Gospel & Universe ♒️ A River Journey

Montaigne

Que Sais-je? - Farther Than Haut-Médoc

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Que Sais-je?

Montaigne’s 16th century question Que sais-je? or What know I? intimates the type of doubt and questioning that later characterizes agnosticism in the 19th century. Instead of asserting that he doesn’t know something (when such an assertion could hide within it at least some understanding), Montaigne allows for the possibility that he knows or he doesn’t know. His words merely assert that he’s willing to look into the question. They also suggest that there’s more to know. Whatever his level of knowledge, he’s willing to question its limits, and willing to expand these limits through critical enquiry.

At times, French skepticism and doubt is expressed in aggressive satire, like we find in Voltaire. At other times it’s expressed in a more diplomatic manner, like we find in Montaigne. While Voltaire’s maxim was Écrasez l’infâme, or Crush the infamous (meaning religious dogma), Montaigne’s was Que sais-je? or What do I know? Montaigne believed in God, Jesus, and the basic teachings of the Catholic Church, and yet he questioned whether we know as much as we think we do. He went back to the Classical thinkers of Greece and Rome, distancing himself from the dogma of the Medieval world, so that he could participate in the rebirth or re-naissance of knowledge — that is, knowledge based in the human condition rather than in abstract theology. Que sais-je? is a more wide-ranging statement of skepticism than Écrasez l’infâme because it doesn’t aim at any one religious institution or creed. Indeed, it doesn’t aim at creeds at all, except insofar as it aims at everything.

Keeping in mind the distinction between skepticism and agnosticism is helpful here. Skeptics can believe or disbelieve in any of the three major metaphysical belief systems — 1. Theism, in which God and soul exist, 2. Agnosticism, in which maybe God and soul exist, and 3. Atheism, in which God and soul do not exist. Yet the skeptic’s attitude of questioning is paramount. Agnostics, on the other hand, operate more narrowly — remaining, by definition, between 1. theism and 3. atheism. Agnostics may experiment with belief or disbelief, yet they come back to their basic position of doubt. Or, to put it another way, agnostics doubt the existence of God and soul (while skeptics can believe, doubt, or disbelieve in them) and agnostics persist in questioning everything within and outside of their belief system.

Because Montaigne’s skepticism is so wide-ranging, it doesn’t require a specific path to reach it. You don’t have to learn French or Latin, let alone Greek, to understand it. You don’t need to see precisely where Medieval doctrine ends and Greek speculation begins. About philosophy, Montaigne says:

It’s a great wrong to depict it as inaccessible to children, as if it had a haughty face, frowning and terrible. / On a grand tort de la peindre comme inaccessible aux enfants et avec un visage renfrogné, sourcilleux et terrible. (trans. RYC)

To understand skepticism you don’t need to delve deeply into the culture and customs of Sixteenth Century France. You don’t need to be wrapped in reams of rich cloth, or have a gable hood with a dark ribbon of silk flowing over your shoulders. You don’t need a rosary dangling from your delicate fingers, or a knowing look in your eye.

You don’t need to wake in the morning to the sounds of a clavichord, or hear the dulcet strumming of a zither throughout the day. You don’t need your own chapel or your own library, complete with the works of all the great writers of Greece and Rome. In brief, you don’t need to commune with the departed sprit of Michel de Montaigne.

You don’t need all of this, but it doesn’t hurt.

So, imagine yourself as Michel de Montaigne, back in the Sixteenth Century. Imagine being a courtier in Paris and then coming back to your family chateau, surrounded by the lush countryside of southwestern France. To the west is the small city of Libourne, and to the east Bergerac. Counter-clockwise to the north flows the Lidoire River, which flows into the Dordogne. After skirting Bordeaux, the Dordogne sails up the Gironde Estuary and into the Atlantic.

Lounging in your chateau, you have time to consider the importance of the rivers that surround you. Their practical importance is obvious as life itself: without water you’ll die, and without water the food you need to survive can’t grow. Yet the symbolism counts for something too. According to the Church, the waters mix with wheat to resurrect the body of Jesus in the wafer. The waters also mix with grapes to revive His blood in the chalice.

To the question Que sais-je? you add another, Pourquoi pas? or Why not?

The waters also make possible the transubstantiation of grape juice into the deep red of Haut-Médoc along the banks of the Gironde, as well as the deeper magic of cognac to the north, along the banks of the Charente. Between the Charente and the Garonne, the waters traverse the countryside everywhere, springing from beneath and giving rise to names like Vignolles, Cognac, Armagnac, and Val des Vignes. The small streams and rivers eventually find their way north to the Charente or south to the Garonne. They leave behind them an elixir, gathered in bottles and served at the dinner table and high altar.

But maybe you’ve never been to Cognac, or Armagnac, or the chateau of Montaigne. Neither have I. Still, we can imagine renting a car and driving out from our imaginary rented chateau onto Route D936. On all sides we see vineyards. Acres and and acres of grapes, presses, bottles, and crates.

The progress of the water is both practical and mystical: it rises from far beneath the ground and flows upward into the dirt, where it’s conceived into existence by the DNA of the genus vitus. It then grows in the sunlight, is snipped by scissors, pummelled in vats, poured into a bottle, packed in a crate, sold in a store, and picked from a shelf.

You set the bottle in your trunk, get back onto Route D936, drive to your rented chateau, and carry your groceries into the kitchen. You uncork the bottle, fill the glass, and twirl it with your delicate fingers. The deep red sparkles in the light from the window. You feel a silky current of air flow over your shoulders.

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Be kind and merciful to us, Soma; be good to our heart, without confusing our powers in your whirlwind.

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The aroma drifts into the air and into your nostrils, like the marriage of heaven and earth. The liquid hits your tongue and enters your body like an elixir from the gods. You know it’s just water and earth, but somehow it’s something more.

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Our words flow together like rivers, made clear by understanding deep within the heart. These waves of butter flow like gazelles fleeing before a hunter.

They are like girls anointing themselves with perfumed oil to go to a wedding. Where Soma is pressed, where there is a sacrifice, there the streams of butter are made clear.

The whole universe is set in your essence within the ocean, within the heart, in the life-span. Let us win your honeyed wave that is brought to the face of the waters as they flow together.

— Rg Veda 8.79 & 4.58 (trans. Wendy Doniger)

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Farther Than Haut-Médoc

I have been, and will return to being, a bunch of red grapes

when the wine presses of the South are empty of meaning.

In a past life of raindrops and caterpillars I slid down the rain-drenched vine

into a forest of green leaves and red roots.

In others I was plucked by the fingers of Sicilian peasants,

and pressed in the stained wood carcasses of Provence,

steeped in the lore of languid hours.

I have travelled from slope to cellar,

from vineyards to the gullets of France.

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I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof: now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy nose like apples; / And the roof of thy mouth like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak. […]

Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits; camphire, with spikenard, / Spikenard and saffron; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices: / A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters, and streams from Lebanon. / Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out.

— Song of Solomon 7. 8-9; 4.13, 15-16

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