Among the things
I admire most about Montaigne is his extensive grasp of military history, both
ancient and of his own time, not a predominant trait of our would-be
philosophers and clerisy. (What I wouldn’t give to have bagged half the classes
I took in college and traded them for a better grounding in Thucydides and the
World Wars.) In his first essay, By
diverse means we arrive at the same end, he begins by dishing a series of
military anecdotes: “As Scanderbeg, prince of Epirus, was pursuing one of his
soldiers in order to kill him…” “Emperor Conrad III, having besieged Guelph,
duke of Bavaria, would not come down to milder terms…” “Dionysius the Elder,
having take the city of Rhegium after extreme delays and difficulties…” These
are not the type of specimen one expects to find in contemporary essays. It
gives the text muscle. It also gives Montaigne a preoccupation, I expect usual
for his day, with matters of honor:
“It is a
noble craving to want even to die usefully and manfully; but the outcome lies
not so much in our good resolution as in our good fortune. A thousand have
proposed to conquer or die fighting, who have failed to do either, wounds and
prison crossing this design and lending them a forced life. There are maladies
that lay low even our desires and our consciousness.” (Against do-nothingness)
No comments:
Post a Comment