Did Montaigne Alter La "Boétie's Contr'un?"Author(s): Harry KurzSource: Studies in Philology, Vol. 43, No. 4 (Oct., 1946), pp. 619-627Published by: University of North Carolina PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4172777 .Accessed: 01/05/2011 07:29

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DID MONTAIGNE ALTER LA BOETIE'S CONTR'UN?

By HARRY KURZ

In the first edition of the Essais (1580), Montaigne said that La Boetie had written the Servitude Volontaire at the age of eighteen; that would be in 1548. Later this was corrected to six- teen.' It is possible that Montaigne (lid not know exactly or per- haps did not remember a detail of this nature seventeen years after his friend's death. He does state that; "ce sujet fut traite par lui en son enfance" (I, 27) and that he read it long before they met. The treatise circulated in manuscript; form and may have under- gone some revision at the hands of its author. The words "nostre poesie frangoise . . . faite toute a neuf par nostre Ronsard, nostre Baif" 2 belong to about 1550, preferably 1552, when Baif pub- lished his first volume of poetry. This would make the author of the Contr'un not eighteen or sixteen, but twenty or twenty-two and by that time a student at the University of Orleans. In trying to ascertain the date of composition, we are torn between Mon- taigne's conflicting statements and undeniable internal evidence of datable reference within the essay. The general tone of political maturity and reasoned indignation quite removes this work from the range of a sixteen year old lad. The best we can do is to allow a spread of some six years, 1546-52, for early writing but also some revision.

This uncertainty about date of composition is shadowed by another vagueness, and that is that no one, so far as we know, except Montaigne, conanects the name of La Boetie with the Con, tr'un manuscript. La Boetie's colleagues at the court of Bordeaux, who deeply respected him, and his friend Longa at the court in Paris, whose name figures twice in the Discourse, must have been aware of this writing. Yet no contemporary at Bordeaux except Montaigne refers to it. Diligent search of all available documents by such scholars as Bonnefon and Armaingaud reveals nothing.3

1 The word " sze " is in M.'s own handwriting with the word " dix-huit " crossed out in his own copy of the Essais, preserved at Bordeaux.

2 p. 43, Oeuvres completes de la Boitie, ed. Bonnefon, Rouam, Paris, 1892.

8 Bonnefon cites as a possible exception in a note in Revue d'Histoire

619

620 Did Montaigne Alter La Boetie's "Contr'un? "

The inflammatory composition simply disappears from view till after the massacre of St. Bartholomew, when Protestants appro- priate it for propaganda purposes and move Montaigne to change his announced plan to publish it as a fitting pendant to his chapter on Friendship.

The fate of the manuscript itself is much beclouded. At his death in 156a, La Boetie left his " bibliotheZque et livres " to Mon- taigne who apparently collected what papers he could during the seven years following and then took them to Paris, where he stayed from April 1570 to March 1571 to supervise their publication chez Morel, in two volumes. In the preface to one of the pieces, Mon- taigne says that he is deliberately keeping out the Servitude Volontaire which he finally retrieved and the Meimoire sur l'edit de janvier, 1562 because " je leur trouve la fagon trop mignarde et delicate pour les abandonner au grossier et vexant air d'une si malplaisante saison."' This was Aug. 10, 1570, two years before the massacre and shows that he felt the dangerous implications in an essay analyzing tyranny. The manuscript thus disappears from view until the Protestants aware of its value against a killing despot, publish it or a copy anonymously, first in part in 1574, then complete in 1576.5 Four years later, in 1580, when Montaigne is issuing the first edition of his Essays, he again feels obliged to suppress it.

It is important to note here that he did not take the trouble to eradicate from the beginning of his chapter on Friendship (I, 27) this promise to print it. "Je me suis advise d'en emprunter un d'Estienne de la Boetie, qui honnorera tout le reste de cette besogne: c'est un discours auquel il donna nom La Servitude Volontaire: mais ceulx qui l'ont ignore l'ont bien proprement rebaptise Le Contre Un," he declares, only to end several pages later with: " Parce que j'ay trouve que cet ouvrage a estk depuis mis en lumiere et a mauvaise fin, par ceulx qui cherchent a troubler et changer l'estat de nostre police, sans se soucier s'ils l'amenderont, qu'ils ont mesle a d'aultres escripts de leur farine, je me suis dedict de le loger icy." He admits further-and this should be stressed in view

Litteraire-Jan. 1917, p. 2, the " t4moignage de Jacopo Corbinelli qui dA- clare, en 1570, avoir vu un Ins. de cette oeuvre ' in francese elegantissimo J'.

