memoire pour la retenir ainsi feinte, ny certes assez de asseurance pour la maintenir; et fois le brave par foiblesse. Parquoy je m'abandonne à la nayfveté et à tousjours dire ce que je pense, et par complexion, et par discours, laissant à la fortune d'en conduire l'evenement.

[C] Aristippus disoit le principal fruit qu'il eut tiré de la philosophie, estre qu'il parloit librement et ouvertement à chacun.

(II, 17, 649)²²

However, if we return to the passage from “Consideration sur Ciceron” with which we began this discussion, and look more closely at the language he uses to describe his “natural” inclinations, we find a curious twist: “… je me jette naturellement à un parler sec …,” he claims; but it is difficult to see how it is possible to throw oneself into a particular mode of behavior in a “natural” (spontaneous, unforced, unconscious, instinctual, automatic) way. This peculiar tension between verb and adverb is reinforced by his remark that he un/consciously chooses/hurls himself into this mode of behavior precisely because of his distate for being perceived as a courtier. If his “parler sec” were as natural and unforced as he claims, surely such external stimuli would be superfluous. Indeed, it is because he is eager to appear to be a non-courtier that he adopts this “natural” mode of behavior. In other words, his protestations against the posturing artificiality of courtly discourse are themselves a pose, and his “nayfveté” resembles not so much la nature as the studied sprezzatura of Castiglione.²³

A critical and revealing moment in the Essais, one at which this contradiction comes most sharply into focus, is found in “Des récompenses d'honneur” (II, 7). Recall that one of Montaigne's favorite tactics for dissociating himself from courtly discourse is that of temporal separation, through identification either with a fictive version of ancient Rome or with a semi-mythical, quasi-feudal noblesse d'épée. In “Des récompenses d'honneur,” Montaigne explicitly associates these two imaginary ages with one another precisely when he also gives his most categorically stated definition of nobility:

Mais il est digne d'estre consideré que nostre nation donne à la vaillance le premier degré des vertus, comme son nom montre, qui vient de valeur; et que, à notre usage, quand nous disons un homme qui vaut beaucoup, ou un homme de bien, au stile de nostre court et de nostre noblesse, ce n'est à dire autre chose qu'un vaillant homme, d'une façon pareille à la Romaine. Car la generale appellation de vertu prend chez eux etymologie de la force. La forme propre, et seule, et essencielle, de noblesse en France, c'est la vacation militaire.

(II, 7, 384 A)

This passage has a strangely hollow ring to it, quite aside from the shakiness of its etymological argument. Montaigne's oddly dogmatic tone, combined with his formulaic assertions, gives one the sense that Montaigne is enunciating, not ideas that he has thought out for himself, but rather clichés he feels obligated to parade before the reader as part of an effort to consolidate his own identification with the class in question.²⁴ Montaigne emphasizes “la vacation militaire” not because he himself is a great warrior—indeed, he himself makes no direct claims on this score, and after all his primary interests and talents lie elsewhere—but because it is the mode of life most diametrically opposed to that of the court.²⁵ The odd formulation “au stile de nostre court et de nostre noblesse” contains a peculiar tension; note that the two terms are presented separately, and not simply assumed to be identical. Does this mean that some at least of the noblesse (d'épée, presumably) exist outside the court—and, more importantly, that perhaps some of the denizens of the court of Henri III are not (the right kind of) noble? (Recall also that, in his discussion (cited above) of the “parler … soldatesque” in I, 26, Montaigne manifests greater interest in adopting the language of the soldier than in actually performing the activities proper to such persons.) That Montaigne himself is hardly convinced of the soundness or veracity of his hyperbolic assertion about the “forme” of French nobility becomes even more evident when we recall that, only slightly earlier in the same essay, he points out that martial valor is actually within the reach of anyone, even the common people, and has in fact become almost “vulgaire: comme il est tres-aysé à voir par l'experience que nous en donnent nos guerres civiles” (II, 7, 383 A).²⁶

It seems clear, then, that Montaigne's model of the nobleman as the man who is literally of his parole, who does not hide behind masks or visages not his own, who performs no role other than that of his “true self,” is an untenable myth; and it seems equally clear that Montaigne's effort to identify himself with this nonexistent class of beings is itself a performance, a mystificiation, an attempt not at revealing his “true self” (despite his innumerable protestations to the contrary) but at persuading his reader/audience that he is other than what he is. We are therefore forced to ask the following questions: first, given that he is not the kind of noble d'épée he has tried to describe (both because he is not and because the existence of any class conforming to his description is highly problematic), why does he spend so much time constructing this artificial identity, and then trying to perform for us in such a way as to convince us that the identity is his own? Second, if he is not what he says he is, then what is he? What alternate identities are available to him, and to us? In what follows we will try to show that Montaigne recognizes the difficulties and contradictions inherent in his model of the neo-Stoic nobleman, and that—far from simply abandoning it as untenable—he embraces its irreality as a rhetorical and theatrical device, using its purely hypothetical status as a kind of Archimedean standing-place from which to move his own political world. The irony developed as he refines and sophisticates his performance of self becomes a powerful tool to be used in the process of constructing Michel de Montaigne.

