ORDER IN DISORDER ORDER IN DISORDER Intratextual Symmetry in Montaigne’s “Essais” Randolph Paul Runyon THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS | COLUMBUS Copyright © 2013 by The Ohio State University. All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Runyon, Randolph, 1947– Order in disorder : intratextual symmetry in Montaigne’s Essais / Randolph Paul Runyon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-1240-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8142-1240-9 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8142-9342-3 (cd-rom) ISBN-10: 0-8142-9342-5 (cd-rom) Montaigne, Michel de, 1533–1592. Essais—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Symmetry in literature. I. Title. PQ1645.R86 2013 844'.3—dc23 2013012565 Cover design by Laurence J. Nozik Text design by Juliet Williams Type set in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Thomson-Shore, Inc. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48–1992. 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix INTRODUCTION: Marginal Symmetry 1 I. BOOK ONE 26 1. Of Means and Ends: I: 1 and I: 57 26 2. The Less Said: I: 2 and I: 56 31 3. Something to Hide: I: 3 and I: 55 36 4. Frivolous and Vain: I: 4 and I: 54 41 5. In or Out: I: 5 and I: 53 49 6. Trouble Back Home: I: 6 and I: 52 52 7. Words, in Effect: I: 7 and I: 51 55 8. Of Idleness and Horses: I: 8 and I: 50 58 9. Lying, After a Fashion: I: 9 and I: 49 63 10. Excess Baggage: I: 10 and I: 48 66 11. Enough Already: I: 11 and I: 47 70 12. Anagrams: I: 12 and I: 46 72 13. A Waiting Game: I: 13 and I: 45 74 14. More Than One Port in a Storm: I: 14 and I: 44 75 15. Custom and Princely Grandeur: I: 15 and I: 43 78 16. Judging Julian Judging: I: 16 and I: 42 80 17. Glory, Given and Taken: I: 17 and I: 41 82 18. Empty Signs: I: 18 and I: 40 84 vi Contents 19. Prolonging Life: I: 19 and I: 39 88 20. Unmasking Masks: I: 20 and I: 38 90 21. Powers of Attraction: I: 21 and I: 37 92 22. Complementarities and Buried Allusions: I: 22 and I: 36 95 23. Here and There: I: 23 and I: 35 96 24. How to Paint a Dog: I: 24 and I: 34 98 25. Well-Nourished Daughters: I: 25 and I: 33 102 26. God’s Wrath and the Weather: I: 26 and I: 32 106 27. Things to Come: I: 27 and I: 31 109 28. Of Immoderation: I: 28 and I: 30 112 II. BOOK TWO 119 1. Sorting Out the Pieces: II: 1 and II: 37 119 2. Slipping It In: II: 2 and II: 36 121 3. Suicide Is Painless: II: 3 and II: 35 125 4. Caesar the Procrastinator: II: 4 and II: 34 130 5. Suffering Innocence: II: 5 and II: 33 132 6. Parallel Deaths: II: 6 and II: 32 136 7. Rewards and Punishments: II: 7 and II: 31 141 8. Hidden Monsters: II: 8 and II: 30 143 9. Only When You Need It: II: 9 and II: 29 149 10. Act Your Age: II: 10 and II: 28 151 11. Doubly Cruel: II: 11 and II: 27 155 12. Opposable Thumbs: II: 12 and II: 26 159 13. Eyes Wide Shut: II: 13 and II: 25 167 14. Equivalent Equivalents: II: 14 and II: 24 172 15. Civil War vs. Civil War: II: 15 and II: 23 176 16. Spreading the News: II: 16 and II: 22 179 17. Spitting Images: II: 17 and II: 21 182 18. Consubstantial Consubstantiality: II: 18 and II: 20 187 III. BOOK THREE 190 1. Distant Harmonies: III: 1 and III: 13 190 2. Distant Theft: III: 2 and III: 12 197 3. Intercourse with the Lame: III: 3 and III: 11 203 4. The Little Things: III: 4 and III: 10 209 5. Sexual Vanity, Vain Sex: III: 5 and III: 9 213 6. Borrowed Wealth: III: 6 and III: 8 217 Contents vii IV. JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE BOOK 225 I: 29, II: 19, and III: 7 225 EPILOGUE: The Playful Text 253 Appendix 257 Works Cited 265 Index of Names 273 Index to the Essays 275 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My fascination with Montaigne was ignited many years ago by Pro- fessor Jean Paris in an inspiring seminar he taught at Johns Hopkins Uni- versity. With his generous encouragement I began what became a lifelong journey to the center of the Essays. He enabled early publication of some initial findings in 1973 in the Parisian journal Change and persuaded the organizers of a Renaissance Symposium held at SUNY-Albany in October 1975 to invite me to speak in his place. I continued to develop my read- ings of the Essays’ symmetries at conferences held by the Modern Language Association, the Sixteenth-Century Society, the Groupe de Recherche sur