We come to one of Montaigne’s more baffling essays, one with very little within it worth quoting, and that deals mostly with naming the virtues of Julian the Apostate, the notably anti-Christian Roman Emperor.
I suppose from this I could jump into a discussion of freedom of religion or tolerance of opposing political or philosophical views, but my intellectual desire is pushing me in another direction, best illustrated by this Nietzsche quote:
One does not only wish to be understood when one writes; one wishes just as surely not to be understood. It is not by any means necessarily an objection to a book when anyone finds it impossible to understand: perhaps that was part of the author’s intention—he did not want to be understood by just “anybody.” All the nobler spirits and tastes select their audience when they wish to communicate; and choosing that, one at the same time erects barriers against “the others.” All the more subtle laws of any style have their origin at this point: they at the same time keep away, create a distance, forbid “entrance,” understanding, as said above—while they open the ears of those whose ears are related to ours.
I’ve brought up the subject of esoteric writing in other essays, but I think what Montaigne is doing in this goes beyond even the esoteric—his writing seems interested in reaching only a few close friends who understand why this topic is important to him. And given that, I’m inclined to just walk away from it and consider it an essay meant for other eyes.
But recently, I came across this quote from Maurice Merleau-Ponty that struck a chord:
What if language expresses as much by what is between words as by the words themselves? By that which it does not ‘say’ as by what it ‘says’? And what if, hidden in empirical language, there is a second-order language in which signs once again lead the vague life of colors, and in which significations never free themselves completely from the intercourse of signs?
Who’s to say that I don’t have my own private language, one that does not exist to be broadly understood, but to be specifically understood, one that relies on its own interpretation of signs to choose its future course? Even though it would seem I have a readership so small that it could all be a rounding error.
Why bother doing this? I will let Nietzsche have the last word:
At times we need a rest from ourselves by looking upon, by looking down upon, ourselves and, from an artistic distance, laughing over ourselves or keeping over ourselves. We must discover the hero no less than the fool in our passion for knowledge; we must occasionally find pleasure in our folly, or we cannot continue to find pleasure in our wisdom.
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