Reading the “2011 Best Essays” reminded me of how much I appreciate Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) and Samuel Pepys (1633-1703). In complicated times – and, when are they not? -- it’s perspective-lending to revisit wise voices from hundreds of years ago who wrestled with pretty much the same issues, albeit more wittily.
Throughout all of the civilized countries from Asia, the Middle East, Europe, it was, in fact, almost obligatory if one was literate and of the ruling class (having time to read, study, and write) to keep a journal. Some journal contents were stewardship issues (estates, businesses, countries, legislatures, families), but they were also opportunities for personal anecdotes, sharp observations, and reflection.
Montaigne has always been a favorite of mine for his intelligence, diffident graceful manner, and depth of vision. A deist, nominally a Catholic – required for the French aristocracy of the time – he was more of an agnostic. “It is setting a high value upon our opinions to roast men and women alive on account of them.” In addition to being credited for raising the personal essay to a significant literary form, he is also considered to be the founder of modern skepticism.
(from “Of Experience”) “We are great fools. ‘He has passed his life in idleness,’ say we: ‘I have done nothing to-day.’ What? have you not lived? that is not only the fundamental, but the most illustrious, of your occupations. ‘Had I been put to the management of great affairs, I should have made it seen what I could do.’ Have you known how to meditate and manage your life? you have performed the greatest work of all."
(from “Of Physiognomy”) We are all of us richer than we think we are; but we are taught to borrow and to beg, and brought up more to make use of what is another's than of our own.
Samuel Pepys, a government administrator and member of the British Parliament, kept a vivid diary with entries ranging from descriptions of the Great Fire of London (1666) to a list of the foods he’d been served for his dinner that day (and how much they cost him) to a recounting of his extramarital affairs. He was a cultured, lively, curious man, whose essays are a wonderful mixture of the sublime and the pragmatic. Here’s an excerpt from his diary during the Great Fire of London, which gutted the city and destroyed 70,000 of the 80,000 inhabitants’ homes.
Sir W. Pen and I to Tower-streete, and there met the fire burning three or four doors beyond Mr. Howell's, whose goods, poor man, his trayes, and dishes, shovells, &c., were flung all along Tower-street in the kennels, and people working therewith from one end to the other; the fire coming on in that narrow streete, on both sides, with infinite fury. Sir W. Batten not knowing how to remove his wine, did dig a pit in the garden, and laid it in there; and I took the opportunity of laying all the papers of my office that I could not otherwise dispose of. And in the evening Sir W. Pen and I did dig another, and put our wine in it; and I my Parmazan cheese, as well as my wine and some other things.
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