What Solitude Does to a Man

On the last day of February 1571, a French nobleman marked his thirty-eighth birthday with a decision. At the top of a narrow stone staircase, in a round tower on his family's estate east of Bordeaux, there was a room lined with books. On the wall of the small study beside it, a Latin inscription still records what he did that day: long weary of the servitude of the court and of public office, he dedicated the place to his freedom, his tranquillity and his leisure. On the beams above his desk, more than fifty sentences of the ancients were painted in Greek and Latin. His name was Michel de Montaigne, and in that tower he invented the essay. This video is about that choice. About what solitude does to a man, and about the thin line between the solitude that builds a man and the isolation that eats him alive. Told through Montaigne's tower and his back room behind the shop, Marcus Aurelius, Petrarch on Mont Ventoux, Thoreau at Walden Pond, Nietzsche at Sils-Maria, Pascal and Schopenhauer. Topics covered: Montaigne's tower (1571) | Solitude, loneliness and isolation | Anachoresis: Marcus Aurelius and the retreat into yourself | Montaigne's back room behind the shop | Petrarch on Mont Ventoux (1336) | Thoreau at Walden Pond (1845) | Nietzsche at Sils-Maria (1881) | Pascal: men cannot stay quietly in their own chamber | Schopenhauer: only alone is a man free | The three laws of solitude | The trap: when the tower becomes a cell | Montaigne the mayor and Thoreau's three chairs | Build the back room SOURCES Michel de Montaigne, Latin inscription in the study of his tower (28 February 1571) and the painted beams of his library · Montaigne, Essays I.39 "Of Solitude" and III.10 (trans. Charles Cotton) · Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.3 (trans. George Long) · Francesco Petrarca, Familiares IV.1 (the ascent of Mont Ventoux, 1336) and De vita solitaria · Augustine, Confessions X.8.15 (trans. E. B. Pusey) · Henry David Thoreau, Walden (1854) · Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo and Thus Spake Zarathustra I, "The Flies in the Market-Place" · Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fr. 139 · Arthur Schopenhauer, Counsels and Maxims (Parerga and Paralipomena) ARTWORK & FOOTAGE Public-domain works by the Limbourg brothers, Antoine Caron, Ernst Josephson, John Thirtle, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Antonello da Messina, Caravaggio, Marinus van Reymerswaele, Raphael, Albrecht Dürer, Nicolas Poussin, Thomas Wijck, Rembrandt, Fleury François Richard, Jean Le Tavernier, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Jan Lievens, Gerrit Dou, Caspar David Friedrich, Georg Friedrich Kersting, Carl Gustav Carus, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Carl Spitzweg, Vincent van Gogh, Elizabeth Thompson, Winslow Homer, Vilhelm Hammershøi, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Gherardo Starnina, Thomas Cole, Richard Wilson, J. M. W. Turner, Quentin Massys, Quiringh van Brekelenkam, Pieter Janssens Elinga, Pieter de Hooch, Job Berckheyde, Samuel van Hoogstraten, Willem van Mieris, Frans Snyders, Cornelis de Vos, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Jules Laurens, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Joos de Momper the Younger, Albert Bierstadt, Claude-Joseph Vernet, Caspar Wolf, Ivan Aivazovsky, Josef Mánes, Arnold Böcklin, Andrea Appiani the Younger, John Lewis Krimmel, Elizabeth Wentworth Roberts, Ferdinand Hodler, John Frederick Kensett, William Aiken Walker, Godfried Schalcken, Asher Brown Durand, Juan Sánchez Cotán, Thomas Fearnley, Hieronymus Bosch, George Henry Durrie, Martin Johnson Heade, Giovanni Segantini, Eduard von Buchan, Frederic Edwin Church, Gabriel Metsu, Gustave Doré, Adriaen van Ostade, Hans Jordaens III, Henry Fuseli, El Greco, Joseph Wright of Derby, Carl Morgenstern, Erik Bodom, Carel Fabritius, Joseph Anton Koch, Johannes Vermeer, Jan Vermeulen, John Linnell, Joachim Patinir, Pieter Claesz, Walter Sickert, William Hogarth, Hendrick Avercamp, Bartholomeus van der Helst, Jacques-Louis David, Louis Le Nain, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Annibale Carracci, Claude Lorrain, Jessica Landseer, Johann Mohr, Sanford Robinson Gifford, Adriaen Coorte, William Holman Hunt, Vittore Carpaccio, Nicolaes Maes, Gustave Caillebotte, Matthias Stom, Willem van de Velde the Younger, Philip Sadée, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, Jean Pierre Sudre, Samuel W. Rowse, Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl and others, via Wikimedia Commons, the Rijksmuseum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Rembrandt, Philosopher in Meditation, photo by Sailko, CC BY 3.0. Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in His Study, photo by Sailko, CC BY 3.0. J. M. W. Turner, The Devil's Bridge, St Gotthard Pass, photo by Andrewrabbott, CC BY-SA 4.0. Joseph-Marie Vien, Marcus Aurelius Distributing Bread to the People, photo by Marc Jeanneteau, CC BY-SA 4.0. Roman fresco of a seaside villa (Naples, National Archaeological Museum), photo by Tyler Bell, CC BY 2.0. Night sky time-lapse: ESO (CC BY 4.0). Earth from orbit: NASA (public domain). MUSIC Original score by Flumera. #philosophy #solitude #montaigne