Mimesis (50 page)

The short sentence, with its many participles, is a picture and a poem. Then tone and theme change:

Ce pendant le marchant disoit à ses moutonniers: “O qu’il a bien sceu choisir, le challant! Il se y entend, le paillard! Vrayement, le bon vrayement, je le reservoys pour le seigneur de Cancale, comme bien congnoissant son naturel. Car, de sa nature, il est tout joyeulx et esbaudy quand il tient une espaule de mouton en main bien seante et advenente, comme une raquette gauschiere, et, avecques un cousteau bien tranchant, Dieu sçait comment il s’en escrime!”

(Meanwhile the merchant was saying to his shepherds: Ah! how well the knave could choose him out a ram; the whoreson has skill in cattle. Truly, aye really and truly, I reserved that very one for the Lord of Cancale, well knowing his disposition: for he is by nature overjoyed and all agog when he holds a good-sized handsome shoulder of mutton, like a left-handed racket, in one hand, with a good sharp carver in the other; God wot how he fences with it then!)

This presentation of the Sieur de Cancale’s character provides an entirely different but no less striking picture, to the highest degree concrete and amusing, and at the same time fitting in perfectly, because the broad description of someone unknown to the entire audience, and of his relations with the speaker, clearly indicates Dindenault’s crude and at the same time witty bumptiousness. Then the ram is thrown into the sea, and immediately the lyrical theme
criant et bellant
is heard again (beginning of chapter 8):

Soubdain, je ne sçay comment, le cas feut subit, je ne eus loisir le consyderer, Panurge, sans aultre chose dire, jette en pleine mer son mouton criant et bellant. Tous les aultres moutons, crians et bellans en pareille intonation, commencerent soy jecter et saulter en mer après, à la file. La foulle estoit à qui premier y saulteroit après leur compaignon. Possible n’estoit les en garder,

(On a sudden, you would wonder how the thing was so soon done; for my part I cannot tell you, for I had not leisure to mind it; Panurge, without any further tittle-tattle, throws you his ram overboard into the middle of the sea, crying and bleating. Upon this all the other sheep in the ship, crying and bleating in the same tone, made all the haste they could to leap and plunge into the sea after him, one behind t’other, and great was the throng who should leap in first after their leader. It was impossible to hinder them,)

And now a sudden excursion into grotesque erudition:

comme vous scavez estre du mouton le naturel, tous jours suyvre le premier, quelque part qu’il aille. Aussi le dict Aristoteles, lib.
IX
, de Histo. animal., estre le plus sot et inepte animant du monde.

(for you know that it is the nature of sheep always to follow the first, wheresoever it goes; which makes Aristotle, lib. 9 De
Hist. Animal., mark them for the most silly and foolish animals in the world.)

So much for the everyday. But the seriousness lies in the joy of discovery-pregnant with all possibilities, ready to try every experiment, whether in the realm of reality or super-reality—which was characteristic of his time, the first half of the century of the Renaissance, and which no one has so well translated into terms of the senses as Rabelais with the language which he created for his book. That is why it is possible to call his mixture of styles, his Socratic buffoonery, a high style. He himself found a charming phrase for the high style of his book, which is itself an example of that style. It is taken from the art of fattening stock, we have already quoted it above:
ces beaux livres de haulte gresse
.

12

L’HUMAINE CONDITION

L
ES
autres forment l’homme: je le recite; et en représente un particulier bien mal formé, et lequel si j’avoy à façonner de nouveau, je ferois vrayment bien autre qu’il n’est. Meshuy, c’est fait. Or, les traits de ma peinture ne fourvoyent point, quoiqu’ils se changent et diversifient. Le monde n’est qu’une branloire perenne. Toutes choses y branlent sans cesse: la terre, les rochers du Caucase, les pyramides d’Aegypte, et du branle public et du leur. La constance mesme n’est autre chose qu’un branle plus languissant. Je ne puis asseurer mon object; il va trouble et chancelant, d’une yvresse naturelle. Je le prens en ce poinct, comme il est, en l’instant que je m’amuse à luy: je ne peinds pas l’estre, je peinds le passage; non un passage d’aage en autre, ou, comme dict le peuple, de sept en sept ans, mais de jour en jour, de minute en minute. Il faut accomoder mon histoire à l’heure; je pourray tantost changer, non de fortune seulement, mais aussi d’intention. C’est un contrerolle de divers et muables accidens, et d’imaginations irresolues, et, quand il y eschet, contraires; soit que je soys autre moy-mesmes, soit que je saisisse les subjects par autres circonstances et considérations. Tant y a que je me contredis bien à l’adventure, mais la verité, comme disoit Demades, je ne la contredis point. Si mon ame pouvoit prendre pied, je ne m’essaierois pas, je me resoudrois; elle est tousjours en apprentissage et en espreuve.