Let us first address the question of why Montaigne seems compelled, at least in some instances, to adopt this role, and/or to promulgate its propaganda line. Friedrich says that some of his “Adelsprätension” may have been due to simple vanity, but goes on to suggest that Montaigne may have wished to persuade his readers of the validity of his own noble background in order to enhance the credibility (to non-nobles d'épée) and effectiveness (to nobles d'épée) of his project of improving the image (and quality) of contemporary French nobility, which suffered from a not-entirely-undeserved reputation for illiteracy and uncultured barbarousness. He points out that Montaigne, even though he was eager to belong to the noblesse d'épée, nevertheless was put off by their violence and anti-intellectualism.²⁷ It may also have been something of a moral stance; perhaps Montaigne felt that such a position enabled him to hold—still within the universe of political reality—the moral high ground, to retain political power and status along with a degree of independence, without seeming to cave in to the corrupting influences of the age. Or, more simply, it may be linked to his pragmatic conservatism; confronted with the chaotic political and social situation of France in the 1560's and 1570's, it might seem natural for someone with Montaigne's horror of change and instability to take refuge in an ideology of rigor and stasis. However, this is not what Montaigne actually does in his political life; far from being (or playing the role of) an isolated country nobleman, shut up on his estate and avoiding or resisting external authority, Montaigne takes an active part in the national and local politics of his day, even after his professed “retirement” from the world. Furthermore, in the course of this activity he shows himself not to be a hard-liner of any kind, Ligueur or Huguenot; instead, he is a politique, an experienced courtier whose judicious adaptability earns him the respect of both sides, as for example when he acts as mediator in a dispute between Henri III and the future Henri IV. If anything, Montaigne is repelled by inflexibility and extremism.²⁸ Why, then, does Montaigne bother to articulate this pose of quasi-Stoic detachment, if he feels so little compelled to act according to its precepts? It may indeed be a persuasive strategy, as Friedrich suggests, but perhaps not in the sense that Friedrich has in mind. It may be that Montaigne's efforts to present the old-noble pose in a convincing manner may be meant to demonstrate the importance of being able to play a role effectively, even when nobody, including the actor, really believes in the actor's identity with that role. Montaigne works very hard at his performance, not necessarily because he believes in it, but because it is necessary to be able to perform effectively, should the occasion arise; what counts is the appearance. The ability to play a role effectively is critical to his real project.

To see how Montaigne makes his way from the Stoic nobleman to the nobleman-as-actor, let us examine the distance that Montaigne places between himself and this Stoic role even as he enunciates it. He establishes this distance in two ways: by undermining the “true” Stoic position, and by claiming that he himself is not suited to its demands. With regard to the first of these tactics, it is worth recalling that, as we have already observed, Montaigne's so-called switch to an anti-Stoic line in the later layers of his text is less a radical repudiation of earlier attitudes than a refinement or sophistication of a previously existing position. That this is the case may be seen if we examine two versions of Montaigne's famous comparison between Seneca, held up as the Voice of Stoicism, and another of Montaigne's favorite edifying authors, Plutarch, who seems to represent something very different. We have seen how Seneca functions as a crucial model for the Stoic nobleman, both literarily and practically; and yet Montaigne is not unaware of the irony inherent in this choice of exemplar. In this passage from “Des livres” (II, 10), Seneca comes off sounding not like a Stoic sage speaking from the moral safety of his arriere-boutique, but rather suspiciously like a courtier:

[A] Plutarque est plus uniforme et constant; Seneque, plus ondoyant et divers. Cettuy-cy se peine, se roidit et se tend pour armer la vertu contre la foiblesse, la crainte, et les vitieux appetis; l'autre semble n'estimer pas tant leur effort, et desdaigner d'en haster son pas et se mettre sur sa targue. Plutarque a des opinions Platoniques, douces et accomodables à la société civile; l'autre les a Stoïques et Epicuriennes, plus esloignées de l'usage commun mais, selon moy, plus commodes [C] en particulier [A] et plus fermes. Il paroit en Seneque qu'il preste un peu à la tyrannie des Empereurs de son temps, car je tiens pour certain que c'est d'un jugement forcé qu'il condamne la cause de ces genereux meurtriers de Caesar; Plutarque est libre par tout. Seneque est plein de pointes et saillies; Plutarque, de choses. Celuy-là vous eschauffe plus, et vous esmeut; cettuy-cy vous contente davantage et vous paye mieux. [B] Il nous guide, l'autre nous pousse.

(II, 10, 413)

To begin with, there is the peculiar opening sentence, which ascribes to Plutarch the quality we would expect to be most Senecan (that is, if we take Seneca at his word), namely “constancy”; and Seneca is described, oddly (but, as it turns out as we read farther, accurately), as “ondoyant et divers”. Montaigne conjures up an image of Seneca rushing about loudly proclaiming his inflexibility and toughness to all and sundry—but adapting his message according to his audience of the moment. Moreover, it seems that even Seneca does not enjoy complete franchise; his ability to speak freely and openly is hampered, and his credibility damaged, by his complicity in the tyrannies of Nero. Finally, his writings are not quite as “farcies et pleines de beaux discours de sapience” as one might wish; they too have their stylistic preoccupations, their self-conscious “pointes et saillies” which may obscure the matière. Seneca's arm-waving gives him away; his persona is revealed to be not an unforced expression of his true inner self, but a consciously willed performance.

