Chapter 27 Often read Changxinhua Montaigne

On weekends, when there were no new books to read in the house, and it was raining outside, and there was not much to think about and write, and the long, bleak and empty afternoons, nothing made one feel better than Montaigne. He liked to scratch his ears, saying, "Itching is one of nature's sweetest gifts." He wrote with suspicion about the wonders of his day that were written about daily as news papers.He wrote, "No oddity, no wonder, in the world seems to me to be so obvious as in myself... The more I come to know myself through introspection, the more amazed I am by my deformity, and the less Know myself."

Montaigne's works never went out of print.This is truly an encouraging aspect of our civilization.In the first ten years after his death, he fell out of favor politically because he took a middle way at both ends of the political dispute, but even in that period, four editions of his essays have been published and have been translated. into English and Spanish.Today, he can be read in all written languages ​​on the earth, and scholars from all over the world have started a prosperous career relying on his three books. I once stumbled through Florio's translation.The book was extremely difficult to read because of its ancient writing, but it was worth the trouble.It wasn't until Donald Frame's American English edition that my reading took off.I have a habit of folding that page whenever I encounter a good place to write, knowing that I will want to go back and review it in the future.I have a bad memory and have to do this kind of thing.Now, more than eight years have passed, more than half of the pages of the book have been cornered, so the book stump has become twice as thick on the table.And I developed a new interest in Montaigne: what, on those unfolded pages, had I read and forgotten, to be rediscovered?

He's determined to tell you everything about himself from page one.And he really did.In the longest space, in all eight hundred and seventy-six pages of the Frame translation, he talks and talks about himself. Originally, this should, almost by definition, be destined to become a big loathing.But not Montaigne, on any of those pages, not at all annoying, why?Even the rambling "Apology to Raymond Sebond" wasn't tiresome.For a few years, I turned away that one as a dry paper.I know that after the lengthy experience of translating a theological tract by Sebond to please his father, his essays contain his thoughts.Therefore, every time I read it, I skip it, or turn over ten lines at a glance, but I can't absorb anything, and I don't hold a page by the corner.Then suddenly one day, I read it in, and never got out again.It turns out that Raymond Sebond was the least of Montaigne's concerns; in the first few passages he nods dutifully to his father and to Sebond, and there is an obligatory sermon in which to reach the truth , reasoning is useful, after that, Montaigne simply believed in the horse and wrote whatever he wanted.Most importantly, he wanted to say that rationality is not a uniquely human endowment that distinguishes humans from other characters of nature.Honey bees are better at organizing societies.Elephants are more concerned about the welfare of other elephants and more imaginative; they will fill human-dug traps with wood and earth and bring trapped elephants back to the ground.He wasn't even sure whether human language was more complex and subtle than the communication of gestures and scents among beasts.He lists a long list of creatures, magpies, jackals, foxes, songbirds, horses, dogs, bulls, turtles, fishes, lions, etc., citing classical anecdotes to show how they are rational and, more importantly, how Gentle and endearing, a satisfying demonstration of "how these animals are better than we are, and how poorly we imitate their skills."

Montaigne makes friends in the opening pages of the book, and as that essay unfolds, he becomes the best and closest friend you have among friends.Of course, he's just talking about himself, but that self then becomes the reader's self.Also, he never puts on airs.True, he liked himself, but he was never complacent and carried away like a bum.He loves his mind, and everything in his mind makes him loving and happy. Of course he was a moralist, like all the greatest moralists.Not only that, but he is also a humorist.It is hard to imagine anyone reading Montaigne carefully, paying attention to what he has to say, without smiling knowingly most of the time.

It was like having a heart-to-heart conversation with a long-time friend.Sometimes there is silence.Such silence is not only permitted, but encouraged.In keeping with the fashion of the time, on each page there are quotations from classic authors, which interrupt the text, and the effect of these places is usually to give a breather without demanding much attention. These essays, you can browse casually if you want, your eyes darting across the pages as you look out a window on a lawn, waiting for something interesting to appear.Then, "By the way," he said.Now, you're leaning forward in your chair, and he's telling you what it's like to be human again.

To glorify himself was Montaigne's life's work.Not self-prejudiced, not self-absorbed, and almost never self-desired.In the best sense, a limited self-satisfaction, an inexplicable determination to make peace with my inner self.For Montaigne, among all the things in nature, the closest thing, and the thing that makes people immerse themselves in it, is Montaigne.Not the closest, but the closest, and therefore the easiest to understand. He was fascinated by his own inconsistency, and went on to argue that inconsistency is a universal biological characteristic that distinguishes humans from other living creatures. "We are all patchwork," he said, "so shapeless, structuring circles, that every little piece, every moment, plays its own game."

He had no psychiatrists at the time, but if they had, Montaigne would have warned them: "It seems to me that even the best writers often err when they insist on taking archetypes out of us and shaping Consistently solid fictional characters. They choose a general characteristic, and proceed to arrange and interpret all human activities to fit their picture; and if they cannot distort these characteristics sufficiently, they proceed to alienate them.  … To me There is nothing harder to believe in people's uniformity, and nothing easier than to believe in their inconsistency." He states that we ourselves become so many different people at so many moments, and that as a result , "We are as different from ourselves as we are from other people." The matter is too complex to analyze; he admits that such an effort could be made to "look inside and find out what clockwork drives people to Act." But, he warned, "Since the trade is so difficult and dangerous, I wish fewer people would do it." Mind you, this was said 400 years ago.

He felt hopeless of knowing himself.He wrote, "All the contradictions can be found in me . . . shy, impertinent; Luxury: all these, I see more or less in myself, depending on which side I lean... I cannot say anything absolute, simple and solid about myself. I cannot say this without feeling confused And mixed, can not be summed up in one word." Discovering and facing all this, he was not at all troubled by it.He calmly, even gleefully, accepts his own, and human, limitations and infirmities. "There is nothing so beautiful, so legitimate, as playing a human being well and hard; and no science is more difficult than knowing how to live this life well and naturally. Among our diseases, the wildest and most Outrageous, is to look down on our existence ... As far as I am concerned, I love life and develop life."

And so he went on, page after page, expressing his thoughts without subjecting himself to any coherent law. "The greatest thing in the world," he wrote, "is that a man knows how to be his own master." It turned out, contrary to his own prophecy, that everything was him, a whole, like As solid as stone, as intact.As he goes around saying, he's a normal guy.He convinces you on every page that he is normal.You have to trust him on this one.He is above all an honest and straightforward person.And this is the unique charm of his book: if Montaigne is an ordinary person, then what an inspiring, after all, what a masterpiece!You can't help being hopeful.