' Bonnefon ed., p. 62. See note 2. 'Le R&veil-Matin des FranQois (1574), first in Latin, later in French,

and M6moires de l'Estat de France sou8 Charles Neufiesme (1576).

Harry Kurz 621

of what follows-" Je ne foys nul doubte qu'il ne creust ce qu'il ecrivoist; car il estoit assez consciencieux pour ne mentir pas mesme en se jouant . . . mais il avoit une aultre maxime souveraine- ment empreinte en son ame, d'obeyr et de se soubmettre tres reli- gieusement aux lois sous lesquelles il estoit nay. Il ne feut jamais un meilleur citoyen, ny plus affectionne au repos de son pais, ny plus ennemy des remuements et nouvelletez de son temps; il eust bien plutost employe sa suffisance 'a les esteindre qu'a leur fournir de quoy les esmouvoir davantage." So the prudent Montaigne substitutes for the subversive tract used by the Huguenots the Vingt et Neuf Sonnets d'Estienne de la Boetie, which are now chapter 28 of the Essais. The Contr'un was never given to the world by this one loving and authoritative editor who instead suppressed it on two occasions because he judged the time inappro- priate, and thereby relegated it to a long oblivion till 1727, when the Swiss editor Coste had the happy idea of appending it to his edition of Montaigne. Coste found it in the Mermoires sous Charles IX.

This suppression finally stirred the suspicions of one of the most learned of contemporary editors of the Essais, Dr. A. Armaingaud. In 1904 he first enunciated his theory that Montaigne acted as he did because he had a hand in the appearance of the Contrun as a Protestant document." In various subsequent studies he developed his conviction that Montaigne, shocke(d by the Massacre, had not only given the essay to the Dissenters for use as a manifesto of revolt, but had even interpolated passages, so as to point the essay more definitely at those in power connected with the atrocity. These passages attributable to Montaigne, Armaingaud published in italics in his various editions of the Contr?un, some 12 inter- polations running from 3 lines to 140, comprising about a seventh of the essay. He naturally chooses the most inflammatory sections reviling the tyranny of the one over the masses, and endeavors to apply to Henry III, who came to the throne in 1574, any possible phrase that can be connected with him, the reference to the C"mignons" or favorites at court, and most especially this specific

e Acad. de8 Saiences Morales et Politiques, vol. 161, 1904, p. 640. All of Arm.'s contentions and rebuttals are collected in Montaigne pamphl6taire, L'6nigme du Contrun, Paris, Hachette, 1910, 341 pp. Contains also Contr'un with italicized passages. His edition of the Essais is in eleven volumes, chez Louis Conard, Paris. Last vol. (1939) contains the Contrun, the Montaigne prefaces, and final r6sumd (84 pp.) by Arm. of his arguments.

622 Did Montaigne Alter La Boe'tie's " Contr'un?"

description of the tyrant as "le plus lasche et femelin de la nation; non pas accoustume a la poudre des batailles, mais ancore A grand peine au sable des tournois; non pas qui puisse par force com- mander aux hommes, mais tout empesche de servir vilement a la moindre femmelette." 7

The tyrant thus described, argues Armaingaud, is no general classical concept but Henry III himself who was "femelin" with his hair-do and jeweled clothing, and who notoriously avoided jousts and battle powder. As for commanding men, the 3AIemoires of Tavannes, one of Henry III's generals, reveals a low esteem for the King's quality as a leader. "Tout empesche de servir a la moindre femmelette" is the climax in this portrait. Armaingaud quotes a letter of the papal nuncio: "lorsque ce roi faible et luxu- iieux passe une nuit ou deux avec une femme, il reste huit jours au lit." Or, if "empesche de" is used in its other 16th century connotation of "absorbe par," it is still Ilenry Ill who liked to costume his mother's attendants, arrange their hair, and even de- signed fashions. Other passages in the Contr'um italicized by Armaingaud and attributed to Montaigne tally with what historians of the period report of the King's debaucheries, his use of religion as a cloak for crime, his maintenance of five or six young men as favorites, the exact number given in the Contr'un. To bolster his case further, Armaing,aud gives a long list of Montaigne's liberal friends, some of them Protestants including Henry of Navarre. Montaigne's owIn brother was a Protestant who might have been his agent of contact. Pertinent quotations from Mlontaigne's Essais are used to show how he felt about despotism. Finally, Montaigne's suppression of the Contr'un, yet leaving the promise of its appear- ance, hides a deep intention, as much as to say: " You know where you can find it. Go and read it."

