In 1878, drained, exhausted and despondent, John Ruskin, the leading art critic of 19th -century Britain, collapsed from mental strain. The bleak, sooty, winter, gloomy and unrelenting, sucked away his hope, leaving him, he wrote, "cold and dead," feeling in a "perpetual fog and depression of my total me [--] body and soul [--] not in any great sadness, but in a mean, small, withered way."
For two months, the prolific critic was crippled by psychotic nightmares, convinced of his own futility, unable even to pick up a pen. When spring took hold, and his spirit revived, Ruskin returned to his diary and recounted the terror and despair that had stolen him from himself.
"Let me see that I don't thaw away into waste myself, now the Spring's come again for me, once more!" he wrote.
Ruskin's diary is one of a series on display in "The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives," at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City through May 22. It comes at a time of revived interest in diary and autobiography, driven in part by the surprise success of the 736-page "Autobiography of Mark Twain," and in part by the proliferation of blogs, now the venue of self-revelation used by more than 20 million Americans.
In its candor and urgency, Ruskin's revelations are refreshing---- but exceptional. When it comes to diaries of the famous, the most we can hope for, with apologies to Stephen Colbert, is a kind of "truthiness." Most autobiographers disguise, evade, embroider and conceal, so that you may read all about Edith Wharton's childhood in "A Backward Glance," but nothing about her affair with Morton Fullerton, so critical to the writing of her novels.
So, too, with Graham Greene or Lillian Hellman or W. Somerset Maugham, who all wrote memoirs but whose discretion makes them seem evasive. Maugham, for instance, never mentions his bisexuality in "The Summing Up," which is today virtually all we talk about when we talk about Maugham.
But sex isn't the only subject diarists and memoirists evade. Writing about the lapses of candor in autobiography in last month's Smithsonian magazine, Paul Theroux reminds readers that "the setting down of personal detail can be a devastating emotional experience." Theroux wrote parts of his own memoir about his friendship with V.S. Naipaul, "with tears streaming down my face."
"Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other," as Rebecca West once said. "But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves."
Into this absurd brew of self-congratulation and omission, then, the publication of "How to Live: or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer," is more than a refreshing balm. It reminds us of the seminal point in history when the idea of writing about oneself in an exploratory, examined way was revolutionary. As Sarah Bakewell writes, the idea of the personal essay "has not existed forever. It had to be invented. And, unlike many cultural inventions, it can be traced to a single person."
Born at the onset of the Protestant Reformation, when wars of religion slaughtered hundreds in his native France, Michel de Montaigne, was, as Andrew Sullivan has written "the quintessential blogger."
Montaigne called this new format the "essay," from the French word "essayer," which means to try. Montaigne's effort, coming as it did in mid-life after the devastating loss of his best friend, his own near-death experience and the death of five of his six children, was as simple as it was poignant: "How to live."
These days the question beckons from every self-help section in every bookstore. But in Montaigne's day, the idea of the individual was new, a phenomenon of the Renaissance. It was in that Renaissance spirit that Montaigne took himself as his subject, quoting Pliny's advice, "Each man is a good education to himself, provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close up." So, as Bakewell writes Montaigne "set himself up like a lab rat and stood over himself with notebook in hand. Each observed oddity made him rejoice."
"I am myself the matter of my book," wrote Montaigne, an assertion that his contemporaries must have found impudent.
Did that make his Essays truer--- than most autobiographies? No doubt. Compared to the bloviating blogosphere, Montaigne's essays are wondrously artless. Most of what he knows about himself is fluid, flawed and ridiculous. "It seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve," wrote Montaigne.
"Question everything," Montaigne instructs, and be aware of your own fallibility. "Read a lot, forget most of what you read and be slow-witted."
That might seem a little disingenuous for a man who spent the first five years of his life reading and speaking only Latin, and by age 35, had probably read everything available to read. But today, when belligerent conviction has replaced civil discourse and "truthiness" has supplanted candor, Montaigne reminds us of the elixir a little candor and healthy dose of modesty can be.
For two months, the prolific critic was crippled by psychotic nightmares, convinced of his own futility, unable even to pick up a pen. When spring took hold, and his spirit revived, Ruskin returned to his diary and recounted the terror and despair that had stolen him from himself.
"Let me see that I don't thaw away into waste myself, now the Spring's come again for me, once more!" he wrote.
Ruskin's diary is one of a series on display in "The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives," at the Morgan Library & Museum in New York City through May 22. It comes at a time of revived interest in diary and autobiography, driven in part by the surprise success of the 736-page "Autobiography of Mark Twain," and in part by the proliferation of blogs, now the venue of self-revelation used by more than 20 million Americans.
In its candor and urgency, Ruskin's revelations are refreshing---- but exceptional. When it comes to diaries of the famous, the most we can hope for, with apologies to Stephen Colbert, is a kind of "truthiness." Most autobiographers disguise, evade, embroider and conceal, so that you may read all about Edith Wharton's childhood in "A Backward Glance," but nothing about her affair with Morton Fullerton, so critical to the writing of her novels.
So, too, with Graham Greene or Lillian Hellman or W. Somerset Maugham, who all wrote memoirs but whose discretion makes them seem evasive. Maugham, for instance, never mentions his bisexuality in "The Summing Up," which is today virtually all we talk about when we talk about Maugham.
But sex isn't the only subject diarists and memoirists evade. Writing about the lapses of candor in autobiography in last month's Smithsonian magazine, Paul Theroux reminds readers that "the setting down of personal detail can be a devastating emotional experience." Theroux wrote parts of his own memoir about his friendship with V.S. Naipaul, "with tears streaming down my face."
"Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other," as Rebecca West once said. "But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves."
Into this absurd brew of self-congratulation and omission, then, the publication of "How to Live: or A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer," is more than a refreshing balm. It reminds us of the seminal point in history when the idea of writing about oneself in an exploratory, examined way was revolutionary. As Sarah Bakewell writes, the idea of the personal essay "has not existed forever. It had to be invented. And, unlike many cultural inventions, it can be traced to a single person."
Born at the onset of the Protestant Reformation, when wars of religion slaughtered hundreds in his native France, Michel de Montaigne, was, as Andrew Sullivan has written "the quintessential blogger."
Montaigne called this new format the "essay," from the French word "essayer," which means to try. Montaigne's effort, coming as it did in mid-life after the devastating loss of his best friend, his own near-death experience and the death of five of his six children, was as simple as it was poignant: "How to live."
These days the question beckons from every self-help section in every bookstore. But in Montaigne's day, the idea of the individual was new, a phenomenon of the Renaissance. It was in that Renaissance spirit that Montaigne took himself as his subject, quoting Pliny's advice, "Each man is a good education to himself, provided he has the capacity to spy on himself from close up." So, as Bakewell writes Montaigne "set himself up like a lab rat and stood over himself with notebook in hand. Each observed oddity made him rejoice."
"I am myself the matter of my book," wrote Montaigne, an assertion that his contemporaries must have found impudent.
Did that make his Essays truer--- than most autobiographies? No doubt. Compared to the bloviating blogosphere, Montaigne's essays are wondrously artless. Most of what he knows about himself is fluid, flawed and ridiculous. "It seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve," wrote Montaigne.
"Question everything," Montaigne instructs, and be aware of your own fallibility. "Read a lot, forget most of what you read and be slow-witted."
That might seem a little disingenuous for a man who spent the first five years of his life reading and speaking only Latin, and by age 35, had probably read everything available to read. But today, when belligerent conviction has replaced civil discourse and "truthiness" has supplanted candor, Montaigne reminds us of the elixir a little candor and healthy dose of modesty can be.
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