Montaigne's Madeleine

The story of Montaigne’s Of Training is unremarkable. M is out riding in a time of civil strife, and collides with another horse and rider. He is thrown to the ground, knocked unconscious for a couple hours, and carried back home. After lying close to death, he recovers, only to lie in great pain for the next several days, during which he apparently reflects on death, its utter novelty, and his inability to prepare for the end of life. This realization gives rise to M’s ruminations that death is the only event for which we cannot possibly be prepared; for everything else, the more we train, the better we get. This little observation is worth taking note of, but would it really justify repeated readings for succeeding generations?

What turns this peculiar essay into something much larger and more noteworthy is its concluding passages, where M describes how this episode led him to a larger and more important discovery – namely, the virtues of the process of self-reflection, its novelty, and its utility. “It is a new and extraordinary pastime…There is no description equal in difficulty to the description of oneself, nor certainly in usefulness.” Although Montaigne claims that much prior writing is essentially self-reflective – “Of what does Socrates treat more largely than of himself?” – He is apparently the first writer to acknowledge that perspective explicitly. And of course, the more well-know and often-read of the Master’s essays are those that openly recognize his process of self-examination.

Thus, M’s fall and recovery become for him the door to his life’s work, just as Proust’s involuntary memories opened the way to the Search for Lost Time. Neither the Madeleine nor the fall from M’s horse are that remarkable, or for that matter, that interesting in and of themselves. And even the next immediate observations – for Proust his childhood come to life again, and for M his recognition of the incomprehensibility of death – are that much more compelling. Rather, for both of them, it is the revelatory process which holds the greatest interest for us. Proust’s involuntary memories lead to his life long reconsideration of his past, of memory, of time, of art, all leading eventually to his immortality. And for Montaigne, his near death leads to self-examination, and the then novel ideas that thinking about one’s self, and committing those thoughts to paper were worthwhile endeavors. Of course, it was that process which led M, just as it did his countryman hundreds of years later, also to find immortality. ”Whoever shall so know himself, let him boldly make himself known by his own mouth.” So well, in fact, that centuries later, we are still reading and knowing Montaigne, and in turn, using him, to learn better about our own selves.