I may take in a new lens sometime

  To judge the appearances

  that we receive of ob-

  jects, we would need a

  judicatory instrument;

  to verify this instru-

  ment, we need a demon-

  stration; to verify the

  demonstration, an ins-

  trument: there we are

  in a circle.

.. Something cleaves to form

until the last minute, past it,

and though the vet's needle was an act

of mercy, the life needed to continue,

the life was larger than cruelty,

the life denied the obliterating gesture

where only kindness had been expected.

..

the life takes it in and says more,

..

and the flooding darkness. The life doesn't care.

The life only wants, the fugitive life.

Sometimes our judicatory instrument

is that supreme essayist of succul-

ence, Montaigne, a son of Bordeaux

and of the early family of Château

d'Yquem. Of him Emerson wrote, Cut

these words, and they would bleed;

they are vascular and alive. Flau-

bert admired his style as a fruit

that fills the mouth and throat,

so succulent that the juice goes

right to your heart.

When it comes time to identify the

judicatory instrument Montaigne en-

visioned, Sainte-Beuve points us

right: Thought and image, with him,

it is all one. Montaigne senses; yet

it is his mode of judgment, which is

celebrated. Between the camera and

the refractometer, both unknown to

his century but not to his imaging, 

he would have chosen the latter, to 

study the impact of the object on 

the light, not the other way 'round.

It is the winegrower's choice, of any

who thirst to match their taste. It

is the choice of Alexandrians, from

Cavafy to Durrell to Doty.

The refractometer, which can measure

suspended sugar in a drop of grape

juice by its refraction of light, re-

lies upon technology impervious to

solids suspended in the air, such as

fog and its less seemly corollaries.

The painter, the photographer incor-

porate them. When it comes to it, we

will breathe what is there; the soul

will come before disdain.

Michel de Montaigne

Apology for Raymond Sebond

Donald Frame, editor and

  translator

The Complete Essays of

  Montaigne

Stanford University Press, 1958©

Mark Doty

My Alexandria

  With Animals

op. cit.

i  photo Laurent