"Should he feel another stone coming on, he tells us, he won’t 'take some bothersome precaution … He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear.'"

"Montaigne will instead do just as he pleases, right up to the last moment, and his refusal to let his pain prevent him from enjoying himself remains endearing—and more than a little inspirational for those in a similar position."

Montaigne, writing about kidney stones in the 16th century, is quoted in "Seven Books That Actually Capture What Sickness Is Like/These titles aren’t interested in sticking to a simple narrative about sickness and health—they explore the textures of human life" (The Atlantic).

It's a great line, applicable to so much more than kidney stones: "He who fears he will suffer, already suffers from his fear."

"'The Crabfish' (known also as 'The Sea Crabb'), an English folk song dating back to the mid-1800s about a man who places a crab into a chamber pot..."

"... unbeknownst to his wife, who later uses the pot without looking, and is attacked by the crab. Over the years, sanitized versions of the song were released in which a lobster or crab grabs the wife by the nose instead of by the genitals or that imply the location of the wounds by censoring the rhyming word in the second couplet. For instance, 'Children, children, bring the looking glass / Come and see the crayfish that bit your mother's a-face' (arse)."

From the Wikipedia article "Expurgation," which I'm reading this morning because I'm listening to the new Chris Rock special (on Netflix) and, in an effort to blog it, relying on a sanitized WaPo article and using the word "expurgations/expurgation/expurgate" for the first time in the 19-year history of this blog.

Elsewhere in Wikipedia, there's a whole article on "The Crabfish," complete with full lyrics, which, first, I'm very happy to see after suffering through numerous YouTube renderings of the expurgated song:

"Yes, the French are... lazy. It’s just not in the way we lazily think."

I'm reading "Are French People Just Lazy?" by the historian Robert Zaretsky (NYT).

"'If equal affection cannot be,' W.H. Auden wrote, 'let the more loving one be me.'"

"In the romantic quest to find a person with whom to share a life, though, we really do seek someone who will fully reciprocate our feelings. We’re warned, accordingly, not to press ourselves on someone who, in the old formula, is 'just not that into you.' Friendships are different; they come in a variety of intensities. Romantic love, if you’ll indulge the caricature, has a toggle switch; friendships come with a dimmer switch. Some friendships have the 'one soul in two bodies' intensity that Montaigne wrote about. Other friendships involve vague good will and an actual conversation every other year. You seldom see each other, but you have a blast when you do. Is there any real friendship between you two?"

So begins an answer from the NYT "ethicist," Kwame Anthony Appiah, answering a question from a person who "pretend[s] to like" someone who considers him a friend. He sees this person as unpleasant and depressed but continues to get together with him, seemingly out of pity for him. 

Here's the Montaigne essay, "Of Friendship." 

"The historian Grace Vicary has argued that codpieces were, in a sense, the P.P.E. of their day, born as a means of containing a disease..."

"... in this case syphilis, which was then sweeping through Europe. Treating the French pox, as it was known, called for 'a whole galaxy of herbs, minerals, syrups, and decoctions,' Vicary writes, applied directly in 'a variety of messy unguents and poultices.' If you wanted to protect your fancy wardrobe from stains, the reasoning goes, you would do well to isolate the whole package in an oversized box. Plus, Renaissance men carried a lot of junk on their belts—this was the era that gave us the 'swashbuckler,' after all—and a bit of padding around the crotch would help insulate them 'from bumps and friction.'... [T]he codpiece, designed for discretion, became... a rigid contrivance... 'a permanent erection'.... As early as the fifteen-eighties, Michel de Montaigne had written off the accessory as 'empty and useless,' puzzling, 'What was the meaning of that ridiculous part of the breeches worn by our fathers?'... In the nineteen-sixties, Eldridge Cleaver, a leader of the Black Panther Party, used the profits from his prison memoir to design a pair of pants with a large, 'sock-like codpiece' built in. 'We’ve been castrated in clothing,' Cleaver told the press, 'and my pants open up new vistas. I’m against penis binding.'"

From "Brief History of the Codpiece, the Personal Protection for Renaissance Equipment" (The New Yorker).



That's "Portrait of Charles V with a Dog" by Jakob Seisenegger (1532). Charles V didn't like it and had Titian paint another version of it, which you can see at the link. The Seisenegger has a more prominent codpiece, and it's a sharper image. I prefer it.

50 years ago today: the Vatican abolished its List of Prohibited Books.

"The 20th and final edition appeared in 1948, and the Index [Librorum Prohibitorum] was formally abolished on 14 June 1966 by Pope Paul VI...."

The aim of the list was to protect the faith and morals of the faithful by preventing the reading of heretical and immoral books....

The Index included a number of authors and intellectuals whose works are widely read today in most leading universities and are now considered as the foundations of science, e.g. Kepler's New Astronomy, his Epitome of Copernican Astronomy, and his World Harmony were quickly placed on the Index after their publication. Other noteworthy intellectual figures on the Index include Jean-Paul Sartre, Montaigne, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Victor Hugo, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, André Gide, Emanuel Swedenborg, Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, David Hume, René Descartes, Francis Bacon, Thomas Browne, John Milton, John Locke, Nicolaus Copernicus, Galileo Galilei, Blaise Pascal, and Hugo Grotius. Charles Darwin's works were never included.