le Recueil, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and the University of Cincinnati. Earlier versions of my argument appeared in two volumes edited by Daniel Martin, The Order of Montaigne’s “Essays” (Hestia Press, 1989) and Montaigne and the Gods (Hestia Press, 1993); in Essays in European Literature for Walter Strauss, edited by Alice N. Benston and Marshall C. Olds (Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature, 1990); in Le Recueil littéraire: Pratiques et théorie d’une forme, edited by Irène Langlet (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2003); and in Freedom Over Servitude: Montaigne, La Boétie, and “On Vol- untary Servitude,” edited by David Lewis Schaefer (Greenwood Press, 1998). I am grateful to the students of my graduate seminars at Miami Univer- sity for allowing me to test out and clarify these readings of the Essays. I am indebted to the manuscript’s readers at The Ohio State University Press for ix x Acknowledgments helping me to improve it and avoid a number of errors, though of course they are not responsible for those it may still contain. Heartfelt thanks are due to the Press’s Eugene O’Connor for his eagle eye and most especially to Senior Editor Sandy Crooms for her unflagging and resourceful support. Most of all, thanks go to Elizabeth, who for years has patiently listened as I enthused over the Essays and told me what worked and what didn’t. My translation of La Boétie’s 29 sonnets, the original middle of Book One of the Essays, together with some additional discussion of the connec- tions between chapters 5 and 8 in Book Three, may be found in an online appendix at the following url: https://ohiostatepress.org/Books/Book%20 Pages/Runyon%20Order.html INTRODUCTION Marginal Symmetry Montaigne begins “De l’amitié” [Of friendship] (I: 28), the chapter1 that comes just before the middle of the first book of the Essays, by talking about a middle that corresponds to that one and hinting at the way his book may be arranged: Considerant la conduicte de la besoingne d’un peintre que j’ay, il m’a pris envie de l’ensuivre. Il choisit le plus noble endroit & milieu de chasque paroy, pour y loger un tableau elabouré de toute sa suffisance, & le vuide tout au tour il le remplit de crotesques, qui sont peintures fantasques, n’ayants grace qu’en la varieté & estrangeté. Que sont-ce icy aussi à la verité que crotesques & corps monstrueux, rappiecez de divers membres, sans cer- taine figure, n’ayants ordre, suite ny proportion que fortuite? Desinit in pes- cem mulier formosa superne. 1. I follow André Tournon in referring to the constituent parts of the Essays as chapters instead of essays: “the term essay being reserved, in line with Montaigne’s usage, for the operation that takes place throughout the text” (Route par ailleurs: Le « nouveau langage » des Essais [Paris: Honoré Cham- pion, 2006], 12). Patrick Henry argues that “It can never be overstressed . that the word ‘essais,’ as employed by Montaigne, refers to his entire work, not to the one hundred and seven individual seg- ments which he calls ‘chapitres.’ The latter term obviously suggests a unified work, parts of a whole, not independent pieces” (p. 859 of “Reading Montaigne Contextually: ‘De l’incommodité de la grandeur’ (III, 7)” (The French Review 61.6 [May 1988]: 859–65). 1 2 Introduction [As I was considering the way a painter I employ went about his work, I was taken with the desire to imitate him. He chooses the noblest place, the middle of each wall, to place a picture labored over with all his skill, and the empty space all around it he fills with grotesques, which are fantastic paint- ings whose only charm lies in their variety and strangeness. What are these here too, in truth, but grotesques and monstrous bodies, pieced together of divers members, with no definite shape, having no order, sequence, or pro- portion other than by chance? “A lovely woman tapers off into a fish.”] (I: 28, 183a, DM 252–53; 135*)2 When he asks “Que sont-ce icy” [What are these here] he means the Essays, as he is preparing the reader for the next chapter, the numerically central one of the fifty-seven of which Book One is composed, and thus “le plus noble endroit & milieu” [the noblest place, the middle] in which he will put a text borrowed from his late friend Etienne de La Boétie.