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On free play

One of the must-be myths of Montaigne is that his Essais represent the free play of the mind. If this is the case, then how does he not leave his desk to go take in the sunlight? Why does he continue?

If it is a devoted study, how is it free? If it is not free, how is it enjoyable? What sort of masochistic shackles hold him down?

In truth, I speak of Montaigne as of myself. Everyone likes to reform him in their own image.

Personally, my undertaking here is simply to write, and, in order to do so, I must suspend judgment on that which I am writing. Suspending judgments is a matter of infinite hope. Here, I do not claim to know Gatsby in any insightful way; rather, the important thing, it would seem, is to encounter myself in literature. Though that was not the sentence I meant to write before starting it, what I mean by this is that the only meaningful engagement I seem to get from literature are with words and phrases which strike me outside of themselves. There is no vainer an activity than reading something which does not make you question; and no vainer a pastime than to write without meditation on what one is writing.

To be clear, I am not referring to the practice of automatic writing. That is the zero-degree of what I am doing here. Rather, what I mean is that I need to delete anticipation of a reader in order to let the thoughts flow. All this said, why do I need writing to block thoughts in the first place? Surely, as a slower medium by which to see one's thoughts, and analyse them, writing is a hindrance rather than an enabler?

In any case, there are many questions here and not many answers. But, given that I can barely exist with myself peacefully at times, it makes sense to profit from this by at least making testament of this split personality. 'Splitting' was something I mentioned in my last post. It might also be called duality, since, to divide something once is to divide it into two. On the other hand, 'splitting' might be likened to Voldemort's horcruxes, and in this sense, the mark of a truly evil soul.

In any case - I start again, remembering at this point the point at which Montaigne makes an intervention into his train of thought to address the addressee directly (voilà ce qu'il dit):

(J'use en liberté de conscience de mon Latin, avecq le congé que vous m'en avez donné.) (Apologie de Raimond Sebond)

At this point, I have forgotten the part of the sentence which was to follow the hypothetical second dash and 'in any case'. This is an example of where my writing has cannibalised itself (concept I mentioned last time I blogged) and which practice I believe I must avoid if I am to make a craft of writing at all. I imagine many people will have experienced such a concern when writing, with a perfectionism so paranoid that hardly a word is written before the page is scrunched up and thrown in the paper bin. The craft the writer develops thereby is most likely parabolic accuracy. One would rather learn physics to explain that.

So, to return to my title, which can become for me an ever-fruitful starting point to recover from these losses, I want to ask if there is any possibility of free play, especially where writing is concerned, and especially in writing where one knows that what one writes will be written by others and that that which is written will most likely be twisted against the writer for various purposes. It seems to me - here I will be a good skeptic and qualify my opinions with the forewarning that they are an opinion, like a bag of peanuts which forewarns its consumer, 'contains: peanuts' - that we live in a society which judges people immensely and immoderately for a few misplaced words in their youth. This thought having haunted me for most of my teenage years, I have lacked the experience necessary to truly perceive where those limits really are. Now, this having so wholly consumed me, I can no longer continue caring how my thoughts may or may not be perceived to be good; because, surely, it is better to have thought and erred than never to have thought at all. There is such thing as lie; however, lie cannot be completely removed from the truth. There is always some element of truth at play. Thus, to declare that 'I am not writing', and this to truly be a lie, the thought of me writing - that which takes place in the material world - must cross my mind. Even if the thought does not cross my mind, the words stand in some relation to the truth, albeit that they are not the truth themselves, they are not altogether nothing in the rational cause-and-effect universe.

On Montaignian wisdom

I have recently finally got round to reading some of Montaigne, an ambition which I have rarely had, but which, at the moment that I have had it, has appeared to me so necessary as to defer to much later, and which, at that later, still appeared frustratingly impossible. In any case, I have followed that which Will Self recommends as reading technique for Montaigne, namely, to start at the smallest essais and progress to the Apologie de Raimond Sebond, picking up and leaving off in the same way Montaigne picks up and leaves off his tract.

An interesting observation Will made was that many seek to compare Montaigne's technique with modern blog writing. It would be nice to think that in doing this I am somehow matching up to the project Montaigne embarked on, to paint himself entirely and naively, and in doing so to found - perhaps unintentionally - a new way of understanding the human race, and the individual: a notion which, according to the episode on In Our Time, was 'intensified' in the Early Modern period. Having watched his debate with Slavoj Žižek, whose concluding remark was that we are on the verge of the time when a new way of understanding the human will prevail. 'We' may be some of the last humans not to have our brains substantially connected to the Internet ether.

Unlike Montaigne, however, in his round Bordelaise tower, I am not so tough of stomach as to be able to present myself in an unbiased way. I am still a creature of great pride, and have many a great weakness I am unwilling to admit. Nor am I allowed free composition, uninterrupted by worldly cares. Admittedly, this is of my own fault, since, as I am writing this, The Last Leg bubbles away in the background, bringing an occasional distraction and resetting my train of thought to its original terminus.

