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Home of Michael Perry – Author, Humorist, Singer/Songwriter, Amateur Pig Farmer

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Posts Tagged ‘Montaigne’

Writing About Things I Don’t Write About

Part of writing about Montaigne (click on “Montaigne” tag to see more…all kinda fishy-wishy at this point, still taking form) is that I will be writing some about [looks left, looks right, whispers] s-e-x, because Montaigne wrote about it just like he wrote about pretty much everything else from philosophers to killer pigs. This really is tricky for me because the subject deserves a balance of frankness and discretion. And even that I’m not saying quite right. Somewhere between healthy openness and libidinous oversharing lies wisdom?

I’ll have to figure it out soon, because I’m on deadline. Back to work…

Montaigne Yanks My Chain

So let’s say you’re going through Montaigne’s Essays, essentially cherry-picking quotes for a magazine piece you’re working on, and you come to this passage:

Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at tongue’s end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad.

Montaigne for Forgetful Amateurs

Still writing that essay about Montaigne. A portion from my rough draft:

If I may say so, Montaigne’s single dominant theme is our propensity for perpetual self-contradiction, and for a guy who can’t make up his mind about anything more complicated than a toggle switch on a bench grinder, I guess you could say Montaigne’s are my kind of affirmations. I admit the angle of my appreciation lacks academic rigor. But you read Montaigne, you feel like you have a friend. And that you may be a reliable idiot, but you are not the original reliable idiot.

Then again:

He also started speaking Latin at the age of four, went to college at the age of six, enrolled in law school when he was fourteen, served as a soldier and was appointed to several high-level government positions and hung out (just once, but still…) with the Pope.

Montaigne the Same

Working on a magazine piece about Montaigne. Never cease to be amazed how he speaks to us as a contemporary, some 430 years removed. Here he is on how the youngsters are dressing:

…the negligent garb, which is yet observable amongst the young men of our time, to wear my cloak on one shoulder, my cap on one side, a stocking in disorder, which seems to express a kind of haughty disdain of these exotic ornaments…

And he was actually speaking in approval of their dress as compared to the adults.

And for those of you who think I use too many big words, you have found a friend:

The way of speaking that I love, is natural and plain, the same in writing as in speaking, and a sinewy and muscular way of expressing a man’s self, short and pithy, not so elegant and artifical as prompt and vehement.

In my defense, if the man was standing here, I’d tell him I shoot for a 50/50 blend.

I read a lot of Montaigne in my deer stand last fall. Everything he ever wrote is on my cellphone. That is ridiculous and lovely.

Can’t Be Too Careful

In the three weeks since I shot this video, the pig have grown markedly larger and more aggressive. These days when Mills or I go in the pen to feed or move fence, the pigs nudge at our calves and take tentative nibbles at our boot toes. During such moments I am always reminded of Montaigne’s essay “That To Study Philosophy Is To Learn To Die,” in which he lists all the many ways his contemporaries and their ancestors have died, including Philip, eldest son of Louis le Gros who died “by jostle of a hog.”

A sentence or two later he writes of the men he has known who died “betwixt the very thighs of women,” so danger is everywhere.