Today I want to show you an essay written by the great Montaigne, it's my favorite. I have been inactive for a couple of weeks since I am finishing the year of medicine that I am studying.
Well, one as a reader knows that most things have been said, so, after I asking myself, how much pleasure does man find in lying to himself? I looked for essays that would explain it to me, and if I didn't find them, I would write them, luckily I found this essay entitled: How the soul focuses on false objects when true ones are missing.
Hoy quiero enseñarles un ensayo escrito por el gran Montaigne, es mi favorito. He estado inactiva por un par de semanas puesto que estoy terminando el año de medicina que curso actualmente.
Bueno, uno como lector sabe que la mayoría de las cosas están dichas, por lo que, luego de preguntarme ¿Cuánto placer encuentra el hombre en el hecho de mentirse a sí mismo? Busqué ensayos que me lo explicaran, y de no encontrarlos, los escribiría, para mi fortuna encontré este ensayo titulado: Cómo el alma se centra en objetos falsos cuando le faltan los verdaderos.
THAT THE SOUL EXPENDS ITS PASSIONS UPON FALSE OBJECTS, WHERE THE TRUE ARE WANTING
A gentleman of my country, marvellously tormented with the gout, being importuned by his physicians totally to abstain from all manner of salt meats, was wont pleasantly to reply, that in the extremity of his fits he must needs have something to quarrel with, and that railing at and cursing, one while the Bologna sausages, and another the dried tongues and the hams, was some mitigation to his pain. But, in good earnest, as the arm when it is advanced to strike, if it miss the blow, and goes by the wind, it pains us; and as also, that, to make a pleasant prospect, the sight should not be lost and dilated in vague air, but have some bound and object to limit and circumscribe it at a reasonable distance.
Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densa
Occurrant sylvae, spatio diffusus inani.
[“As the wind loses its force diffused in void space, unless it in its strength encounters the thick wood.”—Lucan, iii. 362.]
So it seems that the soul, being transported and discomposed, turns its violence upon itself, if not supplied with something to oppose it, and therefore always requires an object at which to aim, and whereon to act. Plutarch says of those who are delighted with little dogs and monkeys, that the amorous part that is in us, for want of a legitimate object, rather than lie idle, does after that manner forge and create one false and frivolous. And we see that the soul, in its passions, inclines rather to deceive itself, by creating a false and fantastical a subject, even contrary to its own belief, than not to have something to work upon. After this manner brute beasts direct their fury to fall upon the stone or weapon that has hurt them, and with their teeth even execute revenge upon themselves for the injury they have received from another:
Pannonis haud aliter, post ictum saevior ursa,
Cui jaculum parva Lybis amentavit habena,
Se rotat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum
Impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam.
[“So the she-bear, fiercer after the blow from the Lybian’s thong-hurled dart, turns round upon the wound, and attacking the received spear, twists it, as she flies.”—Lucan, vi. 220.]
What causes of the misadventures that befall us do we not invent? what is it that we do not lay the fault to, right or wrong, that we may have something to quarrel with? It is not those beautiful tresses you tear, nor is it the white bosom that in your anger you so unmercifully beat, that with an unlucky bullet have slain your beloved brother; quarrel with something else.
Livy, speaking of the Roman army in Spain, says that for the loss of the two brothers, their great captains:
Flere omnes repente, et offensare capita.
[“All at once wept and tore their hair.”-Livy, xxv. 37.]
’Tis a common practice. And the philosopher Bion said pleasantly of the king, who by handsful pulled his hair off his head for sorrow, “Does this man think that baldness is a remedy for grief?”—[Cicero, Tusc. Quest., iii. 26.]—Who has not seen peevish gamesters chew and swallow the cards, and swallow the dice, in revenge for the loss of their money? Xerxes whipped the sea, and wrote a challenge to Mount Athos; Cyrus employed a whole army several days at work, to revenge himself of the river Gyndas, for the fright it had put him into in passing over it; and Caligula demolished a very beautiful palace for the pleasure his mother had once enjoyed there.
—[Pleasure—unless ‘plaisir’ were originally ‘deplaisir’—must be understood here ironically, for the house was one in which she had been imprisoned.—Seneca, De Ira. iii. 22]—
I remember there was a story current, when I was a boy, that one of our neighbouring kings—[Probably Alfonso XI. of Castile]—having received a blow from the hand of God, swore he would be revenged, and in order to it, made proclamation that for ten years to come no one should pray to Him, or so much as mention Him throughout his dominions, or, so far as his authority went, believe in Him; by which they meant to paint not so much the folly as the vainglory of the nation of which this tale was told. They are vices that always go together, but in truth such actions as these have in them still more of presumption than want of wit. Augustus Caesar, having been tossed with a tempest at sea, fell to defying Neptune, and in the pomp of the Circensian games, to be revenged, deposed his statue from the place it had amongst the other deities. Wherein he was still less excusable than the former, and less than he was afterwards when, having lost a battle under Quintilius Varus in Germany, in rage and despair he went running his head against the wall, crying out, “O Varus! give me back my legions!” for these exceed all folly, forasmuch as impiety is joined therewith, invading God Himself, or at least Fortune, as if she had ears that were subject to our batteries; like the Thracians, who when it thunders or lightens, fall to shooting against heaven with Titanian vengeance, as if by flights of arrows they intended to bring God to reason. Though the ancient poet in Plutarch tells us—
Point ne se faut couroucer aux affaires,
Il ne leur chault de toutes nos choleres.
