SOURCE: Heitsch, Dorothea B. “Approaching Death by Writing: Montaigne's Essays and the Literature of Consolation.” Literature and Medicine 19, no. 1 (spring 2000): 96-106.

In the essay which follows, Heitsch explores Montaigne's use of writing about the death of his friend Étienne de La Boétie as part of the mourning process.

He had deceived death by his assurance and death deceived him by his convalescence; for does it not mean deceiving us if we are ready to arrive at the harbor and are pushed out onto the open sea again? He has finally reached this harbor and has left us in the middle of the water in a thousand storms and a thousand tempests.

Pierre de Brach on Montaigne's death¹

In medieval and Renaissance art, it is the portrayal of the moment of death in a lifeless medium that unveils the identity of the human being. Since movement or transitoriness...