Negotiating Authors

In his chapter on philosophy as preparation for death, Montaigne went back to the beginning. He was born, he writes, at eleven thirty in the morning on the last day of February 1533. Thirty-nine years and two weeks separated the moment of his birth from the moment in which he was writing (‘Il n’y a justement quinze jours que j’ay franchi 39 ans’), and he hopes that he will have at least as long until the moment of his death. It would be foolish, he asserts, to worry about death when it is surely still so far off, ‘si esloignée’, and yet ‘les jeunes et les vieux laissent la vie de mesme condition’ [young and old leave life on the same terms] (1.20.84/58).