From a writer and thinker who has latched onto moderation so often, the following passage from Montaigne is unexpected:
This perfect friendship I speak of is indivisible: each one gives himself so wholly to his friend that he has nothing left to distribute elsewhere; on the contrary, he is sorry that he is not double, triple, or quadruple, and that he has not several souls and several wills, to confer them all on this one object. Common friendships can be divided up: one may love in one man his beauty, in another his easygoing ways, in another liberality, in one paternal love, in another brotherly love, and so forth; but this friendship that possesses the soul and rules it with absolute sovereignty cannot possibly be double. If two called for help at the same time, which one would you run to? If they demanded conflicting services of you, how would you arrange it? If one confided to your silence a thing that would be useful for the other to know, how would you extricate yourself? A single dominant friendship dissolves all other obligations.
Contrast this to what Montaigne says in many places, including the same essay, about marriage: that it should not contain deep passions or even what contemporary people would consider to be good sex. It is supposed to be governed by distance and safety.
And Montaigne also calls for a certain distance in father/son relationships and among brothers. He is skeptical that same sex relationships can work out, for reasons that don’t seem terribly convincing, and speculates that maybe an affair between a man and woman who are intellectual equals and physical pairs could be ideal, but then he suggests that this is asking too much.
So, Montaigne places friendship above all else and describes in beautiful detail why his pairing with Etienne de la Boetie was such a match. But that paragraph above is still striking. He is saying that we should all wish to have that one person in our life who gets us completely, and that’s it. Don’t let anyone else in, otherwise it spoils the perfection.
For all of Montaigne’s deep skepticism about romantic love, he has an extremely romantic view of friendship. To me this sounds impossible. I have had best friends throughout my life, but never have I reached a point where I would close off all others in service of just one.
While I understand the value of monogamous romantic relationships, especially when there are children involved, I’m at a loss to explain the monogamous friendship. My personal view is that people should aim to have as many friendships as possible. And if that means lending ourselves out more frequently, so be it, it’s generally worth the personal investment.
Having said this, I am a big fan of the movie “Frances Ha” and this brilliant monologue from Greta Gerwig isn’t that far removed from Montaigne’s thoughts:
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