That this comparison with Plutarch occurs not in a C-text portion of one of the essays of the third book but in an essay from the first two books, and in the A-text at that, indicates to us that even prior to 1580 Montaigne is aware of—and uncomfortable with—the contradictions and inconsistencies at the heart of a hard-line Stoic position. By the time this comparison is taken up again in “De la phisionomie” (III, 12), while it is still presented in similar terms, it seems more like an outright condemnation of Seneca, particularly when read in the full context of the essay. Simultaneously, Plutarch is viewed in an increasingly positive light. Montaigne begins the essay by talking about the fundamental unsoundness of our judgment: “Quasi toutes les opinions que nous avons sont prinses par authorité et à credit” (III, 12, 1037 B). Even Socrates, that greatest of men (and Montaigne's hero throughout the third book), owes his present reputation not to any merits he may himself have possessed, but simply to the inability of the rest of us to think independently. Our opinions are formed through inertia. He continues:

Nous n'apercevons les graces que pointues, bouffies et enflées d'artifice. Celles qui coulent soubs la nayfveté et la simplicité eschapent ayséement à un veuë grossiere comme est la nostre: elles ont une beauté delicate et cachée; il faut la veuë nette et bien purgée pour descouvrir cette secrette lumiere. […] Nostre monde n'est formé qu'à l'ostentation: les hommes ne s'enflent que de vent, et se manient à bonds, comme les balons.

(III, 12, 1037 B)

This is familiar terminology; traits of the courtier and courtly discourse, such as “artifice” and “ostentation,” are contrasted unfavorably with such anti-courtly attributes as “nayfveté” and “simplicité.” Montaigne here goes farther than usual in recognizing the power of such courtly qualities, their moral dubiousness notwithstanding; flashy artifice and glib deceit will sway the mind far more effectively than the plain and naked truth. Perhaps this cannot be helped, he says, but it is nevertheless to be deplored. In this context, he returns to the comparison between Seneca and Plutarch:

[B] L'un [Seneca], plus vif, nous pique et eslance en sursaut, touche plus l'esprit. L'autre, plus rassis, nous informe, establit et conforte constamment, touche plus l'entendement. [C] Celuy là ravit nostre jugement, cestuy-cy le gaigne.

(III, 12, 1040)

Clearly, for Montaigne, a discursive style which “nous pique et eslance en sursaut” achieves these effects through being “pointu, bouffi et enflé d'artifice,” and therefore its integrity is necessarily suspect. Ultimately, Seneca's Stoicism (as presented by Montaigne) sounds like an unsustainable pretense, not a state of inner repose. It may even be empty posturing, or—worse yet—hypocritical, concealing unpleasant truths through rhetorical display. This is not to say, however, that Montaigne is directly condemning Stoicism per se; he is merely saying that Seneca doth protest too much. Excessive carrying on, à la Seneca, in support of any position tends to weaken that position and make its supporter (or performer) suspect. In other words, Montaigne's critique of Senecan (literary and personal) style is just that: a stylistic critique, and not so much a direct attack on substance.

Meanwhile, Montaigne tries to disqualify himself from the ranks of the “true” Stoics by claiming that he is insufficiently tough. This is evident even in an essay we have been reading as one of the most “Stoic” in the Essais, “De la solitude”; here, after describing the Stoic arriere-boutique and the corresponding attitude of harsh disdain for the world expected of its occupant, he describes the reading he plans to do in his own state of retreat from the world, and in a more general sense how he approaches the whole question of retirement:²⁹

Je n'ayme, pour moy, que des livres ou plaisans et faciles, qui me chatouillent, ou ceux qui me consolent et conseillent à regler ma vie et ma mort:

tacitum sylvas inter reptare salubres,
Curantem quidquid dignum sapiente bonoque est.

Les gens plus sages peuvent se forger un repos tout spirituel, ayant l'ame forte et vigoureuse. Moy qui l'ay commune, il faut que j'ayde à me soutenir par les commoditez corporelles; et, l'aage m'ayant tantost desrobé celles qui estoyent plus á ma fantasie, j'instruis et aiguise mon appetit à celles qui restent plus sortables à cette autre saison.

(I, 39, 246 A)

Even in retreat, Montaigne claims that he is not up to the rigorous Stoic version of solitude; privation and mortification of the flesh are not for him—nor, for that matter, is affliction of the spirit; he wants readings to entertain and console him, not to make him more uncomfortable than he already is. He is, he tells us, simply too weak for that sort of thing. The real difficulty with the Stoic line, then, is not so much that it is wrong or unsound as that it is impracticable for “les âmes communes” like Montaigne himself.³⁰ We see, therefore, that this doubly oblique undercutting of Seneca renders Montaigne's own position(s) with regard to noble identity, neo-Stoic or otherwise, more sophisticated and complex; Montaigne would have us believe that it also leads towards a more realistic and accurate representation of his state, or rather process, of being. This increasing complexity also makes his positions more directly accessible. To put it another way, Montaigne's performance as a writer before an audience becomes less histrionic and more polyvalent; it is more readily legible because Montaigne offers us more points of access.

