The Trumpet Sound, à la Française

An Insightful Blog from Renaissance

Michel de Montaigne writes in his Essays, a real thoughtful blog from Renaissance (one could say):

“I can see that these writings of mine are no more than the ravings of a man who has never done more than taste the outer crust of knowledge (…) and who has retained only an ill-formed generic notion of it: a little about everything and nothing about anything, in the French style.”

He then provides us with some information on his background:

“(…) I do also know how the sciences in general claim to serve us in our lives. But what I have definitely not done is to delve deeply into them (…) I have fashioned no sustained intercourse with any solid book except Plutarch and Seneca (…). My game-bag is made of history, rather, or poetry, which I love, being particularly inclined towards it;”

And here follows a vivid depiction of poetry effectiveness:

“For (as Cleanthes said) just as the voice of the trumpet rings out clearer and stronger for being forced through a narrow tube so too a saying leaps forth much more vigorously when compressed into the rhythms of poetry, striking me then with a livelier shock.”

(I am using the Penguin Classics edition, 2003, I:26, with its outstanding translation by M. A. Screech)

Good old Montaigne, writing openly and honestly about everything regarding life and man, from small trivia and anecdotes to truly deep meditations. His words are simple yet profound and personal. I love to browse randomly into his pages where one can read thousands of insightful passages, like the ones above that hit me yesterday.

Dear old Montaigne, a true magister for meditation (and consolation). A man of the street of the French Renaissance (well, I am exaggerating, he was cultured, well-off and retired to his castle lol). A French country intellectual in some way (he was not a Paris man) and his essays so damn close to a Renaissance blog which was continuously rewritten and constantly in progress. He in fact always gets back to his writings: why a blog, from the Renaissance or from today, should be thrown down instinctively? (I know many readers will not agree; I am also wavering between these two approaches).

He makes use 1) of French as the general medium and neutral language (French is sometimes a bit neutral, I’ll admit), 2) of the Guascon dialect for the most colourful passages, and finally 3) of Latin (mainly quotes) for the most noble themes.

Of course what also attracts us is his good choice of the ancient, classical Western philosophers, he being in fact such a gold mine of information about the Stoic, Skeptic and Epicurean thoughts, the ones we have some preference for (among the rest).

But he is not only that. Since he is a little about everything and nothing about anything: à la française.

Man of Roma

Health and Serenity of Soul

In Living to our Fullest Potential we wrote about Dario Bernazza’s list of the 30 major issues which – he argues - we must necessarily face (and solve) in the best possible way in order to diminish life sufferings and live a fruitful life. After no. 1 in his list (Defining a purpose in life) we will here consider no. 2 and no. 3, namely:

2. Keeping ourselves in good health
3. Serenity of soul

(Above a so-called Seneca, a Roman bronze at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Italy. Picture by Massimo Finizio, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Italy. Here the Wikimedia source file)

Good health

According to Bernazza (I am summarizing his thought freely) health is more precious than wealth or power. It is a prerequisite for a fruitful and happy life. “It is the condition without which the edifice of happiness cannot be built or, if it is already in place, its falling apart cannot be avoided”. Better to be an unknown man who is in good health, than being a successful man who is sick. Good health is a way of delaying old age and fighting back death.

We should abstain ourselves from intemperance and dissolute living, because the pleasure of wellbeing is by far greater than that of revels (of any kind) that will later make us sick and will endanger our health. Bernazza condones a few exceptions (like - it is my thought - our civilization always did: from Roman Saturnalia to modern Carnivals), so here we can quote – since Bernazza doesn’t – the Roman poet Horace who teaches to “mingle a little folly with your wisdom: a little nonsense now and then is pleasant.”

Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem:
Dulce est desipere in loco.

(Horace: 4 Odes, xii. 28.)

(I do not know who translated Horace’s verses into English. Now and then makes good rhythm and is fine to me as a concept, though probably it is not a good translation of in loco, which should be “at a proper time”).

As a conclusion, a minimum advice from Bernazza on how to keep our good health: a walk at a good pace of 2-3 km every day in a park or green area.

Serenity of soul

Attaining serenity of soul is an effective weapon against life liabilities, namely all the sufferings that life inflicts upon us without mercy. But how can we attain it? We first have to understand something about life sufferings. Physical sufferings can be diminished if we take care of our health, as we said before – argues Country Philosopher (this is how we like to call Dario Bernazza). As regards psychical sufferings, some originate from the consequences of our bad choices, others from events we do not have control over, like the death of someone we love, for example, or people’s bad actions.

