Essays – Northcoast Antiquarian

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.

“We are great fools. ‘He has spent his life in idleness,’ we say; ‘I have done nothing today.’ What, have you not lived? That is not only the most fundamental but the most illustrious of your occupations. … To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.” – Montaigne, Essays

It is a shame that I have only come of late to begin reading Montaigne’s Essays, in the autumn of my life, as it were. It seems that such a work should have been useful to read early and often throughout the whole of my life. It is, of course, possible to identify dozens of authors and works with which one should hope to be familiar, and from whom one can be inspired, but something about his Essays is so profoundly compelling, that with surety, the work would have been a wellspring that would have been a source of refreshment for a lifetime. The late literary critic Harold Bloom makes a credible stab at explaining the attraction of Montaigne and his Essays in a chapter entitled “Montaigne and Moliere: The Canonical Elusiveness of the Truth” in The Western Canon: The Books and School of Ages. That chapter, perhaps alone, made Bloom’s work a worthwhile read.

Bloom, noting that many admirers of Montaigne found his gift or charisma difficult to explain, included one particular sentence that I cannot resist including if only for the chuckle it elicited from me: The Swiss historian Herbert Luthy thought that all of Montaigne was in one of the most casual of his sentences: ‘When I play with my cat who knows if she does not amuse herself more with me than I with her?'” Although I am not so inclined to agree that all of Montaigne is within that sentence, it does capture nicely the brilliance of the mind whom one engages with when one reads the Essays.

For my part, as I continue to work my way through the work, I note that I am taking copious notes of lines here and there that I wish to revisit. I have an appreciation of Montaigne’s ability to interlace his work with highly appropriate quotations from others. Two that I found to be very memorable from an early essay, Of Sorrow, are the following:

“He who can say how he burns with love, has little fire.” – Petrarca, Sonetto 137.

“Light griefs can speak: deep sorrows are dumb.” – Seneca, Hippolyctus, Act II, Scene 3.

Each of the above expresses truth so pithily that I, as a reader, came to a standstill and reflected in silence on their applicability to certain moments within my life. Then, once I caught my breath, and obtained a certain levity, I wondered if there would be a market for Philosophical Greeting Cards.