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The Complete Essays
Michel de Montaigne was one of the most influential figures of the Renaissance, singlehandedly responsible for popularising the essay as a literary form. This Penguin Classics edition of The Complete Essays is translated from the French and edited with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech.
In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays', inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.
With its extensive introduction and notes, M.A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1586) studied law and spent a number of years working as a counsellor before devoting his life to reading, writing and reflection.
If you enjoyed The Complete Essays, you might like Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, also available in Penguin Classics.
'Screech's fine version ... must surely serve as the definitive English Montaigne'
A.C. Grayling, Financial Times
'A superb edition'
Nicholas Wollaston, Observer
In 1572 Montaigne retired to his estates in order to devote himself to leisure, reading and reflection. There he wrote his constantly expanding 'assays', inspired by the ideas he found in books contained in his library and from his own experience. He discusses subjects as diverse as war-horses and cannibals, poetry and politics, sex and religion, love and friendship, ecstasy and experience. But, above all, Montaigne studied himself as a way of drawing out his own inner nature and that of men and women in general. The Essays are among the most idiosyncratic and personal works in all literature and provide an engaging insight into a wise Renaissance mind, continuing to give pleasure and enlightenment to modern readers.
With its extensive introduction and notes, M.A. Screech's edition of Montaigne is widely regarded as the most distinguished of recent times.
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1586) studied law and spent a number of years working as a counsellor before devoting his life to reading, writing and reflection.
If you enjoyed The Complete Essays, you might like Francois Rabelais's Gargantua and Pantagruel, also available in Penguin Classics.
'Screech's fine version ... must surely serve as the definitive English Montaigne'
A.C. Grayling, Financial Times
'A superb edition'
Nicholas Wollaston, Observer
1344 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1580
About the author
Michel de Montaigne
1,624 books1,432 followersMichel Eyquem de Montaigne (1532-1592) was one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. Montaigne is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. He became famous for his effortless ability to merge serious intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography—and his massive volume Essais (translated literally as "Attempts") contains, to this day, some of the most widely influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on writers the world over, from William Shakespeare to René Descartes, from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Stephan Zweig, from Friedrich Nietzsche to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a conservative and earnest Catholic but, as a result of his anti-dogmatic cast of mind, he is considered the father, alongside his contemporary and intimate friend Étienne de La Boétie, of the "anti-conformist" tradition in French literature.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" ("What do I know?").
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
In his own time, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman then as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his skeptical remark, "Que sais-je?" ("What do I know?").
Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary nonfiction has found inspiration in Montaigne, and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.
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October 31, 2014
Okay I've read enough of this now, in a wide variety of settings, at miscellaneous times, within sundry atmospheres, such as late nights in bed under the lamp's pale glow, bright mornings early at certain tables or on metros, over coffees and over beers or over blended rye or such-like things, in times of happiness and times of depression, in times of relative wealth and in times of poverty, in the stark wet heat of summer and the stark dry freeze of winter, under the rapture of autumn foliage about to be released from limbs and above the emerging green and yellow shoots and sprigs of spring, to qualify it as "read"- so, over these long years sporadically spent with Montaigne, let's say I've come to think of this collection as damn near a complete picture of a human mind striving to come to terms with the phenomenal world by engaging the sensorium as we're likely to get. These pages contain a Universe, by which I mean a mind building things with language, and you, dear reader, are invited to navigate. Raise the masts! Aim the bowsprit directly into the heart of the day!
April 26, 2022
e'ssay. (2) A loose sally of the mind; an irregular indigested piece; not a regular and orderly composition.
—From Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language.
Now I finally have an answer to the famous “desert island book” question: This book. It would have to be. Not that Montaigne’s Essays is necessarily the greatest book I’ve ever read—it’s not. But here Montaigne managed to do something that has eluded the greatest of our modern science: to preserve a complete likeness of a person. Montaigne lives and breathes in these pages, just as much as he would if he'd been cryogentically frozen and brought back to life before your eyes.
Working your way through this book is a little like starting a relationship. At first, it’s new and exciting. But eventually the exhilaration wears off. You begin looking for other books, missing the thrill of first love. But what Montaigne lacks in bells and whistles, he more than compensates for with his constant companionship. You learn about the intimacies of his eating habits and bowel movements, his philosophy of sex as well as science, his opinion on doctors and horsemanship. He lets it all hang out. And after a long and stressful day, you know Montaigne will be waiting on your bedside table to tell you a funny anecdote, to have easygoing conversation, or to just pass the time.
To quote Francis Bacon’s Essays: “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.” Montaigne’s essays are to be sipped. This book took me a grand total of six months to read. I would dip into it right before bed—just a few pages. Sometimes, I tried to spend more time on the essays, but I soon gave it up. Montaigne’s mind drifts from topic to topic like a sleepwalker. He has no attention span for longwinded arguments or extended exposition. It’s not quite stream-of-consciousness, but almost. As a result, whenever I tried to spend an hour on his writing, I got bored.
Plus, burning your way through this book would ruin the experience of it. Another reviewer called Montaigne’s Essays the “introvert's Bible”. This is a very perceptive comment. For me, there was something quasi-religious in the ritual of reading a few pages of this book right before bed—night after night after night. For everything Montaigne lacks in intelligence, patience, diligence, and humility, he makes up for with his exquisite sanity. I can find no other word to describe it. Dipping into his writing is like dipping a bucket into a deep well of pure, blissful sanity. It almost seems like a contradiction to call someone “profoundly down-to-earth,” but that’s just it. Montaigne makes the pursuit of living a reasonable life into high art.
