The Montaigne Readalong is a year long project in which I try to read over 1,000 pages of Montaigne's essays. Every Monday I write about the essays I read for the week. You can share your thoughts or join the readalong if you'd like, just check the Montaigne Readalong schedule. You can read several of these essays for free on Google Books or subscribe to Montaigne's essays on Daily Lit.
Essays Read this Week:
1. That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities
2. On affectionate relationships
3. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boetie
Favorite Quotations:
"How many of the things which constantly come into our purview must be deemed monstrous or miraculous if we apply such terms to anything which outstrips our reason! If we consider that we have to grope through a fog even to understand the very things we hold in our hands, then we will certainly find that it is not knowledge but habit which takes away their strangeness." (That it is madness to judge the true and the false)
"And in truth what are these Essays if not monstrosities and grotesques botched together from a variety of limbs having no defined shape, with an order sequence and proportion which are purely fortuitous?" (On affectionate relationships)
General Thoughts:
I can't decide if the order of Montaigne's essays just happen to line up with my thoughts this year or if I'm just reading too much of my own thoughts into his writing, but over the past several weeks it's seemed like Montaigne and I have just been on the same page.
This week I read On affectionate relationships, which was fitting because I've been thinking a lot about friendship. When I went home over spring break I had a strong desire to get back together with old friends. I did get together with a couple of friends I've stayed in touch with since high school, but I didn't see either of the people who were really my best friends in high school. I did run into some people who were good friends of mine, and it was just like seeing a stranger. The loss of old friendships has been painful for me. In On affectionate relationships Montaigne describes a kind of friendship in which the friends will do anything for each and other and are really a part of each other.
"Moreover what we normally call friends and friendships are no more than acquaintances and familiar relationships bound by some change or some suitability, by means of which our souls support each other. In the friendship which I am talking about, souls are mingled and confounded in so universal a blending that they efface the seam which joins them together so that it cannot be found. If you press me to say why I loved him, I that it cannot be expressed except by replying: 'Because it was him: because it was me.'"
I just really loved that quote because I think it perfectly sums up my ideas on friendship. The majority of my friends now are really just familiar relations. We have parties, go out for coffee, and so on, but I don't feel like I know them that well or like they know me that well. It's crazy to think about now, but the only people who I feel really know me are my friends from high school who are still my friends today. I never thought I would stay in touch with so many people from high school, the whole point of college is to branch out and meet new people right? But I've found that friendships are largely disappointing, and the only people who really have my back are the people who watched me through my awkward teenage years.
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