2

2. On sadness

[Chapters 2–18 (in their [A] version) seem to date from the earliest period, reflecting the influence of books which Montaigne was reading about 1572 – Guicciardini’s History of Italy, Jean Bouchet’s Mémoires d’Aquitaine and the Mémoires of the Du Bellay brothers. ‘On sadness’ shows Montaigne’s concern with ecstasies produced by strong emotions and his impatience with merely fashionable tristesse (sadness) which sought to ape the abstracted, pensive depths of melancholy genius (as portrayed, for example, by Dürer).]

[B] I am among those who are most free from this emotion; [C] I neither like it nor think well of it, even though the world, by common consent, has decided to honour it with special favour. Wisdom is decked out in it; so are Virtue and Conscience – a daft and monstrous adornment. More reasonably it is not sadness but wickedness that the Italians have baptised tristezza,1 for it is a quality which is ever harmful, ever mad. The Stoics forbid this emotion to their sages as being base and cowardly.

[A] But a story is told about Psammenitus, a King of Egypt. When he was defeated and captured by Cambises the King of Persia he showed no emotion as he saw his daughter walk across in front of him, dressed as a servant and sent to draw water. All his friends were about him, weeping and lamenting: he remained quiet, his eyes fixed on the ground. Soon afterwards he saw his son led away to execution; he kept the same countenance. But when he saw one of his household friends brought in among the captives, he began to beat his head and show grief.2

You can compare that with what we recently saw happen to one of our princes.3 He was at Trent: first he heard the news of the death of his very special elder brother, the support and pride of his whole family; then came the death of his younger brother, their second hope. He bore both these blows with exemplary fortitude; yet, when a few days later one of his men happened to die, he let himself be carried away by this event; he abandoned his resolute calm and gave himself over to grief and sorrow – so much so that some argued that only this last shock had touched him to the quick. The truth is that he was already brimful of sadness, so the least extra burden broke down the barriers of his endurance.

We could, I suggest, put the same interpretation on the story of Psammenitus, except that the account goes on to tell us that Cambises asked him why he had remained unmoved by the fate of his son and daughter yet showed such emotion at the death of his friend. ‘Only the last of these misfortunes can be expressed by tears’, he replied; ‘the first two are way beyond any means of expression.’

That may explain the solution adopted by a painter in antiquity.4 He had to portray the grief shown on the faces of the people who were present when Iphigenia was sacrificed, giving each of them the degree of sorrow appropriate to his feelings of involvement in the death of that fair and innocent young woman. By the time he came to portray the father of Iphigenia he had exhausted all the resources of his art, so he painted him with his face veiled over, as though no countenance could display a grief so intense.

That is why the poets feign that when Niobe lost seven sons and then seven daughters she was overcome by such bereavements and was finally turned into a rock:

Diriguisse malis. [Petrified by such misfortunes.]5

By this they expressed that sad, deaf, speechless stupor which seizes us when we are overwhelmed by tragedies beyond endurance.

The force of extreme sadness inevitably stuns the whole of our soul, impeding her freedom of action. It happens to us when we are suddenly struck with alarm by some really bad news: we are enraptured, seized, paralysed in all our movements in such a way that, afterwards, when the soul lets herself go with tears and lamentations, she seems to have struggled loose, disentangled herself and become free to range about as she wishes:

[B] Et via vix tandem voci laxata dolore est. [And then, at length, his grief can just force open a channel for his voice.]6

[C] In the war which King Ferdinand waged near Buda against the widow of King John of Hungary, there was a German officer called Raïsciac. As he saw men bringing back the body of a soldier slung across a horse, he joined in the general mourning for the man who had shown exceptional bravery in the clash of battle. Like the others he was curious to know who the man was. When they took off the armour he recognized his son. Amid all the public tears he alone stood dry-eyed, saying nothing, his gaze fixed on his son until the violent strain of that sadness froze his vital spirits and, just as he was, toppled him dead to the ground.7

[A] Chi puo dir com’ egli arde e in picciol fuoco – [He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre]8 –

that is what lovers say when they want to express an unbearable passion.

misero quod omnes Eripit sensus mihi. Nam simul te, Lesbia, aspexi, nihil est super mi Quod loquar amens.

Lingua sed torpet, tenuis sub artus Flamma dimanat, sonitu suopte Tinniunt aures, gemina teguntur Lumina nocte.

[How pitiable I am. Love snatches my senses from me. As soon as I see you, Lesbia, I can say nothing to you; I am out of my mind; my tongue sticks in my mouth; a fiery flame courses through my limbs; my ears are ringing and darkness covers both my eyes.]9

[B] We cannot display our grief or our convictions during the living searing heat of the attack; the soul is then burdened by deep thought and the body is cast down, languishing for love. [A] That is the source of the occasional impotence which sometimes comes so unseasonably upon men when making love, and of that chill produced, in the very lap of their delight by excessive ardour. For pleasures to be tasted and then digested they must remain moderate:

Curae leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent. [Light cares can talk: huge one are struck dumb.]10

[B] We can be equally stunned when surprised by joy unhoped for:

Ut me conspexit venientem, et Troïa circum Arma amens vidit, magnis exterrita monstris, Diriguit visu in medio, calor ossa reliquit, Labitur, et longo vix tandem tempore fatur.

[As soon as she noticed me coming and saw the arms of Troy all about her, she went out of her mind. As though terrified by some dreadful portents her gaze became fixed upon them, the heat drained from her body; she fell to the ground and for a long time uttered not a word.]11

[A] There was a Roman woman who was surprised by joy on seeing her son return from the rout at Cannae and fell down dead; Sophocles and Dionysius the Tyrant died of happiness; Talva died in Corsica upon reading the news of the honours conferred on him by the Senate. Apart from these it is claimed that in our own century Pope Leo X entered into such an excess of joy upon being told of the capture of Milan (his desire for which had been extreme) that he took fever and died.

And there is an even more noteworthy witness to [C] human [A] weakness:12 the Ancients recorded that Diodorus the Dialectician ‘fell in the field’, overcome by an extreme sense of shame at being unable to refute arguments put to him in public in the presence of his followers.

[B] Violent emotions like these have little hold on me. By nature my sense of feeling has a hard skin, which I daily toughen and thicken by arguments.