Michel de Montaigne and Cecília Meireles: a meeting between solitudes

Abstract

Loneliness has always motivated the development of the contemplative gaze. Distant from external stimuli, the individual would be more willing to experience existence in an integral way, since he would become accustomed to living with himself. Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), in his essay “On loneliness,” draws the attention of the reader to the creation of a boutique-shop, that is, a corner where loneliness validates partial access to the authenticity of essence – since, as Valéry asserts, “we have no means of getting exactly what we wish from ourselves” (VALÉRY, 2011). Human nature is also meticulously probed by the character-narrator of Cecília Meireles (1901-1964) in “Of solitude,” a short writing belonging to Choose your Dream. In agreement with Montaigne, the Cecilian individual weaves reflections on the yearning for freedom from the standpoint of privileged quiet and solitary spaces. Through the comparison between Michel de Montaigne’s essay and Cecília Meireles’s writing, the aim of this paper is to observe how solitude is a basic factor in these two works, discerning the features of each author: the peculiarities of the former as a philosopher and the aspects of the latter as a writer.