This new mode of performance is presented to us, in this comparison, through the exemplar of Plutarch. Far better than the nervous Seneca, Montaigne tells us, is Plutarch's equable calmness, a style which achieves plenitude and density without harshness, obscurity, or deception. Plutarch's rhetoric maintains an easy, measured pace, unruffled by external threats; this in turn bespeaks a solid internal suffisance, such as we shall find embodied in the practical counterpart (Socrates) to this literary paradigm.³¹ As a result, says Montaigne, Plutarch is “libre par tout”; his rhetorical neutrality enables him to avoid the kind of questionable ethical entanglements into which Seneca's more vehement and polemical rhetoric draws him. This accounts for the description of Plutarch as more “constant” than that paragon of Stoic constancy, Seneca; but what about Montaigne's statement that Plutarch also holds opinions “douces et accomodables à la société civile”? This seeming contradiction is resolved when we realize that one who possesses or adopts this kind of serene indifference has as a result a certain liberty, a freedom to maneuver, and is therefore able to adapt to circumstances as they arise. This does not mean that Montaigne has suddenly become a crypto-Machiavellian in his dotage, although his attitudes do begin to take on more of an Italianate tinge. This “new” ideal of flexibility is actually part of and consistent with Montaigne's revised concept of the human world, as expressed in his famous remark at the beginning of “Du repentir”: “Le monde n'est qu'une branloire perenne” (III, 2, 804 B). Montaigne applies this idea of constant flux directly to himself and to his project of representing himself through the Essais. “Je ne peints pas l'estre. Je peints le passage …” (III, 2, 805 B). His self-representation may seem to be inconsistent and unstable, but it is actually all the more accurate for its variability: “… les traits de ma peinture ne forvoyent point, quoy qu'ils se changent et diversifient” (III, 2, 804 B). To reduce himself to a single representation, a single persona, would be misleading (if not downright dishonest), since “[l]a constance mesme n'est autre chose qu'un branle plus languissant” (III, 2, 805 B). Therefore, his mode of self-representation, focusing on the continuous process of being, is, he claims (in a C-text addition), both more accurate and more complete than the traditional approach, which seeks to impose a false stasis on a perpetually moving subject: “Les autheurs se communiquent au peuple par quelque marque particuliere et estrangere; moy le premier par mon estre universel, comme Michel de Montaigne, non comme grammairien ou poëte ou jurisconsulte” (III, 2, 805 C).

This is a far less innocent statement than it first appears to be. It may seem that Montaigne is simply saying that he wants to show all aspects of his identity to his audience, to present a complete, comprehensive, and honest performance, without hiding behind any “marque … estrangere”; but the very language in which he makes this claim is ideologically loaded. It echoes a similar statement in “De l'institution des enfans,” where the place of the term “estre universel” is taken by the word “gentilhomme.” Montaigne tells a shaggy dog story (“Allant un jour à Orleans …”) whose punchline (“Il n'est pas gentilhomme; c'est un grammairien …” I, 26, 168-69 A) betrays an aristocratic scorn (whether “natural” or adopted) for such lowly beings as grammairiens. The story is situated in the larger context of what the proper attitude of a budding gentilhomme should be towards his studies; and the answer is much like that given by Castiglione, advocating a kind of dilettantism for the nobility. Over-specialization is bad because it is unworthy of a gentilhomme, a point which Montaigne reemphasizes when he tells us that his mission in “De l'institution des enfans” is to “… former non un grammairien ou logicien, mais un gentil'homme …” (I, 26, 169 A). Likewise, here in “Du repentir,” where his project is to delineate his own persona (or personæ), he wishes to distinguish himself from “les autheurs,” and to establish an identity free from such degrading specializations. So the universality that Montaigne both advocates and lays claim to is not a philosophical, abstract, or absolute universality, but rather a kind of practical, even politic versatility à la Castiglione. In other words, Montaigne's “estre universel” seems somewhat more class-bound, and hence less “universel,” than he would have us believe.

In any event, the peculiar flexibility of that “estre universel” enables Montaigne to enact or perform his noble identity or identities in a variety of specific contexts. Indeed, such performative flexibility is an essential capacity in Montaigne's world as he describes it to us. Just as the self is no philosophical ideal, so too the circumstances to which Montaigne would have it adapt are not mere abstractions, but concrete aspects of a particular historical context. The equable adaptability found in Plutarch's literary style and in the person of Socrates (as represented via Montaigne's readings of Ficino's Latin translations of Plato) will become, in Montaigne's hands, a tool for his own survival—political, social, and physical—in late sixteenth-century France.

Notes

1. On this trend in general, see John H. M. Salmon's essay, “Cicero and Tacitus in Sixteenth-Century France,” which surveys sixteenth-century French responses to Ciceronean and Tacitean models of civic behavior, emphasizing the links between rhetoric and public comportment. This essay constitutes the first chapter of his Renaissance and Revolt. Essays in the Intellectual and Social History of Early Modern France, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); it originally appeared in American Historical Review, 85 (1980): pp. 307-31. See also his Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century (London: Ernest Benn 1975).

