‘Here I Gather All the Friends’: Machiavelli and the Emergence of the Private Study
November 15, 2024 at 04:51AMLonging for a calmer life seems endemic in today’s world. Too much phone! Not enough book! More focus! But an undersappreciated element of that calm involves carving out a space in which to think. Once upon a time, that was something that people intuitively understood. As the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance, reading and writing became more valued as a secular activity—and, as Andrew Hui details, reading and writing rooms became an increasingly common part of that ritual. If you’ve ever stared longingly at a photo of a bookstore or library, this one’s for you.
In the essay “Of Solitude”, Montaigne writes, “We should have wife, children, goods, and above all health, if we can; but we must not bind ourselves to them so strongly that our happiness [tout de heur] depends on them. We must reserve a back room [une arriereboutique] all our own, entirely free, in which to establish our real liberty and our principal retreat and solitude.”12 Clearly present here is the emergence of the modern liberal self — the autonomous individual with his right to privacy. After all, Montaigne discusses outright the need for happiness, freedom, liberty. His use of arriereboutique, “back room”, is interesting, for it evokes more of a shophouse bustling with trade rather than the tranquility of a nobleman’s secluded estate. Machiavelli in his letter similarly uses the humbler scrittoio, a writing room, as if his space in the farmhouse is not deigned to be worth the title of the lofty studiolo. For both writers — and this is true for Renaissance humanism at large — there is no contemplative life without the active life — the two modes necessarily co-exist.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2024/11/14/here-i-gather-all-the-friends-machiavelli-and-the-emergence-of-the-private-study/
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