My favourite Frenchman

 

Read it online at www.archive.org

 

At my age, I always try to read stuff that will make me look good if I should suddenly die in the middle of it - and Sarah Bakewell's book "How To Live" certainly qualifies for it.

How to get on well with people, how to deal with violence, how to adjust to losing someone you love - such questions arise in most people's lives. They are all versions of a bigger question: how do you live? How do you do the good or honourable thing, while flourishing and feeling happy?

This question obsessed Renaissance writers, none more than Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-92), perhaps the first truly modern individual. A nobleman, public official and wine-grower, he wrote free-roaming explorations of his thought and experience, unlike anything written before.

He called them 'essays', meaning 'attempts' or 'tries'. Into them, he put whatever was in his head: his tastes in wine and food, his childhood memories, the way his dog's ears twitched when it was dreaming, as well as the appalling events of the religious civil wars raging around him. The Essays was an instant bestseller, and over four hundred years later, Montaigne's honesty and charm still draw people to him. Readers come to him in search of companionship, wisdom and entertainment - and in search of themselves.

This book, a spirited and singular biography (and the first full life of Montaigne in English for nearly fifty years), relates the story of his life by way of the questions he posed and the answers he explored. It traces his bizarre upbringing (made to speak only Latin), youthful career and sexual adventures, his travels, and his friendships with the scholar and poet Etienne de La Boetie and with his adopted 'daughter', Marie de Gournay. And as we read, we also meet his readers - who for centuries have found in Montaigne an inexhaustible source of answers to the haunting question, 'how to live?'.

You can read Montaigne's Essays online.

And some of his quotes are worth repeating:

I have often seen people uncivil by too much civility, and tiresome in their courtesy.

Ignorance is the softest pillow on which a man can rest his head.

It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.

Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in the memory as the wish to forget it.

A good marriage would be between a blind wife and a deaf husband.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

 

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A moment of "Strewth!"

 

 

The last time I heard the exclamation "Strewth!, once fairly common in Australia, was in the mid-60s. I was then a lowly Ledger Examiner with the ANZ Bank in Alinga Street in Canberra when Kay Atkinson, a ledger machinist, had just barely missed dropping a heavy metal tray of ledger cards from the mezzanine floor onto the heads of the unsuspecting customers below.

She voiced her relief with a resounding "Strewth!" --- and within minutes was before the manager, Mr Reid, who wanted to know how she could have dared uttering such profanity in his august banking chambers.

She returned red-faced to our guffaws and heckles of "Oh Mrs Jones!" which is what we had come to call her after her recent marriage to a chap by the name of Jones which coincided with the launch of a TV commercial that featured a margarine-buying Mrs Jones. Of such innocence were our jokes in the 60s!

 

A little bit of history from The Bulletin, July 2, 1966

 

I was reminded of all this when Ian Paterson, a colleague of mine from my Bougainville days in the 70s, who had trawled through my Bougainville website and blogs, emailed me:

"Pete, you have thought no doubt about writing a book, haven't you? I have lived half a dozen lifetimes in this incarnation. But you, struth [sic], don't need to come back for 2000 years! You have crammed in about 50 lifetimes!! Not only that, you have an amazing way of viewing life with extremely entertaining and interesting expression. So I will be buying a copy as long as you sign it with a suitable inscription."

No book - yet, Ian; I am far too busy already writing my own eulogy to make sure the bastards get it right.

 

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People often mistake resignation for wisdom

 

 

What if the peace you envy in other people is not wisdom but exhaustion? What if the simplicity in their lives is merely defeat? What if the people who seem free are those who merely have run out of places to flee to?

I found this literary drama about guilt, ambition, reinvention, and the human tendency to mistake resignation for enlightenment, "The Retreat in Bali", while looking for another "Banjar Hills" hide-away after I had just heard that Virgin has started direct flights from Canberra to Bali.

I loaded it onto a USB-stick and took it with me to "Melbourne" where I listened to it until I fell asleep. Given how difficult it is for me to still my mind and fall asleep, it must've been a good story, and I shall listen to it again tomorrow and the day after. In the meantime, Bali can wait.

 

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"You only had to look at your plate to know what day of the week it was."

 

 

Bonegilla, the migrant reception centre - my first "home" in Australia for just two days - has set up an online exhibition called "So Much Sky" which brings back memories of those uncertain early days almost fifty-five years ago - see here.

After only two days at Bonegilla, I worked for less than two months as "trainee manager" with Coles in Melbourne, followed by another two months as truckdriver for Ingram & Sons, a hardware store in Canberra.

Then, still penniless and "fern der Heimat", just four months after my arrival and having just turned twenty, I became a bank officer with the Australia & New Zealand Bank, starting a new career in a new country.

Not that this was the end of my privations as I faced - and, strangely, enjoyed - many more years in boarding houses and mess halls which is why the comment "There was always plenty to eat, but every now and then it got boring. You only had to look at your plate to know what day of the week it was" on the "So Much Sky" webpage resonates with me.

After Bonegilla came the Capital Hill Hostel and Barton House in Canberra, a couple of boarding houses in Sydney, the Public Works Department mess hall in Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, and by the time the Bonegilla Centre closed in 1971, I was still living in Camp 1 on the Bougainville Copper Project. Bonegilla had been a great introduction!

 

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(Armchair-)Travel broadens the behind

 

 

In this four-part BBC series, Julia Bradbury takes her boots and backpack to the Continent to explore the landscape of Germany and the cultural movement that made it famous, Romanticism.

The Germans enjoy a relationship with walking that has lasted over 200 years. By walking in four very different parts of Germany (the Rhine, the Bavarian Alps, the island of Rügen, and Saxony) Julia explores river valleys, coastlines, mountains and gorges, following in the footsteps of Richard Wagner, Caspar David Friedrich, Johannes Brahms as well as British romantics like William Turner and Lord Byron.

 

 

YouTube used to have all four parts but all that's left now is the Rhine; so I searched on ebay and ordered the set on DVD, which saved me a trip to Germany. Want to save yourself a trip to Germany? Sit down and watch this series. As they say, "(Armchair-)Travel broadens the behind."

 

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