Quotation
Last reviewed:
“I do not portray being. I portray passing.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism · Renaissance · 1588
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a method: the Essays record a self that alters, so the book would be false if it tried to freeze one official character. He is not refusing to judge. He is refusing a portrait that pretends the sitter stayed still for the whole sitting. A rival reading hears a slippery excuse, a person who will not be held to yesterday's sentence because everything passes; The line belongs with the claim that each person bears the human form, in the same essay, so passage and form are meant to work together.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Repentance, Essays book three, chapter 2. The French opposes being to passage, a self in change rather than a fixed essence on the page. This wording is a translation.
Where it comes from
Essays III.2
Approximate date: 1588.
How to use it
A journal entry from March and a different one from October, both true of a year in a shared house in Brighton, do not have to be edited into a single brand. He thinks the contradiction may be the accurate portrait, provided one does not use the change as a trick to dodge a promise that was meant to bind. Passing is not the same as never having said anything.
A mindset reading
People quote the line to avoid accountability, as if a changed mood cancelled a commitment. He is talking about description, not about oaths. A portrait of passage can still include the fact that a promise was made and broken, or made and kept; The method is against a false consistency of character; It is not against consistency of word.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is passing, passage, the self as a movement rather than a substance that could be painted once. On Repentance distinguishes a real change of life from the theatrical repentance of people who denounce a self they have not actually left. Screech translates the contrast of being and passing directly. The essay is late Montaigne, in the 1588 book, when the project of self-portrait is fully explicit.
- change
- self
- knowledge
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as a method: the Essays record a self that alters, so the book would be false if it tried to freeze one official character. He is not refusing to judge. He is refusing a portrait that pretends the sitter stayed still for the whole sitting. A rival reading hears a slippery excuse, a person who will not be held to yesterday's sentence because everything passes; The line belongs with the claim that each person bears the human form, in the same essay, so passage and form are meant to work together.
Did Michel de Montaigne really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Screech's translation of On Repentance, Essays book three, chapter 2. The French opposes being to passage, a self in change rather than a fixed essence on the page. This wording is a translation.
Which work is it in?
Essays III.2 Approximate date: 1588.