Saturday, January 14, 2006

Montaigne's a "Regular" Guy

Montainge's essay "On Experience" is the final essay. It is also about 150 pages long. I have not yet managed to finish it. Maybe I am trying to drag it out a bit, not wanting to be done. I have noticed, comparing his early essays to his late ones, that the farther on he gets the more personally revealing he becomes. In the beginning he disclosed very little about himself other than his opinion and maybe a bit about his study, the Wars of Religion in which he fought, or hints about personal friendships. In the last few essays I have learned about his sex drive and a few sexual encounters, lots about his gallstones and the difficulty and pain of passing them, and in this essay I learn that he can hold his urine for up to ten hours or more and he and his bowels have a regular rendezvous at nearly the same time every day. He verged into the realm of TOO MUCH INFORMATION with that one. I now have images of Montaigne and his chamber pot stuck in my head. Eeeww! Off to finish reading the essay. I hope he doesn't reveal any further information about his bowels. Or urine. Or vomitting which he has also mentioned.