As regards both physical and psychical sufferings, learning how to control nervous overexcitability can be of enormous benefit - argues CP – and especially its negative side, which is anger (the positive side of overexcitability being joy). The less we get angry (and generally overemotional, in a negative sense), the less we suffer. The more we get angry (and overemotional), the more we suffer.

Is it possible to always avoid anger and nervous overexcitement? Only the strictest stoics and the strictest oriental religious gurus think it possible – argues CP. But that would mean to have the psyche of a corpse, which is not possible, unless we really are a corpse. What we can do is limiting our nervous overexcitement to such an extent that real negative overexcitement is not possible any more. “This means reaching a status of psychic calmness more or less unalterable, thence a substantial serenity of soul.” It is an immense, invaluable benefit, it is clear – argues CP – because in this way we can highly diminish psychic sufferings which are the sufferings that mostly plague our life.

“But how can we possibly attain this? Socrates - argues Bernazza - teaches us how: through exercise, because exercise creates a habit, any habit. And how long must this exercise last? Until the day we really get into the habit of not getting angry and overemotional any more. It is a long exercise, it is not an easy one and it cannot but last some years.” But, even if we fail and get now and then overemotional let us remember never to give up, this being highly important, since perseverance will certainly allow us to attain our positive result. There is no doubt about it, there is really no doubt (I told you CP always repeats this phrase).

PS
Here is a list of our writings on Dario Bernazza:

Country Philosopher
Ethical Confusion & Ancient Teachings
Assets and Liabilities in Life
Living to Our Fullest Potential
Health and Serenity of Soul

And here a post on anger (a bit on the wild-soliloquy side, I’ll admit):
Force & Anger. Ghosts in the Mind

Assets and Liabilities in Life

We talked about Country Philosopher before (in two previous posts at least, 1 and 2). We said how he is free from doubt and how his argumentations, often categorical and at times naïve, are however not deprived of both interest and of this ancient fascination so hard to explain. In the following passage, summarized here and there and which will hopefully better clarify this point to our readers, Dario Bernazza tells us how there is like a balance in our in life. If liabilities exceed the assets, our life is a failure; if the contrary occurs, our life is successful and happy. Let us try to understand.

(Dario Bernazza, Vivere alla massima espressione, Editrice Partenone - Luciano Bernazza & C - Roma 1989, pp. 12-22)

Life Liabilities

Life is such that we cannot avoid its offensive: bitterness and sufferings of all kinds. These are life’s liabilities. Which are these liabilities?

Since our childhood we are exposed to numerous internal and external enemies.

“Among the internal enemies: ignorance, dishonesty, little respect for truth, selfishness, conceit, inclination to excess, worship of money, lechery, anger, sloth, unproductive envy, hate, lack of authentic affections, ennui, loneliness, excessive shyness, superficiality, lack of ambition, incorrect reasoning, intolerance, wrong pastimes, disregard for other people’s rights, wrong solutions, tendency to join the herd, undue submission, acquiescence towards the avoidable, pessimism, optimism … .”

“External enemies: to be born in a foolish family, lack of (or wrong) education, inadequate school teaching, bad company, incapability or dishonesty of politicians ruling us, difficulties of any kind, job-related worries and fatigue, lack of money, unfavorable unexpected events, diseases, all flaws and errors by others, wrong clichés, perverse temptations, evildoers of any kind … .”

This is only a partial list of our dreadful, obstinate, sometimes alluring, enemies - argues Dario Bernazza. And they are responsible for our sufferings, namely for our life liabilities.

Life assets

In order to make our life advantageous it is necessary to oppose some adequate assets to those liabilities. It is obvious, says Bernazza. But which can be these assets? “They consists, naturally, in the sum of every pleasant moment, of every satisfaction and success that we are capable of attaining during our whole existence. If such sum is greater than that determined by our life offenses, or liabilities, it is ok. If it is instead lower, then it would be preferable not to have come into this world. We must in fact be brave enough to honour truth - says Bernazza -. Who can in fact say that it is preferable to start a firm whose liabilities exceed the assets, instead of not starting it altogether? Only a fool can say that.”

We must also consider – CP argues - that while these liabilities are spontaneously inflicted on us by life without any mercy, the assets are not given us as a gift, but we must earn them day by day, bit by bit. And the only way to earn them is that of giving the best solution to the major problems of our life. If we can do this, we divert or soften life liabilities, or sometimes we can even eliminate some of them.

Bernazza then identifies 20 major problems we must necessarily solve in the best possible way in order to minimize life liabilities and live a fruitful life (or advantageous, as he says).

We will talk about that in a future post.

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