No summary of this sort can do justice to Armaingaud's con- tentions,6 backed up by lifelong stu(dy of Miontaigne and an unicanny command of cointemporary documents. No matter how improbable the theory of such a handling by Montaigne of his beloved friend's literary bequest, scholars were forced to take note of it. Most are shocked by the implied necessary revision of their concepts of Montaigne's character and of his relations with La Boetie. Many of them take up the small points of characterization in the text

7 Bonnefon ed., p. 5.

Harry Kurz 623

and attempt to prove that they apply to tyrants in general. Dates are analyzed minutely and proof offered showing that when a frag- ment of the Contr'un was first published anonymously in the Reveil-Matin des Franpois, 1574, Henry was only Duke of Anjou and King of Poland and absent from France. It would require a very detailed study to marshall in three series: first, a thorough list of all of Armaingaud's arguments; second, the refutations by scholars of every one of them; and, third, Armaingaud's subsequent rebuttals. The debate lasted from 1904 to 1935, the year of Armain- gaud's death at the age of 93, " c'est Montaigne qui me conserve," he claimed; in fact, to 1939 when appeared posthumously the eleventh and final volume of his monumental edition of Montaigne,6 containing the Contr'un with its italicized passages, and a long preliminary study repeating all his contentions with an increasing vigor of conviction and citation. In this same fateful year of 1939 appear the two final studies of which I have note, still combatting the persistent stand of the unchanging Armaingaud.

Andre Morize in his Problems and Methods of Literary History (1922) gives a succinct account of the Armaingaud contention and the counter arguments of two of his critics, Bonnefon and Villey. Bonnefon 8 makes a thorough study of the Reveil-Matin and shows that the iuguenots were in fact hinting at an invitation to Henry to oppose Charles IX, who was considered responsible for the massacre, though in the next breath they consign all of the Valois to perdition. Certainly La Boetie, the loyal Catholic anid respecter of law and order, was in queer company as a Protestant shock trooper, and Montaigne's decision not to reprint the Contr'un especially after its second appearance in entirety in the Memoires de l'Etat sous Charles IX, 1576, was easily explained by his natural desire not to have his friend's name involved in the violent disorders of the period. Villey points out that the P'rotestants never objected when Monitaigne took away from them the credit for the Contr'un and proclaimed La Boetie as the author. Hle further devastates the Armaingaud position by making a comparison of the three formats in which we have the Contr'un, the Reveil-Matin, the ]eLmoires sous Charles IX, and the de Mesmes manuscript discovered and

"Revue politique et parlementaire, Vol. 51, 1907, p. 107. 9 Revue d'histoire litteraire, Vol. 13, 1906, p. 727. Also has a post-

scriptum by Bonnefon.

624 Did Montaigne Alter La Boetie's " Contr'un? "

published by Payen in 1853. There are many slight variants but not a single one of strongly tendentious significance, such as the Protestants would have introduced. As the Discours stands, its attitude of deep respect for French royalty is obvious. Villey's textual scrutiny also reveals that Montaigne uses the Amyot trans- lation of Plutarch, but in the Contr'un the citation on Pyrrhus is freely translated, and the long passage from Virgil is in French verse. La Boetie is a poet, Montaigne is not. Besides, Montaigne in the Essais generally uses classical terminology; La Boetie uses the French. Of course, Armaingaud neatly turns aside these argu- ments by saying that he never claimed Montaigne had written the whole Discours.

