Here, Montaigne tackles the subject of anxiety and the extraordinary calm some people can show in the face of danger. He starts by noting that it’s normal to respond to anxiety with a quickened pace, as opposed to being frozen by fear:
Reason ordains that we should keep to the same road but not to the same rate; and although the wise man must never allow his human passions to make him stray from the right path, he may without prejudice to his duty certainly quicken or lessen his speed, though never plant himself down like some fixed and impassive Colossus. If Virtue herself were incarnate I believe that even her pulse would beat faster when attacking the foe than when attacking a dinner – indeed it is necessary that she should be moved and inflamed.
What follows here is a montage that feels downright cinematic. First, there’s a paragraph about Alexander the Great, which comes via Erasmus and Plutarch, being so calm before a critical battle that he overslept and had to be awakened by his aide Parmenion. The scene then cuts to Emperor Otho, who on the very same night had decided to end his life. He calmly distributed all of his belongings, sharpened his sword, then waited for news that his friends had all arrived safely at home. While waiting, he fell asleep and his servants heard him snoring.
That’s juxtaposed with Cato, who also was ready to take his life, but he wanted assurance that Senators who had just visited them had sailed into safety. He also fell asleep, into a snoring slumber, only to be awoken to be told that they had hit rough seas. He went back to sleep and snored some more.
There are a few other examples and a couple odd stories at the end about apocryphal cultures where people hibernate half the year and someone who slept for 57 years, Rip Van Winkle-like. What I take away from this short essay is deep admiration from Montaigne about people who can calm their nerves and get the rest they need.
While I am good at calming myself under most situations during the day, I admit to difficulty doing so in the middle of the night. I say middle, because my issues with sleep never involve falling fast asleep, I do so easily and consistently. But on nights before I have something that concerns me the next day, I inevitably toss and turn all night. My dreams do not calm me either, they tend to be even more frustrating than usual (I don’t remember all of my dreams, but I’d categorize them all as mild nightmares) and sometimes even wake me up.
My worst sleep unusually comes on Sunday nights/Monday mornings and I anticipate any activity that day to be far worse than it usually turns out. Throw a difficult event on my schedule on a Thursday or Friday and I can usually handle it without overnight anxiety.
I interpreted this essay previously as an example of Montaigne admiring the stoic attitudes of exemplars, but I wonder if that is the case. I think perhaps, in a more Pyrrhonist way of looking at it, less impressed by the sleep habits as awe struck by them. Montaigne loves seeing odd stories of people and cultures and sometimes likes to juxtapose the outliers to underline just how unusual they are, and note that there’s nothing wrong with having a little nervous energy when we might need it.
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