   Arnaldo Momigliano, in his essay “Tacitus and the Tacitist Tradition,” links together Tacitus and Seneca in this context [123]: “The popularity of Seneca both as a stylist and as a philosopher was mounting; Neo-Stoicism became the faith of those who had lost patience with theology, if they had not lost faith altogether. The fortunes of Seneca and Tacitus became indissolubly connected towards the end of the sixteenth century.” The essay appears as ch. 5 of Momigliano's The Classical Foundations of Modern Historiography, Sather Classical Lectures, v. 54 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 109-131.

   I wish here to thank Natalie Zemon Davis, Alban K. Forcione, Lionel Gossman, François Rigolot, and especially David Quint for their careful readings of and comments upon earlier versions of this essay.

2. For a different view, see Gordon Braden's Renaissance Tragedy and the Senecan Tradition. Anger's Privilege (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), in which he proposes a theatrical model of the aristocratic self based on the Stoic themes and personages of Senecan tragedy. One of Braden's primary assumptions is that neo-Stoic ideology is closely identified, in the Renaissance, with aristocratic ideas of selfhood; he goes on to argue that Montaigne identifies himself more or less unambiguously with the noblesse d'épée (see p. 78), and therefore that—despite Montaigne's ambivalence towards Stoicism per se (p. 94)—he is situated on a line of development leading to an essentially Stoic kind of arriere-boutique, where “the self's ambitions are compromised into a new sense of distant inwardness” (p. 2). I do not feel, as will become apparent, that Montaigne is able or willing to align himself unequivocally with the ideology, neo-Stoic or otherwise, of the true noblesse d'épée. Gerhard Oestreich, in his Neostoicism and the Early Modern State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), articulates still another viewpoint, namely that neo-Stoic ideologies and attitudes were adopted not so much by the old nobility as by the noblesse de robe, court functionaries who wanted, not unlike Montaigne, to cultivate a certain posture of quasi-aristocratic independence. Richard A. Sayce goes even farther, suggesting that this pose of independence is in fact a kind of proto-bourgeois individualism; see his The Essays of Montaigne. A Critical Exploration (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1972), pp. 239-40.

3. Michel de Montaigne, Essais, ed. Pierre Villey and V.-L. Saulnier (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1965), p. 237. All further references to the Essais will be to this edition, and will be indicated parenthetically in the text, thus: (I, 39, 237 A).

4. This may be compared to many passages in Seneca's Epistulae Morales, for example VIII, 5: “Hanc ergo sanam ac salubrem formam vitae tenete, ut corpori tantum indulgeatis quantum bonae valetudini satis est. Durius tractandum est ne animo male pareat: cibus famem sedet, potio sitim extinguat, vestis arceat frigus, domus munimentum sit adversus infesta temporis … cogitate nihil praeter animum esse mirabile, cui magno nihil magnum est.”

   It should be recalled that the possibility of ending up “sans femme, sans enfans et sans biens, sans train et sans valetz” was not, for Montaigne as for anyone else in late sixteenth-century France, a mere hypothetical abstraction; the civil wars made such deprivation a very real threat. The Stoic gesture is therefore to some extent practical, and not just philosophical or ideological.

   Franz Borkenau neatly sums up the political dilemma of the Stoic: “Das Lebensproblem des Stoikers ist die Haltung des Individuums in der Politik, nur sie. Die Regel ist: äusserlich in ihr stehen, innerlich sich von ihr frei halten.” Franz Borkenau, Der Übergang vom feudalen zum bürgerlichen Weltbild. Studien der Geschichte der Philosophie der Manufakturperiode (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1934; reprint: New York: Arno [series: European Sociology], 1975), p. 190.

5. Of course Montaigne will radically contradict this thesis elsewhere, particularly in the third book; his most thorough exploration of the issue is to be found in “De l'exercitation” (II, 6).

6. In some ways this seems to out-Seneca Seneca, since even the Roman seems to indicate that his retirement from the world nevertheless benefits that world, by affording him the time to produce the letters that will so edify and improve the lot of humanity. See, once again, letter VIII, 2: “Secessi non tantum ab hominibus sed a rebus, et in primis a meis rebus: posterorum negotium ago. Illis aliqua quae possint prodesse conscribo; salutares admonitiones, velut medicamentorum utilium compositiones, litteris mando …” and later in the same letter (VIII, 6): “Mihi crede, qui nihil agere videntur maiora agunt: humana divinaque simul tractant.” Montaigne, as we will see, will roundly criticize just this kind of arrogance and presumption in Cicero and Pliny in “Consideration sur Ciceron” (I, 40), ironically holding up Seneca (along with Plutarch) as a counter-example.