Each opponent of Armaingaud in turn contributes something distinctive. I shall cite just a few. Monbrun 10 shows that Mon- taigne was a convinced royalist, a submissive subject of Henry 111, and a faithful Catholic, opposed to "la nouvellte quelque visage qu'elle porte" (Raymond Sebond), so that the disloyal subterfuge of handing his friend's treatise to sectarian rebels is out of line with the character who wrote: "C'est ici un livre de bonne foi, lecteur." Strowskill is particularly detailed in his analysis of the Reveil-Matin and convincingly reports that all hatred is heaped upon Charles IX as instigator of the massacre, the " Tyran " as he is called, whereas the King of Poland is the "frere du Tyran," so that when the La Boetie fragment is introduced, the Protestant intention is to complete the portrait of the "Tyran," Charles IX. His conclusion is that La Boetie wrote it as a general diatribe against tyranny and that Montaigne, enemy of disorder, was in no way implicated in the Huguenot use of it. The Contr'un was no secret: Longa, the magistrate in Paris to whom La Boetie dedi- cated it must have had a copy of it; Montaigne saw a copy before he met his unique friend, and reports that the manuscript "court piega es mains de geins d'entendement" (I, 27) ; other manuscripts of La Boetie were scattered since the 29 sonnets in the Essais came to him unexpectedly from a sieur de Puiferre. Another critic, Dezeimeris,12 applies with apparent ease the qualities of La Boetie's tyrant to Charles VI (1380-1422), led by the phrase in the Con-

10 Bulletin historique et arcUIologique du P6rigord, Vol. 34, 1907, pp. 253- 266 aind 421-451.

11 Revue philomatique de Bordeaux, Vol. 10, 1907, p. 59. 12 Actes de l'Academie Nationale de Bordeaux, Vol. 69, 1907, p. 5.

Harry Kurz 625

tr'un "de la m6moire de nos grands-peres," which facility only goes to prove how thoroughly identifiable with the genus " tryant " the despot in the Contr`un can be. Delaruelle,l' another critic, performs the same trick most neatly, with the " femelin," the " sable des tournois," and the " empesche de servir A la femmelette " and other tyrannical perquisites, by quoting from Suetonius and Tacitus, and appropriating for the prototype of all despots, Nero, all the Armaingaud marks of identification. According to him, the Contrun is obviously of antique inspiration, containing only four political references to modern times, Venetians, the Grand Turk, and the two flattering mentions of the Kings of France. Barckhausen,14 the final critic to be cited here, points out that if the Contr'un was touched up by someone to attack Henry III, it was a poor job as no one in that day identified the tyrant till Armaingaud came along three centuries later. It will not be feasible here to analyze the able rebuttals' of Armaingaud to the various points raised by his opponents, all leading us deeper into the available documents of the decade from 1570 to 1580, and ending in an increasing respect for Armaingaud's erudition without dis- turbing in the least our growing conviction that his thesis is

untenable. Among all who have studied this problem, he gains only one adherent, Edme Champion,15 who sees in Montaigne's obvious hesitations about printing the Contrun the darkly hidden purpose of calling public attention to it in its available printed forms.

It is pertinent to remark here the extraordinary thesis on the Servitude Volontaire of Joseph Barrere in his Etienne de la Boetie contre Nicolas Machiavel,"6 that the young Frenchman wrote his essay against II Principe, and that the Contrun is really Contrun seul livre. Much more useful is the same author's Humanisme et politique dans le discours de la servitude volontaire,17 a thorough analysis of La Boetie's background in the classics and his Renais- sance contemporaries. But here again he states his belief that the

1J Annaleg du midi, Vol. 20, 1908, p. 406. Also Revue d'histoire litt6raire, Vol. 77, 1910, p. 34.

'"Revue historique de Bordeaux, Vol. 2, 1909, p. 77. 16 Revue bleue, March, 1907. Also quoted in full by Arm., see note 6. ""Bordeaux, Mollat, 1908, 98 pp. See also Revue philomatique de Bor-

deaux, Vol. 12, 1909, p. 183. 17 Paris, Champion, 1923, 244 pp.

626 Did Montaigne Alter La Boe'tie's " Contr'un? "

Contr'un was meant by its author as an Institution du peuple opposing the Machiavellian Institution du prince.

