Montaigne: A Life
by philippe desan
translated by steven rendall and lisa neal
princeton, 832 pages, $39.95
When faced with a biography that could as well stop a door as fill a shelf, one’s first question is always, “Does the subject merit this exhaustive treatment?” There are a few historical characters about whom one wishes to know everything, but not very many. One would like to know, for example, what Hitler or Stalin had for breakfast, even though such information would add nothing to one’s historical understanding and in effect be perfectly useless. Of most authors, however, a biographical essay suffices, and indeed requires more real intellect to write well than a lengthy recitation of every known fact about its subject. Stefan Zweig (who wrote a book about Montaigne) used to say that the art of writing was more in knowing what to leave out than what to put in, and his first drafts were often six times longer than his final version.
At first sight, Michel de Montaigne, who after all wrote a book of a thousand pages both about and to please himself, might be thought unworthy of minute biographical examination. But though his book was about himself, it was only so in a special sense, that is to say in a sense of his own creation, and his life was so extraordinary (to say nothing of the times in which he lived), and he was of such enduring cultural significance, that a long biography seems both just and appropriate.