7. Indeed, Jean Starobinski, in his Montaigne en mouvement (Paris: Gallimard, 1982), does seem to make of Montaigne a kind of Rousseau avant la lettre in this respect, and many of the motifs evident in his reading of the Essais echo themes found in his earlier work on Rousseau (Jean-Jacques Rousseau. La transparence et l'obstacle [Paris: Plon, 1958]). For another discussion of this point, see Robert D. Cottrell, Sexuality/Textuality. A Study of the Fabric of Montaigne's ‘Essais’ (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1981), pp. 104-109.

8. Terence Christopher Cave, The Cornucopian Text. Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), part II, ch. 4: “Montaigne,” pp. 271-321.

9. This is of course a familiar topos in the Renaissance; we are reminded, for instance, of the «Prologue» to Marguerite de Navarre's Heptaméron.

10. On Montaigne's attitudes, mistrustful and otherwise, with regard to rhetoric, see Hugo Friedrich, Montaigne (Bern: A. Francke, 1949. 2nd ed. 1967), pp. 85-87; Lawrence D. Kritzman, Destruction/Découverte. Le Fonctionnement de la rhétorique dans les «Essais» de Montaigne (Lexington: French Forum, 1980); Edwin M. Duval, “Rhetorical Composition and ‘Open Form’ in Montaigne's Early Essais,” in BHR, XLIII, 1981: pp. 269-287; and Gérard Defaux, Marot, Rabelais, Montaigne: l'écriture comme présence (Paris et Genève: Champion-Slatkine, 1987), especially ch. iv, “La présence recouvrée: Montaigne et la peinture du Moi.”

11. The typically Montaignian tag at the end of the paragraph undercuts his argument at its most vehement, which should make us wonder even more just how far Montaigne is really committed to it. In some of the later additions to the Essais Montaigne goes even further, on occasion beginning to sound almost Ciceronian himself.

12. Erasmus, Ciceronianus LB I, 1022 B; cited by Defaux, p. 204. Defaux, reading Plato's Phaedrus via Erasmus (rather than, he says, through Nietzsche, as certain modern critics have done), divides language, whether written or spoken, into categories of good (reliable) and bad (unreliable), and makes the anti-Derridean argument that there can be—through an Augustinian leap of faith—a direct connection between the former category and some form of supralinguistic truth. “Il s'agit donc moins pour Montaigne, on le voit, d'une opposition entre l'authenticité du dit et l'artificialité de l'écrit que d'une meditation, d'ailleurs tout à fait canonique, sur la bonne façon de parler ou d'écrire” (206). I do not think that Montaigne goes as far in this direction as Defaux claims. It seems more accurate to say that, while Montaigne is willing to distinguish between good and bad uses of language, he nevertheless maintains a clear separation between language—good, bad, or indifferent—and non-language, as expressed in the opening to “De la gloire”: “Il y a le nom et la chose: le nom, c'est une voix qui remerque et signifie la chose; le nom, ce n'est pas une partie de la chose ny de la substance, c'est une piece estrangere joincte à la chose, et hors d'elle” (II, 16, 618 A). See the following footnote. Defaux pp. 202-07; see also an earlier version of the same argument: “Montaigne, Erasme, Platon, Derrida: l'écriture comme présence,” in Rivista di Letterature moderne e comparate, vol. XXXVIII, fasc. 4 (ott.-dic. 1985): pp. 325-43.

13. This is, despite its apparent simplicity, an especially tricky phrase. “Parole” here has multiple meanings; in the more general sense (and the one in connection with which this passage is most often cited, not without doing some violence to the context), it may be read to mean the word as communication, language as the (only) medium of interchange between persons. Hence it could mean, for Cave, that we are wholly dependent on language, since nothing can be shown to exist outside of it; or it could mean, for Defaux, that we must place our faith in the imperfect medium of language, while remembering that there exists a supralinguistic higher essence of which that language is only a reflection. But it must be remembered that the specific sense generated by the context of the essay remains active; at this point in “Des menteurs,” “parole” means “the word/language that is not misleading,” “word (of honor),” etc. It is this latter meaning that has a more direct bearing on our argument, as will become apparent. The more general sense is operative in the following passage from “Du démentir”: “Nostre intelligence [commerce] se conduisant par la seule voye de la parolle, celuy qui la fauce, trahit la societé publique. C'est le seul util par le moien duquel se communiquent nos volontez et nos pensées, c'est le truchement de nostre ame: s'il nous faut, nous ne nous tenons plus, nous ne nous entreconnoissons plus. S'il nous trompe, il rompt tout nostre commerce et dissoult toutes les liaisons de nostre police” (II, 18, 666-67 A). Even here, however, Montaigne makes no metaphysical claims for the power of la parole; on the contrary, he strictly limits its application to the realm of the practical. While human society depends on the trustworthiness of our parole, it remains a “util,” not a philosophical abstraction; whether or not it represents some transcendent truth is irrelevant.