Je propose une vie basse et sans lustre: c’est tout un; on attache aussi bien toute la philosophie morale à une vie populaire et privée, que à une vie de plus riche estoffe: chaque homme porte la forme entière de l’humaine condition. Les autheurs se communiquent au peuple par quelque marque particuliere et estrangiere; moy le premier par mon estre universel, comme Michel de Montaigne, non comme grammairien, ou poete, ou jurisconsulte. Si le monde se plaint de quoy je parle trop de moy, je me plains de quoy il ne pense seulement pas à soy. Mais est-ce raison que, si particulier en usage, je pretende me rendre public en cognoissance? est-il aussi raison que je produise au monde, où la façon
et l’art ont tant de credit et de commandement, des effets de nature et crus et simples, et d’une nature encore bien foiblette? est-ce pas faire une muraille sans pierre, ou chose semblable, que de bastir des livres sans science et sans art? Les fantasies de la musique sont conduictes par art, les miennes par sort. Au moins j’ay cecy selon la discipline, que jamais homme ne traicta subject qu’il entendist ne congneust mieux que je fay celuy que j’ay entrepris, et qu’en celuy-là je suis le plus sçavant homme qui vive; secondement, que jamais aucun ne penetra en sa matiere plus avant, ni en esplucha plus particulierement les membres et suites, et n’arriva plus exactement et plus plainement à la fin qu’il s’estoit proposé à sa besoingne. Pour la parfaire, je n’ay besoing d’y apporter que la fidelité: celle-là y est, la plus sincere et pure qui se trouve. Je dis vrai, non pas tout mon saoul, mais autant que je l’ose dire; et l’ose un peu plus en vieillissant; car il semble que la coustume concede à cet aage plus de liberté de bavasser et d’indiscretion à parler de soy. Il ne peut advenir icy, ce que je veoy advenir souvent, que l’artizan et sa besoigne se contrarient. … Un personnage sçavant n’est pas sçavant partout; mais le suffisant est partout suffisant, et à ignorer mesme; icy, nous allons conformément, et tout d’un train, mon livre et moy. Ailleurs, on peut recommander et accuser l’ouvrage, à part de l’ouvrier; icy, non; qui touche l’un, touche l’autre.

(Others form man; I describe him, and portray a particular, very ill-made one, who, if I had to fashion him anew, should indeed be very different from what he is. But now it is done. Now the features of my painting do not err, although they change and vary. The world is but a perennial see-saw. All things in it are incessantly on the swing, the earth, the rocks of the Caucasus, the Egyptian pyramids, both with the common movement and their own particular movement. Even fixedness is nothing but a more sluggish motion. I cannot fix my object; it is befogged, and reels with a natural intoxication. I seize it at this point, as it is at the moment when I beguile myself with it. I do not portray the thing in itself. I portray the passage; not a passing from one age to another, or, as the people put it, from seven years to seven years, but from day to day, from minute to minute. I must adapt my history to the moment. I may presently change, not only by chance, but also by intention. It is a record of diverse and changeable
events, of undecided, and, when the occasion arises, contradictory ideas; whether it be that I am another self, or that I grasp a subject in different circumstances and see it from a different point of view. So it may be that I contradict myself, but, as Demades said, the truth I never contradict. If my mind could find a firm footing, I should not speak tentatively, I should decide; it is always in a state of apprenticeship, and on trial.

