The Essays of Montaigne and Controlling the Homicidal Urge
I went to a bookstore the other day to look for the latest translation of Montaigne’s Essays. I like skillful translations of classic texts and have heard that M.A. Screech’s version, which came out in 1993, is quite good. The essays themselves have been around since the sixteenth century and an English version available since 1603, but reading those early editions is painful and reading Montaigne should be fun. Montaigne practically invented the essay genre and was one of the first great modern skeptics. His prose was straightforward and witty and his subject – his own life – fascinating.
“Montaigne’s essays?” the clerk – a woman who had to be at least 45 years old - asked me from behind her computer terminal. “Do you know who wrote it?”
Montaigne believed that humanity is in no way superior to the beasts. I thought maybe because we had opposable thumbs or could manufacture self-cleaning ovens that we had one up on the animal kingdom. All the claims Montaigne might arrange in his essays to prove his point would not do as much to convince me as that clerk’s question: Who wrote Montaigne’s Essays?
If a device existed that could reveal my Snob brain activity, bystanders might have been happy to see the Snob ‘centers’ in my cerebral cortex turning magenta with overloaded activity, causing synopses in my brain to misfire, and generally resulting in a Snob meltdown accompanied by a mental slideshow of pscychotic ideations depicting various techniques of hunting, killing, and gutting humans in a suburban setting. Externally, I was too stunned to register any immediate response.
This is a Snob predicament. The gentleman or lady ignores intellectual and social trespasses with silent reprobation and outward calm, feeling all the better for their natural superiority. The dandy delights in merry and vain condescension. But the Snob cannot remain quiet at the scene of a crime, and doesn’t fit well in a cloak of petty arrogance. Maybe sarcasm is our last, best hope: a Molotov cocktail to toss at the shock troops of Ignorance. “I believe, perhaps, that Montaigne was the author of Montaigne’s Essays.”
But sarcasm is a dangerous weapon. It overtakes us and turns us bitter. Montaigne may have been on to something when he suggested that human beings are no better than animals. I think though that he is proof enough against his own argument. The trouble for Snobbery is trying to understand the difference between that which is superior and that which is not. This is a qualitative judgment and we are living in a time when qualitative judgments are quite out of fashion.
I am an historian and Snobs have an historical consciousness. History is not a Tsunami; it does not move all at once towards one end. The past, one might say, has many currents. They move in different directions, some glacier slow, others fast. The trend now may seem to overturn canons of judgment, while in the background historical forces are slowly uprighting them: fast currents above slow currents. Today we may be in the avant-garde of the Revolution, tomorrow Robespierre may have our heads for orthodoxy.
The Essays of Montaigne and the book clerks who ask stupid questions both challenge us to probe our own mental state. Snobbery is at heart a form of insecurity – a good form, but insecurity nevertheless. There is nothing smug about the Snob’s superiority. The Snob’s superiority floats with history, and cannot be assumed or certain. Our culture encourages people to ask themselves, “How can I be the best me possible?” as a positive, therapeutic measure designed to promote “human potential.” Yet if that person arrives at the next natural question, “What is the best?” the pale has been crossed. The indulgence of the first question is considered healthy, especially when compared with the impudence of the latter. The Snob occupies that lonely territory beyond the pale, mucking about in history trying to find what is best, hated by both the left and the right, and buying books from people who are forgetting how to read.
“Montaigne’s essays?” the clerk – a woman who had to be at least 45 years old - asked me from behind her computer terminal. “Do you know who wrote it?”
Montaigne believed that humanity is in no way superior to the beasts. I thought maybe because we had opposable thumbs or could manufacture self-cleaning ovens that we had one up on the animal kingdom. All the claims Montaigne might arrange in his essays to prove his point would not do as much to convince me as that clerk’s question: Who wrote Montaigne’s Essays?
If a device existed that could reveal my Snob brain activity, bystanders might have been happy to see the Snob ‘centers’ in my cerebral cortex turning magenta with overloaded activity, causing synopses in my brain to misfire, and generally resulting in a Snob meltdown accompanied by a mental slideshow of pscychotic ideations depicting various techniques of hunting, killing, and gutting humans in a suburban setting. Externally, I was too stunned to register any immediate response.
This is a Snob predicament. The gentleman or lady ignores intellectual and social trespasses with silent reprobation and outward calm, feeling all the better for their natural superiority. The dandy delights in merry and vain condescension. But the Snob cannot remain quiet at the scene of a crime, and doesn’t fit well in a cloak of petty arrogance. Maybe sarcasm is our last, best hope: a Molotov cocktail to toss at the shock troops of Ignorance. “I believe, perhaps, that Montaigne was the author of Montaigne’s Essays.”
But sarcasm is a dangerous weapon. It overtakes us and turns us bitter. Montaigne may have been on to something when he suggested that human beings are no better than animals. I think though that he is proof enough against his own argument. The trouble for Snobbery is trying to understand the difference between that which is superior and that which is not. This is a qualitative judgment and we are living in a time when qualitative judgments are quite out of fashion.
I am an historian and Snobs have an historical consciousness. History is not a Tsunami; it does not move all at once towards one end. The past, one might say, has many currents. They move in different directions, some glacier slow, others fast. The trend now may seem to overturn canons of judgment, while in the background historical forces are slowly uprighting them: fast currents above slow currents. Today we may be in the avant-garde of the Revolution, tomorrow Robespierre may have our heads for orthodoxy.
The Essays of Montaigne and the book clerks who ask stupid questions both challenge us to probe our own mental state. Snobbery is at heart a form of insecurity – a good form, but insecurity nevertheless. There is nothing smug about the Snob’s superiority. The Snob’s superiority floats with history, and cannot be assumed or certain. Our culture encourages people to ask themselves, “How can I be the best me possible?” as a positive, therapeutic measure designed to promote “human potential.” Yet if that person arrives at the next natural question, “What is the best?” the pale has been crossed. The indulgence of the first question is considered healthy, especially when compared with the impudence of the latter. The Snob occupies that lonely territory beyond the pale, mucking about in history trying to find what is best, hated by both the left and the right, and buying books from people who are forgetting how to read.
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