Veil - “Of Sorrow”
Montaigne writes, “And, peradventure, something like this might be working in the fancy of the ancient painter,—[Cicero, De Orator., c. 22 ; Pliny, xxxv. 10.]— who having, in the sacrifice of Iphigenia, to represent the sorrow of the assistants proportionably to the several degrees of interest every one had in the death of this fair innocent virgin, and having, in the other figures, laid out the utmost power of his art, when he came to that of her father, he drew him with a veil over his face, meaning thereby that no kind of countenance was capable of expressing such a degree of sorrow.” The veil is emblematic of the abstractness of sorrow. The veil incarnates sorrow by rending it a manifestation whose conclusion is imperceptible. Cicero the Orator’s approach highlights the difficulty of explicating sorrow using art which conjectures that sorrow should be obscured are resisted.
The Miserable Mother - “Of Sorrow”
“The miserable mother” incarnates profound misery: “ Which is also the reason why the poets feign the miserable mother, Niobe, having first lost seven sons, and then afterwards as many daughters (overwhelmed with her losses), to have been at last transformed into a rock—” Art personifies sorrow unqualifiedly. The personification of sorrow shapes the perceptions that art audiences have regarding sorrow. The ‘miserable mother’s’ conversion into a rock renders sorrow a shattering veracity that extinguishes humans downrightly.
Weeds - “Of Idleness”
Montaigne elucidates, “As we see some grounds that have long lain idle and untilled, when grown rich and fertile by rest, to abound with and spend their virtue in the product of innumerable sorts of weeds and wild herbs that are unprofitable.” The weeds embody the unprofitability of idleness. The untilled land has the prospect of sustaining profitable plants; hence, instead of abandoning land, which symbolizes the brain, to trivial weeds, it is vital to develop one's mind optimally.