[“We must not trouble the gods with our affairs; they take no heed of our angers and disputes.”—Plutarch.]
But we can never enough decry the disorderly sallies of our minds.
CÓMO EL ALMA DESCARGA SUS PASIONES SOBRE OBJETOS FALSOS, CUANDO LOS VERDADEROS LE FALTAN
Un noble francés, extremadamente propenso al mal de gota, a quien los médicos habían prohibido rigorosamente que comiera carnes saladas, acostumbraba a reponer, bromeando, al precepto facultativo: «Menester es que yo encuentre a mano alguna causa a que achacar mi alma; maldiciendo unas veces de las salchichas y otras de la lengua de vaca y del jamón, parece que me siento más aliviado.
De la propia suerte que cuando alzamos el brazo para sacudir un golpe, nos ocasiona dolor el que no encuentre materia con que tropezar, dar el golpe en vago, y así como para que la vista de un panorama sea agradable, es necesario que no esté perdido ni extraviado en la vaguedad del aire, sino que se encuentre situado en lugar conveniente:
Ventus ut amittit vires, nisi robore densae
ocurrant silvae, spatio difusus inani80,
de igual modo parece que el alma, quebrantada y conmovida, se extravía en sí misma si no se la proporciona objeto determinado; precisa en toda ocasión procurarla algún fin en el cual se ejercite. Plutarco dice, refiriéndose a los que tienen cariño a los perrillos y a las monas, que la parte afectiva que existe en todos los humanos, falta de objeto adecuado, antes que permanecer ociosa se forja cualquiera, por frívolo que sea. Vemos pues, que nuestra alma antes se engaña a si misma enderezándose a un objeto frívolo o fantástico, indigno de su alteza, que permanece ociosa. Así los animales llevados de su furor, se revuelven contra la piedra o el hierro que los ha herido, y se vengan a dentelladas sobre su propio cuerpo, del daño que recibieron:
Pannoni, haud aliter post ictum saevior ursa,
cui jaculum parva Lihys amentavit habena,
se rolat in vulnus, telumque irata receptum
impetit, et secum fugientem circuit hastam.81
¿A cuántas causas no achacamos los males que nos acontecen? ¿En qué no nos fundamos, con razón o sin ella, para dar con algo con qué chocar? No son las rubias trenzas que desgarras, ni la blancura de ese pecho que despiadada, golpeas, los que han perdido al hermano querido a quien lloras; busca en otra parte la causa de tus quejas. Hablando Tito Livio del ejército romano que peleaba en España después de la pérdida de los dos hermanos, los grandes capitanes82, dice: flere omnes repente el offensare capita.
El filósofo Bión habla de un rey a quien la pena hizo arrancarse los cabellos; y añade bromeando: «Pensaba, acaso, que la calvicie aligera el dolor.» ¿Quién no ha visto mascar y tragar las cartas o los dados a muchos que perdieron en el juego su dinero? Jerjes azotó al mar, y escribió un cartel de desafío al monte Atos. Ciro ocupó todo un ejército durante varios días en vengarse del río Gindo, por el temor que había experimentado al cruzarlo. Calígula demolió una hermosa vivienda por el placer que su madre había en ella disfrutado.
Los campesinos decían cuando yo era mozo que el rey de una nación vecina, habiendo recibido de Dios una tunda de palos, juró vengarse de tal ofensa; para ello ordenó que durante diez años ni se rezase ni se hablase del Criador, y si a tanto alcanzaba su autoridad, que tampoco se creyese en él. Con todo lo cual quería mostrarse, no tanto la estupidez como la vanidad pertinente a la nación a que se achacaba el cuento; ambos son siempre defectos que marchan a —15→ la par, aunque tales actos tienen quizás más de fanfarronería que de estupidez. César Augusto, habiendo sido sorprendido por una tormenta en el mar, desafió, al dios Neptuno, y en medio de la pompa de los juegos circenses, hizo que quitaran su imagen de la categoría que le pertenecía entre los demás dioses para vengarse de sus iras, en lo cual es menos excusable que los primeros, y menos aún cuando, habiendo perdido una batalla bajo el mando de Quintino Varo en Alemania, de desesperación y cólera golpeaba su cabeza contra la muralla, gritando: «Varo, devuélveme mil legiones!» Los primeros se dirigían al propio Dios o a la fortuna, como si ésta tuviera oídos para escucharlos, a ejemplo de los tracios que, cuando traería, o relampaguea, arrojan flechas al cielo para calmar las iras de la naturaleza. En fin, como dice este antiguo poeta en un pasaje de Plutarco:
Point ne se fault courroacer aux affaires;
il ne no leur chault de toutes nos choleres.83
Nunca acabaríamos de escribir vituperios contra los desórdenes de nuestro espíritu.