14. Space does not permit us to discuss the C-text twist at the end of this paragraph. Antoine Compagnon, in a useful article, examines Montaigne's use of this quasi-aphoristic style, showing (as we will try to do) that the reader of the Essais should not be fooled by Montaigne's Senecan posturing into making of him purely an author of aphorisms; Montaigne's style, he argues, is in fact a Socratic balance of the compressed and the extended, the brief and the sustained, and it is the tension between these two discursive modes, governed by the first-person authorial voice, that gives the Essais their organic unity. Our argument will follow a similar critical trajectory, while attempting to show that these stylistic choices, rather than existing in a vacuum, are closely linked to specific political and ideological positions. See Compagnon, “A Long Short Story: Montaigne's Brevity,” in Montaigne: Essays in Reading, ed. Gérard Defaux (Yale French Studies 64 [1983]): pp. 24-50, especially pp. 34-37, where he discusses this passage from “De l'institution des enfans.”

15. For another discussion of the connection between Montaigne's choice of linguistic style and his desire to be associated with a particular system of values, see Cottrell, op. cit. Cottrell highlights the sexual vocabulary and metaphors used by Montaigne to describe a “masculine” ethical stance of “vigor and valor” (p. 15), pointing out that “Montaigne ascribes to masculinity all the virtues ordinarily identified with Stoicism—virtues that imply, of course, unrelenting tension and rigidity” (p. 7). He then discusses how Montaigne moves from positive approbation of this kind of moral virtue to a more equivocal view, showing that Montaigne simultaneously “undermines the value of such behavior” (p. 15) and associates himself with its opposite, a kind of quasi-feminine laxity or mollesse, both linguistically and philosophically (pp. 22-23, 39ff.). However, Cottrell's psychoanalytic reading does not address, as we hope to do, the issues of class and historical context.

16. This is linked to a larger concept of the nobleman-as-dilettante, of which one of the earliest and most influential expressions is naturally to be found in Castiglione's discussion of sprezzatura, and which is set forth in Montaigne especially in “De l'institution des enfans.” Montaigne's claims to poor memory, inability to be polite in a courtly context, and all-round ineptitude are all part of this package—this despite Montaigne's professed distaste for Castiglione and his ideas of courtly behavior (see, for example, “De la gloire” (II, 16), p. 622). Many critics have commented on Montaigne's studied claims to ineptitude; see, for example, Erich Auerbach's famous essay, “L'Humaine Condition,” ch. 12 of Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), pp. 285-311, especially pp. 298, 306-08; Friedrich, pp. 36, 87-88; and Sayce, pp. 282-84.

17. Read in this context, this statement sounds almost like testimony before a Congressional committee (“Are you now, or have you ever been … ?”); and it seems less a philosophical reappropriation of “good” language (Defaux, p. 206) than a practical and political statement. See supra, n. 12.

18. This is hardly surprising when we consider that, in “De l'institution des enfans,” Montaigne, after counseling the young proto-noble to take his instruction in behavior not from the study of books but rather from “le commerce des hommes,” goes on to clarify just which “hommes” he has in mind: “En cette practique des hommes, j'entends y comprendre, et principalement, ceux qui ne vivent qu'en la memoire des livres” (I, 26, 156 A).

19. At the end of the essay, Montaigne discusses his letter-writing habits, and deplores the necessity of affixing not only the formules de politesse, “ces longues harengues, offres et prieres,” but also “une legende de qualitez et tiltres,” honorifics and titles which cannot be omitted or wrongly formulated without offending the honor of the addressee. He links this proliferation and consequent debasement of language to the inflation in the economy of nobility: “Tant d'innovations d'offices, une si difficile dispensation et ordonnance de divers noms d'honneur … si cherement acheptez …” (I, 40, 253-254 B)

    See François Rigolot's discussion of this theme, in connection with “De la gloire,” in terms of the “false currency” of what he refers to as the “monde inflationniste et pervers des affaires publiques.” Rigolot, Les métamorphoses de Montaigne (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1988), p. 57.

20. For a discussion of this phenomenon as typical of the later sixteenth century in France, see George Huppert, Les Bourgeois Gentilshommes. An Essay on the Definition of Elites in Renaissance France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977). In his discussion of this point, Huppert seems to take for granted the legitimacy of Montaigne's self-proclaimed connection to this class; however, it seems more prudent, while noting Montaigne's interest in appearing to belong to that class, not to take at face value the claim that he actually does belong to it. Cf. Huppert, p. 90.

21. This is almost identical to sprezzatura, which likewise means scorn or disdain; but Montaigne adds to it a dimension of rudesse, in keeping with the quasi-martial tone he wishes to set for his French nobleman, which does not seem quite in accord with the grazia associated with Castiglione's courtier. On this, see Compagnon, “A Long Short Story,” p. 39.

22. Note that the C-text addition essentially pulls the rug from under Montaigne's original argument, by suggesting that it is careful study and self-cultivation (“la philosophie”) that confers upon one the capacity for free and open speech.

23. This contradiction is of course already at the heart of Castiglione's notion of the courtier; see the entire discussion of sprezzatura itself (I, xxvi), as well as the famous problem of the “occulto seme” (I, xiv), which raises, but does not answer, the question: is nobility genetic, or can it be learned? Baldassarre Castiglione, Il libro del Cortegiano, ed. Ettore Bonora and Paolo Zoccola (Milano: Mursia, 1972, 1984), pp. 47ff., and 61ff. On the relationship between Montaigne and Castiglione, see Marcel Tetel, “The Humanistic Situation: Montaigne and Castiglione,” in Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. X, no. 3 (Fall 1979): pp. 69-84.

