One of the most striking images from Montaigne’s Essays, which has lodged itself firmly in my mind, comes from his Apology for Raymond Sebond. Specifically, within one paragraph, he uses wheat as an extended metaphor or an allegory wherein he suggests that the more wisdom or knowledge one acquires, the more humble one becomes. He writes:
To really learned men has happened what happens to ears of wheat: they rise high and lofty, heads erect and proud, as long as they are empty; but when they are full and swollen with grain in their ripeness, they begin to grow humble and lower their horns. (Montaigne, 1963, p. 227)
The image captures what I have found to be my experience insofar as that, with each passing year, as my hair has silvered and my eyes dimmed, I have found that wisdom requires casting the certitude, rigidity, and knowledge of youth aside for the humility of lived experience.
Additionally, I find the lesson to be an extraordinary corollary to my personal motto, about which I have previously written, Humilitatem Initium Sapientiae (humility is the beginning of wisdom).
Thus, having reflected if not obsessed upon Montaigne’s insight for well over a fortnight, I finally shaped my thoughts about it into a poem, the results of which are below.
The Ripened Ear (Inspired by Montaigne)
Beneath the sun’s unyielding gaze, it grows, The tender stalk, upright and full of pride, Its hollow strength unbent by winds that blow, Yet void of fruit, it stands unsatisfied.
But time, the patient sower, bids it yield, To weight of grain within its swelling breast, It bows its head, as on the golden field, The burdened ear finds wisdom’s humble crest.
So too the soul, in ignorance, stands tall, Unbowed by truths it dares not yet to see, Until the harvest’s gentle weight does call, And bends the heart to find humility.
For wisdom ripens where humility’s sown, And humbleness, by wisdom, is full-grown.
Montaigne, M. de. (1963). Essays and selected writings: A bilingual edition (D. M. Frame, Trans. & Ed.). St. Martin’s Press.
Guillaume Guillon Lethière (French, 1760 – 1832) The Death of Virginia, about 1825–1828, Oil on paper, mounted on canvas. Unframed: 73.5 × 117 cm (28 15/16 × 46 1/16 in.). The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, 2023.7
Livy’s History of Early Rome offers a timeless case study in the corruption of power through the story of Verginia. In Book 3, Appius Claudius – a member of the decemviri tasked with codifying Roman law – becomes consumed by lustful desire for Verginia, a young woman of plebeian birth. Unable to win her through legitimate means, he orchestrates a fraudulent court case to claim her as a slave, abusing his authority to ensure the verdict.
When her father Verginius, a soldier, arrives to defend his daughter, he finds the machinery of justice has been wholly perverted to serve Appius’s desires. Faced with no recourse against this tyranny, Verginius takes his daughter’s life in the forum rather than see her enslaved and defiled. His tragic act galvanizes both the people and army, leading to the overthrow of the decemviri and restoration of constitutional government.
The story has relevance today as we witness how unchecked power still corrupts, with modern figures who – like Appius – seduce both masses and elites with promises of reform while pursuing personal gain and dismantling democratic safeguards. The allusive poem I drafted below below explores this persistent danger, using Verginia’s sacrifice to illuminate the cost of our collective failure to recognize and resist tyranny in its early stages.
The Wages of Compromise: The Blood of Verginia
Beneath the rostra’s shadowed height, he stood, The man whose gilded words had bought the crowd. Their cheer, a wreath for virtue misconstrued, Their gaze averted, though his deeds grew loud. What harm, they thought, if petty sins abound? A jest, a taunt, though brazen, met no plea; The slights were not whispered, though unjust, Personal gain o’er public trust was clear to see.
Yet they excused what honesty would shun, For promised change, for vengeance lightly jested. The wrongs of old made present wrongs seem none; A brighter future claimed, though untested. And so, unchecked, his shadow stretched and grew, Till justice bowed before his grim designs. A father’s hand, with love and fury true, Struck down the bonds of tyranny’s confines.
Her blood, a warning, sanctified the square, The people’s slumber shattered by her cry. The forum rang with shouts that pierced the air, The dream of freedom breathed, though she must die. No longer could they feign or look away— Their wish for ease had birthed a tyrant’s reign. The jest of vengeance turned to ash that day, And Appius fled, undone by grief and shame.
Let not the lesson fade within our time: That deeds unchallenged fester into might. To mock the law, to cloak a crime sublime In promised gold, ensures the coming blight. The people’s trust, the lords’ approving nod, May crown a man or break his staff and rod.
This past week found me felled by a viral affliction. Partaking neither in food nor drink, and scarcely participating in sensible cognition, I was confined to bed for more days than I care to recall. Yet, as the affliction ebbed and fragments of normalcy returned, I turned instinctively to the rejuvenating essays of Montaigne and Ralph Waldo Emerson—sources of intellectual nourishment I revisit whenever my spirit requires renewal.
Immersed in their timeless prose, I found myself drifting into a peculiar, lyrical state of mind. Suspended between the lingering exhaustion of illness and the clarity that accompanies recovery, I began reflecting on the seasons of life as illuminated by these great essayists. One restless night, as I contemplated the transformations we undergo from youth to old age, a thought emerged: our lives might be divided into three distinct seasons. The first is the boundless optimism of youth, the second the tempered cynicism of middle age, and the third, a kind of amiable reconciliation in later years.