More of the list here, along with some discussion of what was not included:

Not on the Index were Aristophanes, Juvenal, John Cleland, James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. According to Wallace et al., this was because the primary criterion for banning the work was anticlericalism, blasphemy and heresy.

"El Chapo Speaks/A secret visit with the most wanted man in the world," by Sean Penn begins with an epigraph from Montaigne.

The epigraph is: "The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom."

Here's the article, in Rolling Stone, in case you want to make sense of the aphorism. Me, I can't wade through this stuff. First paragraph:

It's September 28th, 2015. My head is swimming, labeling TracPhones (burners), one per contact, one per day, destroy, burn, buy, balancing levels of encryption, mirroring through Blackphones, anonymous e-mail addresses, unsent messages accessed in draft form. It's a clandestine horror show for the single most technologically illiterate man left standing. At 55 years old, I've never learned to use a laptop. Do they still make laptops? No fucking idea! It's 4:00 in the afternoon. Another gorgeous fall day in New York City. The streets are abuzz with the lights and sirens of diplomatic movement, heads of state, U.N. officials, Secret Service details, the NYPD. It's the week of the U.N. General Assembly. Pope Francis blazed a trail and left town two days before. I'm sitting in my room at the St. Regis Hotel with my colleague and brother in arms, Espinoza.

I don't need to visit the interior of the Mind of Sean Penn. Do they still make movie stars? No fucking idea! It's 6:31 in the morning. Another pre-dawn in Madison, Wisconsin. No lights, no buzzing, no cops, no popes. I'm hanging out here with my husband, Meade... oh? Do you think I should get to some point?

What I like about this article is that it's the article that everyone must read but no one will read. Or, maybe, if you scroll down about 20 screens worth of blabber you will get to the boldfaced questions and read some of that. These questions are prefaced with: "Of the many questions I'd sent El Chapo, a cameraman out of frame asks a few of them directly, paraphrases others, softens many and skips some altogether." So what's it worth? Example:

Did your drug business grow and expand when you were in jail?

From what I can tell, and what I know, everything is the same. Nothing has decreased. Nothing has increased....

With respect to your activities, what do you think the impact on Mexico is? Do you think there is a substantial impact?

Not at all. Not at all....

Do you have any dreams? Do you dream?

Whatever is normal. But dreaming daily? No....

The answers are flat and opaque — unrevealing — even as the questions get more Barbara Walters-y. Look at this one:

If I ask you to define yourself as a person, if I ask you to pretend you are not Joaquín, instead you are the person who knows him better than anybody else in the world, how would you define yourself?

Well, if I knew him – with respect, and from my point of view, it's a person who's not looking for problems in any way. In any way.

Yes, it's perfectly inane. I skipped over a lot of text, but I never saw anything that justified the high-tone epigraph: "The laws of conscience, which we pretend to be derived from nature, proceed from custom." El Chapo wasn't revealing much and Sean Penn couldn't pull any story out of him. I think El Chapo got played by his own vanity. He wanted to be the subject of a biopic. That's why he made this connection. And from what I'm reading elsewhere, Sean Penn seems to have led the authorities to recapture El Chapo. I guess whatever role he played there is not something he wants too much attention for.

Anyway... epigraphs: "In literature, an epigraph is a phrase, quotation, or poem that is set at the beginning of a document or component." That's from Wikipedia, which warns: "Not to be confused with epitaph, epigram, or epithet." An epigraph, to me, implies that what follows will benefit from being looked at through that brief statement. It's tantalizing, no?

Wikipedia gives a few examples of epigraphs, including the Samuel Johnson quote — "He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man" — that begins Hunter S. Thompson's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was originally published in Rolling Stone, and reading Sean Penn's hyper-personal raving style — "Do they still make laptops? No fucking idea!" — I had the feeling he aspired to Thompsonesqueness... to make a beast of himself, perhaps, and get rid of the pain of writing like a professional journalist.

Do they still make professional journalists? No fucking idea!

ADDED: The night the Rolling Stone article goes up, Sean Penn appears at a fundraiser... alongside his ex-wife Madonna. The Daily Mail article with the photos says Penn "unwittingly led the Mexican authorities to" El Chapo and that he's "now under investigation." Madonna and Sean, together again — a good move for both of them.

"If others examined themselves attentively, as I do, they would find themselves, as I do, full of inanity and nonsense."

"Get rid of it I cannot without getting rid of myself. We are all steeped in it, one as much as another, but those who are aware of it are a little better off — though I don’t know."

Wrote Michel de Montaigne, evincing one of 2 personality types perceived and examined by David Brooks. 

Montaigne was more laid back, and our culture is more comfortable with his brand of genial self-acceptance and restraint. 

