Montaigne and the writing of life in history (2)

Montaigne takes his cue from Plutarch, who declared at the opening of his Life of Alexander : "I have not learned to write histories, but only to write lives". Defining the task of the biographer as opposed to that of the historian, according to his interest in the intimate, he was already claiming the project of recording "light things", more revealing of a great man's "form", his vice or virtue, than the narration of his "glorious exploits". Montaigne's conception of history is therefore based on an attention to signs that can reveal the interiority of great men. In the chapter "Des livres" (II, 10) devoted to historians, whom he claims are his "right ball" - the "true gisbier of my study" he had first written - Montaigne expresses his preference for those who, like Plutarch, are more interested "in advice than in events, more in what comes from within than in what happens outside". The marked opposition between historians of great facts and "those who write lives" thus overlaps with the antinomy, recurrent in the Essays, between the terms conseils and evenemens.

The word " advice " , with its connotations of deliberation and bias, is at the heart of the chapter "Divers evenemens de mesme conseil" (I, 24), which parallels the first chapter of the Essais , "Par divers moyens on arrive à pareilles fins". In defense of the idea that the trust we place in others engages them in turn to place their trust in us, these chapters present two opposing strategies for attracting the enemy's clemency: on the one hand, submission and humility; on the other, pride. The account of a moment of Alexander's cruelty that runs counter to his legendary magnanimity, given in a 1588 addition to the first chapter, illustrates this perfectly: the anecdote not only reveals the inconsistency of the great man's character, but also provides a counter-example to the idea that pride in the face of the enemy could attract his commiseration. As for the chapter "Divers evenemens de mesme conseil", it offers the example, borrowed from Plutarch, of Augustus' clemency for Cinna, contrasted with that of François de Guise's magnanimity towards Poltrot de Méré, who murdered him a few months later.

No exemplary life withstands Montaigne's close scrutiny, not even that of Socrates, criticized in the final chapter of the Essais. Montaigne's conception of history thus rejects the model of exemplary Lives in favor of case studies: the chapter "On the Institution of Children" (I, 26) expresses an ethical interest in Lives, which are no longer given as examples to be imitated, but as cases to be studied in order to form one's own judgment.

"J'aime les historiens ou fort simples ou excellens" writes Montaigne in the chapter "Des livres" (II, 10), according to a gradation leading from "simples" to "sages" that will be taken up by Pascal. The "simple" historians, by virtue of the good faith their simplicity guarantees, are the most trustworthy witnesses: thus Froissart, who delivers the material of history without encumbering it with his own judgments. They share this fides, proper to the "honest man", with the great philosophical historians of Antiquity, committed to describing the manners and conditions of men. Already, in the chapter "Des cannibales" (I, 31), the "simple and coarse man" represents the perfect witness; yet, lacking such a witness, Montaigne relies on the accounts of cosmographers André Thevet and Jean de Léry. The autopsy, or eyewitness account, serves as the foundation for a History that aims to tell the story of life as it was: Caesar could embody this figure of a direct witness, as well as a great man; but, although he faithfully reports the thoughts of others, he is at fault for concealing his own.

What interests Montaigne as a historian is the concordance between the life and speech of great men, the conformity of their speech with their action: it's "a beautiful harmony when doing and saying go together" (II, 31). Looking for examples of this "beautiful harmony" of saying and doing, he finds only a dozen among the Ancients, including Cato, to whom he adds Seneca and Plutarch in the next chapter, "On the defense of Seneca and Plutarch" (II, 32). The idea of a harmony of parts, which would define the "great man", is linked to the notion of "universal estre", as he calls it as early as 1580. We touch here on the limits of Montaigne's mobilism, which underlines the contradictions and inconsistencies of individuals, but within a demand for conformity in the recognition of the "master form", of the singularity of his "universal estre".