On 'assays'

“If my design had been to seek the favour of the world I would have decked myself out better and presented myself in studied gait. Here I want to be seen in my simple, natural, everyday fashion, without striving or artiface: for it is my own self I am painting...
And therefore, Reader, I myself am the subject of my book: it is not reasonable that you should employ your leisure on a topic so frivilous and so vain.
Therefore, farewell:
--Montaigne, the first of March, One thousand, five hundred and eighty."

In 1572, a French legal official named Michel Eyquem retired from public service to his estate – Montaigne – in southwest France and began exploring the world through rigorous reading and by writing “assays” of his reflections, ideas, and insights. Montaigne’s experiment resulted in the birth of the essay genre, which was originally characterized by Montaigne's informal, almost conversational exploration of ideas, thoughts, texts, and objects in the world through subjective observation and reporting. Montaigne’s subjects ranged from some of the great philosophical problems faced by mankind – conscience, cruelty, and virtue – to things as common as sleep, smells, and thumbs.

Montaigne’s essays are unique in what they say, but equally so in how they say it. Montaigne's casual style stands in stark contrast to modern connotations of the essay – especially the schoolroom academic composition – in its rigid formalization. Of course, there are still writers composing what has come to be a sub-category of the genre – the personal or reflective essay. Montaigne’s essays are considered both in that his tone is reflective while his voice is subjective. The reflective essay’s form can be traced as far back as Ancient China and classical antiquity.

Montaigne’s essays are consciously subjective, but that does not mean they are reductive or simple-minded. They do not, however, depend on a “thesis” or a clearly outlined, doggedly pursued argument. This is partly due to Montaigne’s indebtedness to a group of thinkers known in classical antiquity as the skeptics (also known as sceptics, academics, pyrrhonists). Briefly, skeptics hold that: 1) nothing can be known with certainty (that idea is Socratic in origin, and the purpose underlying the great Cartesian experiment resulting in his Method); and 2) Arcesilaus’ observation that "it cannot be known that nothing is known." Therefore, all judgement should be suspended (Greek = epoche). Often, Montaigne’s essays merely ramble forward, loosely organized around long digressions and eclectic quotes dropped in, which are then considered and replied to from various angles. Often, an essay's structure seemingly parallels Montaigne’s simultaneously unfolding thoughts, as if a "free-write." His essays are deceiving in this way because Montaigne was a sensitive self-editor, releasing three versions (in editions) of his essays, which in modern compilations total more than 1250 pages (in about a 10-point font) in a standard paperback size. Comparing versions, his edits often include the subtlest changes in diction and syntax, which open doors to whole new webs of associations and connotations. Such is the care Montaigne showed in thinking and rethinking through his ideas.

By the end of any given essay, we often feel Montaigne’s opinion on the subject is as much tentative as before he started, yet his graceful, highly exploratory style provides myriad insights, leaving our minds desirous to explode outward in pursuit of a million, half-developed notions all at once. This feeling of incompleteness again reveals the skeptic influence on Montaigne. However, it would be unjust to the scope of his education and the breadth of his thought to think so categorically. There are also intellectual traces from Platonic, Aristotlean, and Augustinean thought, and, ironically, of Seneca, who as a stoic philosophically stands in direct contrast to the skeptic worldview.

I do not think I can achieve the grace, clarity, urbanity, and compassion Montaigne achieved in his lucid prose. Montaigne wrote in the late 16^th Century in Latin (not French), yet one of the most common contemporary evaluations of his essays include how “modern” they read. Montaigne’s writing, although centered in so many ways around himself and on his observations, was ultimately for immediate posterity. His writing, in turn, has come to represent one of the great acts of literary and philosophical charity in history.

This space will be used for my own humble “assays,” in Montaigne's sense of the genre.