So, after writing about Montaigne off and on for nearly 14 years now, you’d figure I would have a really strong handle on the essays themselves and would know everything in them. So far from the truth!
Over the last couple months, I have been working on a revision of my essay about Montaigne’s “On Some Verses of Virgil” essay, which is widely regarded as his essay about sex. And I chided Montaigne’s approach for having so much to say about physiological aspects of sex but having so little to say about beauty.
And I’ve also, through the years, considered his second to last essay “On Physiognomy” to not have much interesting to say about the subject of beauty either. But then I came across this passage today:
I cannot say often enough how much I consider beauty a powerful and advantageous quality. Socrates called it “a short tyranny,” and Plato, “the privilege of nature.” We have no quality that surpasses it in credit. It holds the first place in human relations; it presents itself before the rest, seduces and prepossesses our judgment with great authority and a wondrous impression. Phryne would have lost her case even in the hands of an excellent attorney, if, opening her robe, she had not corrupted her judges by her dazzling beauty. And I find that Cyrus, Alexander, Caesar, those three masters of the world, did not forget beauty in carrying out their great affairs; nor did Scipio the Elder.
One and the same word in Greek embraces the beautiful and the good. And the Holy Ghost often calls good those whom it means to call beautiful. I would readily uphold the ranking of good things found in a song, taken from some ancient poet, which Plato says was widely known: health, beauty, riches.
Aristotle says that to the beautiful belongs the right to command, and that when there are any whose beauty approaches that of the images of the gods, veneration is likewise their due. To one who asked him why people frequented beautiful persons longer and more often, he said: “That question is proper only for a blind man.” Most philosophers, and the greatest, paid for their schooling, and acquired wisdom, by the mediation and favor of their beauty.
So, some major revisions are in order for me, clearly Montaigne had a lot to say about beauty that I’ve overlooked. But not only that, I’ve written in several places that Montaigne never mentioned his friend Etienne de La Boetie again after his “Affectionate Friendship” essay. But no, he name checks him here in this section about beauty:
The ugliness which clothed a very beautiful soul in La Boétie was in this category. This superficial ugliness, which is very imperious for all that, is less prejudicial to the state of the spirit and not very certain in its effect on men’s opinion. The other, which is more properly called deformity, is more substantial and more apt to strike home inwardly. Not every shoe of smooth leather but every well-formed shoe shows the form of the foot within.
So his friend not only appears, he’s given a rather harsh insult for no good reason, except perhaps to allay rumors about what his friendship with La Boetie was all about. Montaigne also makes clear in this section that he does not consider someone’s outward appearance an unimportant matter:
There is nothing more likely than the conformity and relation of the body to the spirit. It matters a great deal in what sort of body the soul is lodged; for there are many things about the body that sharpen the mind, many that blunt it [Cicero].
All of this proving, once again, that Montaigne’s “what do I know?” credo is especially apt in examining him and this project, and that no matter how far along it may appear, these essays remain in endless re-examination and recreation.
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