Initially, I intended to encapsulate each season in a simple couplet, but inspiration soon carried me beyond that modest aim. Each season grew into a stanza, and those stanzas evolved into lyrics for a song. To the surprise of anyone familiar with my usual preferences, I envisioned the piece as a folk-country ballad—an entirely unexpected departure. Adding a touch of mischief, I deliberately included a non-grammatical line to irk a particular friend who finds such lapses intolerable to his Germanic sensibilities. With lyrics in hand, I collaborated with Udio.com to set the lyrics I had written to music. The result is a short composition titled Three Seasons We Live.
This song traces the journey of life through its phases: from the bright-eyed optimism of youth, through the shadows of midlife cynicism, and ultimately into the serenity of autumnal reflection. Its brevity is telling of my still-recovering stamina; I am reserving my energy for Vitruvian Man Unbound, a work that remains in need of substantial emendation, refining, revising, reorganizing—and likely, the painful excision of several dozen eight-line stanzas. I simply got carried away with the iambic pentameter once I got started.
In the meantime, as Monty Python would say, “And now for something completely different.” I invite you to listen to this heartfelt piece, an unexpected blend of introspection and melody, crafted during a week marked by convalescence and quiet inspiration.
Paul Klee, Rose Garden (1920, 44, oil and pen on paper on cardboard, 49 cm x 42.5 cm), Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau Munich, on permanent loan from the Gabriele Münter and Johannes Eichner Foundation, Munich, CC BY-NC-SA.
Periodically, I revisit the essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. His writing style is sometimes jarring but just as often sublime (Henry James, in Partial Portraits (1888), observed that Emerson “never really mastered the art of composition” (p. 20) while also acknowledging that “he had frequently an exquisite eloquence” (p. 32)). The visit is always profitable.
While rereading Emerson’s perhaps most famous essay, Self-Reliance (1847), I found that after much of my recent reading focusing so heavily on things temporal, especially in the past month (e.g., Carlo Rovelli’s masterful works The Order of Time, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, and Reality is Not What it Seems and Tom Siegfried’s lyrical The Number of the Heavens: A History of the Multiverse and the Quest to Understand the Cosmos), the following passage resonated in a manner it had not on previous readings of the essay:
“Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.”
Such an extraordinary observation and lesson—that there is no lamentation of the past, or anticipation of the future, only presence for the rose.
Lamentation, or regret more precisely, I have long regarded as the most useless of human endeavors, if it is more than rectification of error, amends to others, and lessons learned. Anticipation, or anxiety about the future, is also too often misplaced and misdirected energy. Yes, we can and should make plans, but when the energy and effort extend beyond the necessary such that the future becomes a thief of reason, serenity, and equanimity, we are perilously close to toppling over.
The image of the rose in the above essay also brought to mind, fortuitously or not, a wonderful piece of art, Rosengarten (1920) by Paul Klee, ensconced in Lenbachhaus, an art museum in Munich.
After reading Helmut Friedel and Annegret Hoberg’s words about Klee from Der Blaue Reiter im Lenbachhaus München (2007) at the Lenbachhaus website, I readily envision Rosengarten as exemplifying the same harmonious integration of presence and timelessness that Emerson attributes to the rose. Created in 1920, the painting merges organic and constructed forms into a rhythmic whole. Klee’s garden unfolds as a grid of irregular, red-tinged rectangles, delicately framed by black lines, with roses—symbols of growth and vitality—scattered like musical notes across the composition. These roses, like Emerson’s, embody the eternal present; their rounded, spiral blooms suggest continuous life and creation. For Klee, as for Emerson, nature’s rhythms transcend human constructs of time.
Interestingly, Klee drew inspiration from music, speaking of “cultural rhythms” in his Bauhaus writings and comparing his visual compositions to musical structures. In Rosengarten, he achieves a polyphony of visual forms, where the temporal becomes spatial, and each element contributes equally to the whole. Just as Emerson’s rose is “perfect in every moment of its existence,” Klee’s garden suggests an infinite unfolding—a melody extending endlessly beyond the canvas.
Both Emerson and Klee challenge us to inhabit the present, to find harmony in life’s rhythms, and to appreciate the completeness inherent in each moment. The rose, whether in prose or paint, invites us to rise above time.
Gaius (Caligula). AD 37-41. Æ Sestertius. Photograph from CNG, Triton XXVII Auction, Lot 675.
The Roman Emperor Caligula, to demonstrate his contempt for the Roman Senate, appointed, by some accounts, his horse, Incitatus, to the Senate so that the horse could be made a consul of Rome. This ancient tale is called to mind by events of recent days, but not for reasons many may suspect. The following poem of Zbigniew Herbert (translated by Oriana Ivy) suggests that the horse had merits as an appointee which many of the recent suggested appointees do not.
***
Caligula Speaks
Among all the citizens of Rome
I loved only one
Incitatus–a horse
when he entered the Senate
the unstainable toga of his coat
gleamed in the midst
of purple-lined assassins
Incitatus possessed many merits
he never made speeches
had a stoic temperament
I think at night in the stable he read the philosophers
I loved him so much that one day I decided to crucify him
but his noble anatomy made it impossible
he accepted the honor of consulship with indifference
exercised authority in the best manner
that is not at all
he would not be persuaded toward a lasting liason
with my second wife Caesonia
thus unfortunately the lineage of centaur caesars
was not engendered
that’s why Rome fell
I determined to have him declared a god
but on the ninth day before the February calends
Cherea Cornelius Sabinus and the other fools
interfered with my pious plans
he accepted the news of my death with calm
was thrown out of the palace and condemned to exile
he bore this blow with dignity
he died without descendants
slaughtered by a thick-skinned butcher from Ancium
Northcoast Antiquarian 