French Celebrities Bio | Michel de Montaigne

You may not have heard of him – he lived in France nearly 500 years ago – but the chances are that you will know at least one of Michel Eyquem de Montaigne’s most famous quotes.

What’s more, some of his truisms, which emerged in a series of groundbreaking essays (they were called ‘essais’ or ‘attempts’– the word came to mean a short meditative article on a single theme) remain equally insightful to this day.

Such was this great man of letters’ feeling for the human condition that sayings like ‘Fame and tranquility can never be bedfellows’ and ‘Not being able to govern events, I govern myself’continue to carry resonance in modern life as we know it.

He even lent some humour to his universally poignant musings:

‘When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her’.

Montaigne’s feel for what makes humans tick was, it could be argued, a result of his rather unorthodox upbringing.

Although his father had been mayor of Bordeaux and the family was very rich, it was decided that for the first three years of his life (he was born in 1533 and died in 1592), Michel would spend all of his time in the company of peasants in order, said his father, to “draw the boy close to the people, and to the life conditions of the people, who need our help.” The young boy then returned to the family’s huge country pile, where he grew up in a household where only Latin was spoken, with plenty of music and games to be enjoyed, plus a smattering of formal Greek thrown in for good measure.

After university and studying law in Toulouse, a prestigious career saw him become a counsellor in both Périgueux and Bordeaux before he eventually retired from public life in 1571. This is when work on his ‘Essais’ – which would become his lasting legacy – began in earnest.

Published in 1580, the literary, philosophical collection of 107 writings was aimed at presenting man with total frankness. Unlike many other Renaissance writers, his world-view was fairly sceptical and pessimistic, especially his views on the wars between Protestants and Catholics. He even slammed the conquest of the New World, taking sides with the natives whose lives had been ruined by invaders.

He wrote about self-esteem, happiness, marriage, education, Christianity and many more topics that interested him. The influence of Montaigne’s writing is still strong in France, such was the modernity of his thought – he was essentially all about self-knowledge, something that everyman should aspire to, no matter which era he is born into.

Monday, April, 18th at 12.10 by Katharine Barrau