This very strange Montaigne essay appears to take contradictory opinions about drinking, and then turns out not to be about drinking at all.
To begin, Montaigne makes it clear that he considers drinking to be a vice and to partake in it to the point of drunkenness is a nasty habit:
Now drunkenness, considered among other vices, has always seemed to me gross and brutish. In others our minds play a larger part; and there are some vices which have something or other magnanimous about them, if that is the right word. There are some which are intermingled with learning, diligence, valour, prudence, skill and finesse: drunkenness is all body and earthy. Moreover the grossest nation of our day is alone in honouring it. Other vices harm our intellect: this one overthrows it; and it stuns the body: The worst state for a man is when he loses all consciousness and control of himself.
For here, however, Montaigne makes a number of statements that soften his position, starting with this one:
Even among the Stoics there are those who advise you to let yourself drink as much as you like occasionally and to get drunk so as to relax your soul: They say that Socrates often carried off the prize in this trial of strength too.
He comes to internal compromise—he doesn’t like drinking all that much, doesn’t do much of it himself at all, but considering all the vices in the world, those that do harm to others are more serious. Having settled that, he let fly one of the best quotes in all of his essays:
If you base your pleasure on drinking good wine you are bound to suffer from sometimes drinking bad. Your taste ought to be more lowly and more free. To be a good drinker you must not have too tender a palate.
But then, about halfway through the essay, Montaigne takes a left turn and no longer discusses drinking. He delves into a thorough examination of stoicism that focuses on the ability to tame their worst instincts through the use of stoic tactics. He crystallizes his thought in this paragraph, which as translated by Donald Frame is either an extremely subtle form of irony or something so bizarre I can barely explain it:
To how much vanity are we driven by the high opinion we have of ourselves! The best-regulated soul in the world has only too much to do to stay on its feet and keep itself from collapsing to the ground through its own weakness. Out of a thousand souls, there is not one that is straight and composed for a single moment in a lifetime; and it may be questioned, given the soul’s natural condition, whether it can ever be so. But when straightness and composure are combined with constancy, then the soul attains its ultimate perfection; I mean even if nothing should jar it, which a thousand accidents can do.
Most of the thoughts in this paragraph are repeated by Montaigne in dozens of places all across his essays. But then there’s that final line. He doesn’t assign it to anyone in particular, not even the stoics. He just states it like it’s a well accepted fact: “when straightness and composure are combined with constancy, then the soul attains its ultimate perfection.” But, of course, there is a semicolon after it, and in this part of the sentence, Montaigne’s tone shifts. “I mean even if nothing should jar it, which a thousand accidents can do.” That line actually sounds what we now call snarky.
I knew something sounded off about it, so I consulted my modern French translation of Montaigne, and was pleased to find that the “straightness and composure” phrase had a footnote in this text. According to the footnote, this question was addressed by Seneca, in letters to Lucilius, number 83. Guess what that letter is called? On Drunkenness. Wow, I hit the motherlode! Except there’s nothing in that letter about straightness, composure or constancy. It’s really just an attack on some faulty logic by Zeno about the trustworthiness of drunks.
The modern French translation itself was useful, however, and reads a bit different to me:
But to add constancy to the soul is to give it its supreme perfection; I mean: when nothing would shake it, what a thousand accidents can do.
So, instead of making too much of this Montaigne line, I’m just going to chalk it up to a questionable translation, because everything that comes afterwards pretty much obliterates the idea that there’s some perfectible soul in humanity.
Montaigne notes that Lucretius, who he admires greatly, was driven insane by an aphrodisiac. (In his Drunkenness letter, Seneca makes a similar point about Mark Antony, that he was driven into madness not by drink, but by his love for Cleopatra.) Montaigne cites Socrates, another of his heroes, but only to note that he wasn’t immune to apoplexy. And then, done with specific heroes, he turns to “the sage” in general:
For all his wisdom, the sage is still a man: what is there more vulnerable, more wretched, and more null? Wisdom does not overcome our natural limitations: “Over the whole body therefore we see arise, Pallor and sweat; the tongue is tied, and the voice dies, The eyes grow dim ears ring, the limbs give way; the whole at last collapses from the terror of the soul,” (Lucretius)
And then, just to drive home his point, Montaigne then explains that even when human beings achieve great heroic feats, they never do so by adhering to the stoic way, they do so by giving in to a different form of madness:
Our soul from its abode could not reach so high. It must leave its dwelling place and rise, and, taking the bit in its teeth, abduct its man and carry him off so far that afterward he is himself astonished at his deeds; as, in exploits of war, the heat of combat often impels high-souled soldiers to go through such dangers that when they have come back to themselves they are the first to be struck with amazement; as also poets are often rapt in wonder at their own works and no longer recognize the track over which they ran so fine a race. That is what is called poetic frenzy and madness.
And this, in a funny way, takes us full circle in the essay, back to the frenzy and madness that drunkenness creates. What Montaigne leaves us wondering is whether, having rebuked the mad frenzy of the drink, does he oppose the madly heroic as well? Or perhaps it’s better to ask this: if the stoics are so staunchly opposed to drunkenness, shouldn’t they also oppose the great feats of heroism?
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