24. Braden seems to accept the identification of Montaigne with the noblesse d'épée when he discusses this passage, and seems to feel that Montaigne's insistent tone may be ascribed to a resistance on his part to threats to the status of the noblesse d'épée as a warrior class (78): “Montaigne … does not yet assent to such a basic redefinition of his class, but its imminence clearly affects him.”

25. Ironically, the language he uses closely echoes that of Castiglione, whose Ludovico da Canossa states that “la principale e vera profession del cortegiano debba esser quella dell'arme”; but Montaigne's emphasis is quite different, and (deliberately?) considerably less sophisticated. Castiglione enunciates the cliché, but immediately goes on to say that the reason for being a warrior is to make oneself look good; he is, after all, talking specifically about the courtier, and therefore does not waste time talking about racial history or national character. Montaigne, on the other hand, seems unwilling to ironize the idea as explicitly, at least at the moment he utters it; he seems to hope that if he shouts loudly enough, nobody will ask too many questions. See Castiglione, I, xvii, p. 51.

26. This is of course a point that Montaigne will make in considerably greater detail later on, notably in “De l'experience” (III, 13).

27. Friedrich, pp. 16-18.

28. See, for example, his extended discussion of the topic in “De mesnager sa volonté” (III, 10).

29. Note that he does so in the same textual layer [A] as the discussion of the arriere-boutique itself.

30. Montaigne is very fond of claiming that he is old and decrepit, that he is soft, flabby, devoid of memory, and generally inept; here, however, this impulse takes on a special focus, as it is precisely his own mollesse-induced unsuitability for the Stoic form of retreat that he wishes to emphasize. (See Cottrell's discussion of this theme, pp. 19-41.) The veracity (dubious at best) of his claims of generalized impotence is irrelevant to his main purpose; the claims are deployed not as absolute truths but as tactics in a larger performative strategy. Ultimately, of course, Montaigne is probably suggesting that we are all “âmes communes,” and therefore that Stoicism is indeed irrelevant to the conduct of daily life, except when it is utilized as a pose, a theatrical performance. Much of “De la vanité” (III, 9), is devoted to an extended consideration of the wretched and depraved nature of contemporary society; Montaigne closes one section of this discussion (955-57) by pointing out that, deplorable as that society is, it is all there is, and—despite the best efforts of Plato, Aristotle and the rest—it cannot be otherwise. To illustrate his point, he holds up that great reformer and lawgiver, Solon, as an example of pragmatic acceptance of the status quo (957). Even the wisest person does not live in a vacuum, and must therefore adapt to the prevailing circumstances, whatever they may be. See Starobinski's discussions of this point, pp. 113ff. and 366-67.

31. Slightly earlier in “De la phisionomie,” we are told where this suffisance is to be found: “Il ne nous faut guiere de doctrine pour vivre à nostre aise. Et Socrates nous aprend qu'elle est en nous, et la manière de l'y trouver et de s'en ayder. Toute cette nostre suffisance, qui est au delà de la naturelle, est à peu pres vaine et superflue. […] Recueillez vous; vous trouverez en vous les arguments de la nature contre la mort, vrais, et le plus propres à vous servir à la necessité: ce sont ceux qui font mourir un paisan et des peuples entiers aussi constamment qu'un philosophe” (1039 B). Montaigne claims that this suffisance is not to be acquired through assiduous study of edifying texts, and that it does not result from a rigorous application of stern philosophical principles in an attempt to make oneself more virtuous. Rather, it is acquired through the application of the Delphic dictum, “know thyself,” in its purest sense. We should, however, be careful not to take Montaigne too literally here, lest we fall into the trap of thinking that he will henceforth base his utterances solely upon his own experiences; after all, he has hardly given up reading ancient authors himself. Perhaps a more accurate way of putting it would be to say that he is adding himself to his reading list. In other words, Montaigne (in the form of the Essais) has himself become a text, an (ancient) author to be read, reread, and commented upon—within the Essais themselves—along with Plutarch and the rest. This reflects his evident eagerness to join that exclusive club of sages “qui ne vivent qu'en la memoire des livres” to which he advises his would-be nobleman to turn for edification and self-improvement. It is interesting, in this connection, to recall Montaigne's desire (expressed in “De la vanité”), to become a citizen of (ancient) Rome: “Me trouvant inutile à ce siècle, je me rejecte à cet autre, et en suis si embabouyné que l'estat de cette vieille Romme, libre, juste et florissante (car je n'en ayme ny la naissance ny la vieillesse) m'interesse et me passione” (III, 9, 996-97 B).

    It should also be noted in passing, although we cannot discuss it fully here, that this passage from “De la phisionomie” is conceptually linked to one of the main themes of the Essais, the ideal of Socratic self-knowledge articulated at the end of the entire work (in “De l'experience”) in such passages as the following: “Nostre grand et glorieux chef-d'œuvre c'est vivre à propos” (III, 13, 1108 C); and, a little further on: “C'est une absolue perfection, et comme divine, de scavoyr jouyr loiallement de son estre” (III, 13, 1115 B).