The other "brand" of which Brooks speaks has Samuel Johnson as its mascot.

We can each pick what sort of person we would prefer to be. But I’d say Johnson achieved a larger greatness. He was harder on himself. He drove himself to improve more strenuously. He held up more demanding standards for the sort of life we should be trying to live, and constantly rebutted smugness and self-approval.

Montaigne was a calming presence in a country filled with strife, but Johnson was a witty but relentless moral teacher in a culture where people were likely to grade themselves on a generous curve, and among people who spent more time thinking about the commercial climb than ultimate things.

Brooks wants us to be harder on ourselves, more rigorous and self-critical, less self-accepting and easy going. He'd like the japing, flying Montaignes of modern-day commentary to subordinate themselves — ourselves! — to the brooding, snooty analysts who delve into history and sort people into 2 categories and chide us to improve ourselves.

And what got him off on that mental jag? I bet it was all the guff he got last month when he soberly advised us against using marijuana:

[My friends and I, having smoked marijuana, reached a] stage, which I guess all of us are still in, of trying to become more integrated, coherent and responsible people. This process usually involves using the powers of reason, temperance and self-control — not qualities one associates with being high.

I think we had a sense, which all people have, or should have, that the actions you take change you inside, making you a little more or a little less coherent. Not smoking, or only smoking sporadically, gave you a better shot at becoming a little more integrated and interesting. Smoking all the time seemed likely to cumulatively fragment a person’s deep center, or at least not do much to enhance it.

So marijuana makes you more like Montaigne, less like Samuel Johnson. How annoying to the Johnsons of this world to have the Montaignes enjoying the fragmentation. How annoying to the Brookses of this world to have the whole crazy internet mocking his call to sobriety.

“Truth for us nowadays is not what is, but what others can be brought to accept.”

Wrote Michel de Montaigne, whose 480th birthday was yesterday.

Also: "The world is nothing but chatter."

"Give up wine; give up meat; avoid chills; sleep only on your right side; take rhubarb pills three times a day."

Old advice on how to extend one's lifespan, from the books available to Michel de Montaigne, the 16th century essayist, whose opinion on such advice is discussed by Steven Shapin and Christopher Martin in "How to live forever: lessons of history":

It wasn’t just that he doubted whether such nostrums would deliver the promised effects — although he did doubt this very much. It was that the purpose of extending life, even if it could be so extended, was not worth the price asked for. If you put the conduct of your life under the care of physicians, Montaigne thought they would make you miserable: “If they do no other good they do at least this, that they prepare their patients early for death, undermining little by little and cutting off their enjoyment of life.” By all means, listen to those who may have authentic medical expertise, but do not give up your freedom of action in so doing. Montaigne said that he knew of, and pitied, “several gentlemen who, by the stupidity of their doctors, have made prisoners of themselves, though still young and sound in health . . . . We should conform to the best rules, but not enslave ourselves to them.” As another proverb has it, to live physically (that is, according to the dictates of doctors) is to live miserably. Don’t be like those people who, in order to extend life, never actually live it. Life is not just about avoiding death; it’s about the active use of our powers while we are alive. To live like a human being, you must do all the things that human beings are capable of doing and should do; you must learn to suffer like a human being, and, finally, to die like a human being: “We must meekly suffer the laws of our condition. We are born to grow old, to grow weak, to be sick, in spite of all medicine. . . . We must learn to endure what we cannot avoid.”

"Most vegetarians look so much like the food they eat that they can be classified as cannibals."

Finley Peter Dunne, quoted in "From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life 1500 to the Present."

Meade just read that out loud to me, and it caused me to do a search for the word "cannibals" in the book I had open in Kindle, Kurt Vonnegut's "Welcome to the Monkeyhouse." I was delighted to find that old Kurt had used the word in his delightful collection of stories, and the line is even one that other readers — 3 to be precise — have highlighted. (Kindle lets you see other people's highlighting.)

But he faced the problem that complicates the lives of cannibals — namely: that a single victim cannot be used over and over.

The "he" is not, of course, a cannibal, just a man with a problem that cannibals have, the need to look for more victims.

As for that Finley Peter Dunne quote, Meade said it puts a different spin on the old saying "You are what you eat." If you are what you eat, you're a cannibal. That seems like something that's been said before, but the closest I get, Googling that, is somebody at Yahoo Answers asking "If you are what you eat then are Cannibals the only True Humans?" Before answering that yourself — assuming you feel so inclined — please read Michel de Montaigne's "On Cannibals":

I am not so concerned that we should remark on the barbaric horror of such a deed, but that, while we quite rightly judge their faults, we are blind to our own. I think it is more barbaric to eat a man alive than to eat him dead, to tear apart through torture and pain a living body which can still feel, or to burn it alive by bits, to let it be gnawed and chewed by dogs or pigs (as we have no only read, but seen, in recent times, not against old enemies but among neighbors and fellow-citizens, and--what is worse--under the pretext of piety and religion.  Better to roast and eat him after he is dead.

Recent times... in 1580.