So, then, as I look at my title again, I can conclude modestly that for at least one instant in the past, I believed that I was going to talk about 'Montaignian wisdom'. My studies today took me to consider the Apologie de Raimond Sebond, essay in which the essayist argues that nothing can be known for certain, owing to the fallibility of the senses. Pyrrhonist scepticism is discussed in the highest possible praise, its antiform to the liar's paradox, "Je doubte," applying both to the statement itself and to the 'outside' world. In a rare moment of believing the shadow of a shadow of flash of brilliance, I thought how this word-made-flesh might relate to Montaigne's comments on text-as-body and the theme of the mind-matter dichotomy. No clear conclusions yet; however, owing to this moment, I thought myself to have renewed confidence in my ability to write my second year abroad essay, which is silently (but not self-concealingly) overdue.

Bref, if I were to develop a craft as an essayist - subject si frivole et si vain - I would first need to establish some greater inner order. Lacking a clear focus beyond myself, my text has a tendency to cannibalise itself. What has now happened is that I am so tired of self-consumption that I necessarily need to find some being outside myself: an imagined reader other than my own conscience whom to address. In this regard, and aware that this tract may well be read by future employers, of whose judgment I ought not fear, for aspiration to unity of will, I will give you an example: I, in my mind, compared my use of bref to be somewhat akin to Boris' comment: Donnez-moi un break.

What is clear, I agree, though, with Boris, is that Something Must Be Done. Just, talking about Kermit the Frog at the UN assembly is maybe not the way. Or, perhaps, it is? Is he making us and world leaders aware of the very vanity of their discussions, not backed up by action?

"Il n'en est à l'avanture aucune plus expresse que d'en escrire si vainement. Ce que la divinité nous en a si divinement exprimé devroit estre soigneusement et continuellement medité par les gens d'entendement" (De la vanité)

To be clear, I have not read this essay, at least not in its entirety. I have always stopped at "vanity of vanities, all is vanity". These three-to-four lines are as much as I understand of De la vanité, as well as the following two, which are in Cave's How to Read Montaigne.

Regardless, in the end, the simple point of which I want to remind myself, and which may or may not be of any interest to whoever you are, reader, is that I found somewhat of a pleasure in reading the part of the Apologie de Raimond Sebond that I did: namely, the turn from skepticism to fideism explained through the grammatical tenses. In any case, I need to know about the Apologie for the exam, so any frustration I may have with it, I can console myself of with a realigning of my episteme towards What Is Good For Me. While this approach has hardly satisfied me in other texts (exception two: Voltaire's), I can at least stomach Montaigne without it. Does he construct a text which is alive in itself? Does his text, entire, match the speech-act-like self-evidence of the ἐποχή (epékhō)? Is this the way in which the Essais are a livre consubstantiel à son autheur? Certainly, Montaigne admires the way in which skepticism "presente l'homme nud et vuide, reconnaissant sa foiblesse naturelle". Certainly, Montaigne also prefigures his text as painting him tout entier et tout nud, that he is the very matiere of his book (hence the consubstantiality). Thus he himself is skepticism, and his book, and skepticism his book... Skepticism, then, perhaps, the third being in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit necessary to understanding the resemblance of fathers to their children (which is the subject of one essai in particular)... bref, the ability of the skeptics to produce a statement which also applies to itself is, for Montaigne... one and the same with the verisimiltude he aims for in his own portraiture.

And doubt is, no doubt, a compulsion to keep writing. For, as long as the author's mind is split in two, he will not stand up and get on with his life, but keep going, splitting himself between himself and the page, trying to balance the scales between how he perceives himself and how he perceives the text and how these two can dwell with each other consubstantially. If ἐποχή (epékhō) is written on the scales, it is because it is this principle which applies to the balancing of the authorial 'I' and the authentic 'I', a unifying principle once the split is made, or a splitting principle once a resolution of mind is taken to write on a particular topic. In any case, the exact way in which parts of the Trinity interact with each other has been a matter of monastic and scholastic debate since the church fathers, I conjecture.

I am not a literary theorist, but I am able to write and experience how it feels to write. From such, I can conjecture as to a theory of writing in the mind. Whether it is possible to do so at the time of writing, is another question. The only thing I might truly say when I write is that "I write." I may even be so vain as to conclude, "I write therefore I am." But if vanity were a profession, we have enough candidates for the job. Everyone knows cogito ergo sum. What is lacking in me is the personal insight to make any writing useful, as well as the ability to quote classical material; yet, I still have my childhood, I still have my memories, I still have my subjectivity. I still have something to give. I, moving, have nothing to say, which is why I convince myself so often that resting still at my desk is the best way to discipline myself. I have always been so, since school, and now, I am increasingly aware of the hydra-like nature of this essay, by which each sentence seems to reproduce three or four rather than come to a unitary, unifying conclusion:

"Swa swa mon on ealdspellum segð þæt an nædre wære þe hæfde nigan heafdu, and simle gif mon anra hwilc of aslog þonne weoxon þær siofon of þam anum heafde." (Old English Boethius)

"Qui ne voit que j'ay pris une route par laquelle, sans cesse et sans travail, j'iray autant qu'il y aura d'ancre et de papier au monde?" (De la vanité)

Is this not a warning? But what is the alternative?