And Montaigne follows up his essay where he trashes Cicero by making another Cicero quote the tonal center of his argument:

There is hardly any other illusion whose vanity reason condemns so clearly; but it has such live roots in us that I do not know whether anyone yet has ever been able to get clean rid of it. After you have said everything and believed everything to disown it, it produces such an ingrained inclination against your arguments that you have little power to withstand it. For as Cicero says, even those who combat it still want the books that they write about it to bear their name on the title page, and want to become glorious for having despised glory.

But I write today not to trash Montaigne in a similar way. Yesterday’s piece was colored by a mood that has passed, not that I disclaim it in any way. What I find more interesting today is the way Montaigne has and has not influenced writing and thought. Montaigne is acknowledged as the innovator of the essay form, yet his essays bear no resemblance to what we think of as an essay.

To get closer to what Montaigne was attempting in his project in modern times, you need to read Fernando Pessoa’s brilliant faceless autobiography “The Book of Disquiet,” that strange fragmentary piece of prose written from the point of view of one of Pessoa’s fictional personas, but that seems to reflect the author’s day to day feelings and moods about life more effectively than any personal essay.

Just thumbing through the book this morning, I came upon this passage:

I envy – but I’m not sure that I envy – those for whom a biography could be written, or who could write their own. In these random impressions, and with no desire to be other than random, I indifferently narrate my factless autobiography, my lifeless history. These are my Confessions, and if in them I say nothing, it’s because I have nothing to say. What is there to confess that’s worthwhile or useful? What has happened to us has happened to everyone or only to us; if to everyone, then it’s no novelty, and if only to us, then it won’t be understood. If I write what I feel, it’s to reduce the fever of feeling. What I confess is unimportant, because everything is unimportant. I make landscapes out of what I feel. I make holidays of my sensations. I can easily understand women who embroider out of sorrow or who crochet because life exists. My elderly aunt would play solitaire throughout the endless evening. These confessions of what I feel are my solitaire. I don’t interpret them like those who read cards to tell the future. I don’t probe them, because in solitaire the cards don’t have any special significance. I unwind myself like a multicoloured skein, or I make string figures of myself, like those woven on spread fingers and passed from child to child. I only take care that my thumb not miss its loop. Then I turn over my hand and the figure changes. And I start over. To live is to crochet according to a pattern we were given. But while doing it the mind is at liberty, and all prince charmings can stroll in their parks between one and another plunge of the hooked ivory needle. Needlework of things … Intervals … Nothing … Besides, what can I expect from myself? My sensations in all their horrible acuity, and a profound awareness of feeling … A sharp mind that only destroys me, and a ferocious capacity for dreaming to keep me entertained … A dead will and a reflection that cradles it, like a living child … Yes, crochet …

What both Montaigne and Pessoa are getting at — from opposite sides of the discussion — is the danger unleashed by people determined not to innovate or create human progress, but to put their stamp on the world, to plant that conquering flag onto something through sheer force of will. It’s the instinct of a toddler, to make life so unpleasant for others that they concede mostly out of exhaustion.

That, of course, isn’t the full story of personal triumph and glory — it isn’t always petulance that leads people to get their way. But there’s a germ of it within, the inner drive that makes us think it possible to demand and receive our way in the world. Montaigne critiques that way of thinking while Pessoa gives a glimpse of what non-glorification looks like for a writer.

So after taking some shots at Montaigne yesterday, I want to give him a little credit today. He admits that as much as he wants to push away personal glory for his writing, it’s still his name on the book and he takes some satisfaction from that. Fernando Pessoa is a more interesting case in this regard because he wrote under a series of created personas, writing continually from their point of view. But even still, the books ended up with his name on the title.

I love the line “these confessions of what I feel are my solitaire.” That feels literally true for me, given that my works are so infrequently read, at least those that bear my name. Like Pessoa, I too write for other characters, these ones real, and my words become theirs. But as for this writing practice, it has the same effect on my mind as playing sudoku for 15 minutes. It passes the time in a soothing manner.

None of this is to say that the Montaigne/Pessoa style of writing is the only legitimate form. But I do find it interesting that for writers who spent so much of their lives in service of others, whether literally in public service like Montaigne or mentally through these created characters like Pessoa, they landed on a similar literary form that gave rise to complete, messy, mood-heavy personal writing that’s digressive, self-contradictory and, strangely, philosophical in a useful but not systematic form.

And as someone who is also in service of others quite a bit — a fact that I whined about yesterday — this is also the natural form for me.