Neither deserts nor caves nor hairshirts nor fasting can disentangle us…
-On Solitude, Michel de Montaigne
The French word Solitude, from Solitudo, Solitudinis- as in, Ubi Solitudinem Faciunt Pacem Appellant, from Tacitus- likewise has the secondary meaning in English of Desert, but Montaigne’s sense of Solitude is unmistakably ours. I would like to read his essay On Nomads which, if anything like On Cannibals, would conclude that a drover’s desire for drinking tea cannot be disentangled from an anthropophage’s desire for eating human flesh.