This insistence that his life is something entirely other than his writing directly contradicts statements elsewhere in the essays, such as (in “Of Giving the Lie”):

I have no more made my book than my book has made me: a book consubstantial with its author, concerned with my own self, an integral part of my life.

or (in “Upon Some Verses of Virgil”):

Isn’t this the way I speak everywhere? Don’t I represent myself to the life? Enough, then. I have done what I wanted. Everyone recognizes me in my book, and my book in me.

It’s possible, then, that when Montaigne says “I have made it my whole business to frame my life,” he means that writing, for him, is not like writing for others; it’s a way of doing and being. He’s not, after all, “a writer of books”; he’s the framer of the Essays.

This positioning as “about to” go into retirement is perhaps falsely anticipatory; since he was already writing, he had already kind of forsaken the commerce of men, and insofar as he continued to play a role in public life, he never really did.

This isn’t quite a “live fast, die young” mentality (at around 40, Montaigne considered himself elderly), but it’s in keeping with his contempt for usury, posthumous fame, and prognostications about the future.

Given his evident obsession with classical literature and philosophy, though, it’s not quite true that Montaigne is only interested in the present in a general sense.

Although Montaigne’s opinions on women (especially lower-class women) in the aggregate are rarely charitable, he did seem to hold several individual women in high regard, including, besides Madame de Duras, Marie de Gournay, a writer who edited Montaigne’s Essays after his death.

This might sum up Montaigne’s views on women: they’re silly and annoying, but probably harmless.

Montaigne shows his contempt for usury more as a metaphor than as a practice; the idea of putting off anything – whether payment or profit – into the future instead of dealing with it head-on is anathema to Montaigne’s presentist way of thinking.

It’s true that Montaigne, before and even during the writing of the Essays, sought to be of service to the living members of his community, serving as a diplomat and mayor of Bourdeaux.

Another self-effacing remark, where Montaigne dismisses his book as of no importance to anyone outside his immediate circle, and hardly worth the trouble of reading. Again, this is an echo of “To the Reader”:

myself am the matter of my book: there’s no reason thou shouldst employ thy leisure about so frivolous and vain a subject.

Montaigne would seem to be indifferent as to whether his book lasts for years after his death, or just a few days.

He claims elsewhere that he wrote in French, instead of the “eternal” language of Latin, because he was sure linguistic evolution would make it unreadable in a matter of years. It’s true that French was changing rapidly in the sixteenth century, becoming more standardized in the seventeenth century, but Montaigne’s French is still legible (funny spellings and weird syntax notwithstanding) to modern readers.

An echo of “To the Reader,” which opens Book I of the Essays:

I have dedicated it to the particular commodity of my kinsfolk and friends, so that, having lost me (which they must do shortly), they may therein recover some traits of my conditions and humours, and by that means preserve more whole, and more life-like, the knowledge they had of me. Had my intention been to seek the world’s favour, I should surely have adorned myself with borrowed beauties: I desire therein to be viewed as I appear in mine own genuine, simple, and ordinary manner, without study and artifice: for it is myself I paint.

Montaigne is forever insisting on the naturalness and nakedness of his prose, which is “consubstantial” with his very self. Needless to say, this ostensible “naturalness” is incredibly stylized.