In the decade before World War II, three distinctive additions have been made by critics in this dispute on authorship. Lablenie 18

studies vocabulary and style of Montaigne and La Boetie; the former prefers classical names in classical endings, the Con tr'un has 54 names with French endings out of a total of 66. "Image" is masculine in Montaigne, feminine in La Boetie; " jouir de" is used in the Contrun, Montaigne always makes it a transitive verb, " je me contente de jouir le monde" (III, 9). WVhen we come to the redoubtable "empesche de" in the passage chosen by Armain- gaud, we discover that Montaigne always said "einpesche 'a." In his letter to his father on La Boetie's death, he wrote: "11 dicta si vite son testament qu'on etoit bien empesche 'a le suivre." The style of the Conltrun is hortatory, with many interrogatives and exclamations, a system of expression antipathetic to tile judi- cious and reflective essayist. Finally the Contr'un has a clear plan. It is ineedless to contrast the planlessness of Montaignes Essais.

The second critic, Aymonier 20 makes what might be called an appeal of taste and sentiment. He examines closely all the " epitres dedicatoires" written by Montaigne in his edition of the various pieces of his friend. The reader must be impressed by the deep reverence and heart-broken devotion of the editor for his departed friend, his tender nurture of these remaining fragments of his genius. It does violence to all one's concepts of this unique friend- ship to harbor the idea that this abiding affection is a nmere facade for the hidden scheme of keeping one of these fragments out of the edition in order to denature it and use it for fomenting unrest and rebellion. We recall here La Boetie's moving appeal on his death- bed to Moontaigne's Protestant brother: "vous voyez combien de ruines ces dissensions ont apporte en ce royaume et vous reponds qu'elles en apporteront de bien plus grandes." 2 Could Montaig,ne be guilty of so heinous an offense, so contrary to the essential spirit of him with whom he was so profoundly blended as to say " nous etions la moitie de tout"?

18 Revue du seizieme siecle, Vol. 17, 1930, p. 203. 19 Armaingaud edition of Montaigne, Vol. 11, p. 178. 20 Revue historique de Bordeaux, Vol. 32, 1939, p. 145. 21 Armaingaud edition of Montaigne, Vol. 11, p. 182.

Harry Kurz 627

Finally, A. Salles 22 examines the italicized passages. attributed by Armaingaud to Montaigne, and decides that no scholar however gifted, could possess the judgment or intuition required to decide with such finality a matter so subtle. While this critic does not push this argument any further, it constitutes a strong refutation as it is easy to choose in the essay many another passage so strangely similar in style to those chosen by Armaingaud, that the result can only be confirmation that the Contr'un is the work of one single mind with marked characteristics of language and thought per- fectly consistent throughout. Salles finally concludes: "L'enigme du Contr'un se resume en somme en une simple hypothese."

There remains one final task on which I am engaged which will add perhaps the final " coup de grace " to the badly battered theory of Armaingaud. Bonnefon finally discovered in Aix-en-Provence the other La Boetie manuscript suppressed by Montaigne, the Memoire sur 1'edit de 156223 by which Michel de l'Hospital was able to cede some measure of tolerance to Protestant worship. This Mermoire states unmistakably La Boetie's intimate thought on the religious controversy and its possible solution. These views need to be carefully analyzed and arranged side by side with Mon- taigne's attitude on the wars of religion and Protestants, and spe- cially toward religious tolerance. On this double quest I have already journeyed a stretch and can at least indicate here that the two friends who in so many respects had "charrie si uniement ensemble" seem to be similarly close in their thought on Church and State and Sectarianism. It will be difficult to imagine a con- servative and prudent Montaigne deviously concealing his friend's manuscript and then making furtive additions to it before handing it over for purposes which violate fundamentally the thought and spirit of both men. Certain stylistic observations will add their strength to the inevitable conclusion that the Contrun is the unadulterated work of a very gifted young man whose name was Etienne de La Boetie.

Queens College, Flushing, N. Y.

" Bulletin des amis de Montaigne, No. 6, June, 1939, p. 54, and No. 7, Oct. 1939, p. 96.

"1 Printed together with the Contrun, Paris, Bossard, 1922. Reviewed by H. Patry in Bulletin de la Soci0t6 de l'hi8toire du prote8tantisme fran4ai8, Vol. 72, 1923, p. 116.