I am holding up to view a humble and lustreless life; that is all one. Moral philosophy, in any degree, may apply to an ordinary and secluded life as well as to one of richer stuff; every man carries within him the entire form of the human constitution. Authors communicate themselves to the world by some special and extrinsic mark; I am the first to do so by my general being, as Michel de Montaigne, not as a grammarian or a poet or a lawyer. If the world finds fault with me for speaking too much of myself, I find fault with the world for not even thinking of itself. But is it reasonable that I, who am so retired in actual life, should aspire to make myself known to the public? And is it reasonable that I should show up to the world, where artifice and ceremony enjoy so much credit and authority, the crude and simple results of nature, and of a nature besides very feeble? Is it not like making a wall without stone or a similar material, thus to build a book without learning or art? The ideas of music are guided by art, mine by chance. This I have at least in conformity with rules, that no man ever treated of a subject that he knew and understood better than I do this that I have taken up; and that in this I am the most learned man alive. Secondly, that no man ever penetrated more deeply into his matter, nor more minutely analyzed its parts and consequences, nor more fully and exactly reached the goal he had made it his business to set up. To accomplish it I need only bring fidelity to it; and that is here, as pure and sincere as may be found. I speak the truth, not enough to satisfy myself, but as much as I dare to speak. And I become a little more daring as I grow older; for it would seem that custom allows this age more freedom to prate, and more indiscretion in speaking of oneself. It cannot be the case here, as I often see elsewhere, that the craftsman and his work contradict each other. … A learned man is not learned in all things; but the accomplished man is accomplished in all things, even in ignorance. Here, my book and I go hand in hand together, and keep one pace. In other cases we may
commend or censure the work apart from the workman; not so here. Who touches the one touches the other.)
The Essays of Montaigne
. Translated by E. J. Trechmann, Oxford University Press, 1927.

This is the beginning of chapter 2 of book 3 of Montaigne’s
Essais
. In Villey’s edition (Paris, Alcan, 1930), the pagination of which will be given in all our future references, the passage is found on page 39 of volume 3. It is one of those numerous passages in which Montaigne speaks of the subject matter of the essays, of his purpose of representing himself. He begins by emphasizing the fluctuations, the unstable and changeable nature of his material. Then he describes the procedure he employs in treating so fluctuating a subject. Finally he takes up the question of the usefulness of his venture. The train of reasoning in the first paragraph can easily be rendered in the form of a syllogism: I describe myself; I am a creature which constantly changes; ergo, the description too must conform to this and constantly change. We shall try to analyze how each member of the syllogism is expressed in the text.

“I describe myself.” Montaigne does not say this directly. He brings it out through the contrast to “others” much more energetically and, as we shall see in a moment, in a more richly nuanced fashion than would have been possible by a mere statement.
Les autres forment l’homme, moy
…: here it becomes apparent that the contrast is twofold. The others shape, I relate (cf. a little further on:
je n’enseigne pas, je raconte
); the others shape “man,” I relate “a man.” This gives us two stages of the contrast:
forment—recite, l’homme—un particulier
. This
particulier
is himself; but that too he does not say directly but paraphrases it with his reticent, ironical, and slightly self-satisfied modesty. The paraphrase consists of three parts, of which the second has both a principal and a subordinate clause:
bien mal formé; si j’avoy …, je ferois
…;
meshuy c’est fait
. The major premise of the syllogism, then, contains in its formulation at least three groups of ideas which build it up and interpret it in various forms of counter- or concurrent motion: 1. the others shape, I relate; 2. the others shape
man
, I tell of
one
man; 3. this one man (I) is “unfortunately” already formed. All this is gathered in one single rhythmic movement without the slightest possibility of confusion; and indeed almost completely without syntactic vincula, without conjunctions or quasi-conjunctional connectives. The coherence, the intellectual nexus established through
the unity of meaning and the rhythm of the sentence, is adequate by itself. To make this point clearer, let me supply some syntactic vincula: (
Tandis que
)
les autres forment l’homme, je le recite
; (
encore faut-il ajouter que
)
je represente un particulier
(
; ce particulier, c’est moi-même qui suis, je le sais
,)
bien mal formé
; (
soyez sûrs que
)
si j’avais à le façonner de nouveau, je le ferais vrayment bien autre qu’il n’est
. (
Mais, malheureusement
)
meshuy c’est fait
. Of course my emendations are at best of approximate value. The nuances which Montaigne expresses by omitting them cannot be caught in full.

As for the minor premise (I am a creature subject to constant change), Montaigne does not express it at once. He leaves the logical continuity in the lurch and first introduces the conclusion, in the form of the surprising assertion:
Or, les traits de ma peinture ne fourvoyent pas, quoy qu’ils se changent et diversifient
. The word
or
indicates that the continuity has been interrupted for a new start. It serves at the same time to tone down the suddenness and surprisingness of the assertion. The word
quoique
, here sharply employed as a precise syntactic vinculum, brings the problem out in bold relief.