Indeed, I find something in Montaigne’s quest for self-knowledge strangely akin to religious thinking. In Plato’s system, self-knowledge leads to knowledge of the abstract realm of ideals; and in the Upanishads, self-knowledge leads to the conception of the totality of the cosmos. For Montaigne, self-knowledge is the key to knowledge of the human condition. In his patient cataloging of his feelings and opinions, Montaigne shows that there is hardly anything like an unchanging ‘self’ at the center of our being, but we are rather an ever-changing flux of emotions, thoughts, memories, anxieties, hopes, and sensations. Montaigne is a Skeptic one moment, an Epicurean another, a Stoic still another, and finally a Christian.
And isn’t this how it always is? You may take pride in a definition of yourself—a communist, a musician, a vegan—but no simple label ever comes close to pinning down the chaotic stream that is human life. We hold certain principles near and dear one moment, and five minutes later these principles are forgotten with the smell of lunch. The most dangerous people, it seems, are those that do try to totalize themselves under one heading or one creed. How do you reason with a person like that?
I’ve read too much Montaigne—now I’m rambling. To return to this book, I’m both sorry that I’ve finished it, and excited that it’s done. Now I can move on to another bedside book. But if I ever feel myself drifting towards radicalism, extremism, or if I start to think abstract arguments are more important than the real stuff of human life, I will return to my old friend Montaigne. This is a book that could last you a lifetime.
December 12, 2018
"I turn my gaze inward, I fix it there and keep it busy. Everyone looks in front of him; as for me; I look inside myself; I have no business but with myself, I take stock of myself, I taste myself… I roll about in myself."Alas, Montaigne inspires me! The Complete Essays covers all kind of subjects and it is an almost eternal work in progress for me. It honestly deals with humanity itself. Montaigne is entertaining, compelling, and inclined to digression. I read Montaigne at indiscriminate times and places, and under disparate moods. If I am depressed, I look for something in it that might help me get back on my feet and keep going; if I am happy, I search for companionship. And I am often awed by him, how easy he seems.
"To learn that one has said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; one must learn that one is nothing but a fool, a much more comprehensive and important lesson".I’ve been reading the Essays for some time now and probably will keep working through its page whenever I feel like contemplating about life. It is, for me, an ever ending source of inspiration and of pleasure. There are periods, it is true, that I forget about it altogether; but eventually I will go back and scan through its chapters looking for themes that grant me some moments of delight. At times I read Montaigne just for thirty minutes or one hour, but never for too long for I know I will get back to it eventually. Whether sipping my coffee at a café, in bed just before I go to sleep or sharing passages with friends when they happen to visit me, I love skipping through its pages until I find what I was expecting.
Ah, he also surprises me. I enjoyed his thoughts about women's rank in society, a puzzling mix of traditionalism and advanced-thinking, considering he lived in the 16th century:
"Women are not altogether in the wrong, when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, for so much as only men have established them without their consent."Read any chapter, randomly if you wish, or read it all if you have time and breath, I am sure you will love it.
Read
August 24, 2020"To learn that one has said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing; one must learn that one is nothing but a fool, a much more comprehensive and important lesson".
There is sheer joy for me in that sentence.
It opens up a new starting point in life, not one of humility but of humour. There is basic honesty about one's own ridiculousness, but also an honesty about the validity and value of one's own experience and life, as clumsy and awkward as this may be.
The honesty and directness about his own life can make reading Montaigne like settling down and listening to an old friend talk, about how he started off preferring white wine, grew over the years to prefer red and then some time later drifted back to white again, or about how he managed to trick a friend on his wedding night so he could overcome his fear of being unable to perform and consummate the marriage or how as he has grown older he has taken to wearing thicker and heavier hats to keep his head warm. It allows a for a remarkably intimate connection with somebody from a very different time.
The material is varied, the subject of the essay, like many a students' first attempts, simply a jumping off point for a long ramble interrupted by quotations. Over the years as he continues to write the essays become more confident and frequently longer, but they are bound together by his way of thinking about himself and his society. A way of thinking that often turns back to thinking about thinking in the broadest sense as in "when I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me".
This can give the sense that he is looking in on his society as a stranger. For example in his contrast between the crowds of people eager to see the savage cannibals brought over from Brazil with savagery of the ongoing wars of religion in his native France. Possibly this is not so surprising as we learn in another essay that his Father had him brought up by a German teacher of Latin with the intention that Latin should be his first language . The result of Montaigne's Father's decision was that his family, their retainers and tenants all had to themselves to learn at least some Latin in order to talk to the young Montaigne as a child. The impression is that he grew up as a foreigner in his own country.
This of course could come across as tragic but the effect is comic. Montaigne notes the peasants in his area are still using Latin names for tools, it is as though Montaigne's father involved them all in a great game, on the basis of a singular educational notion, that are all still playing years later. Something of this playfulness matures in the son into an openness that allows him to see the peculiarity of his own point of view and to appreciate how far it is shaped by where he happens to stand.
There is sheer joy for me in that sentence.
It opens up a new starting point in life, not one of humility but of humour. There is basic honesty about one's own ridiculousness, but also an honesty about the validity and value of one's own experience and life, as clumsy and awkward as this may be.
The honesty and directness about his own life can make reading Montaigne like settling down and listening to an old friend talk, about how he started off preferring white wine, grew over the years to prefer red and then some time later drifted back to white again, or about how he managed to trick a friend on his wedding night so he could overcome his fear of being unable to perform and consummate the marriage or how as he has grown older he has taken to wearing thicker and heavier hats to keep his head warm. It allows a for a remarkably intimate connection with somebody from a very different time.
The material is varied, the subject of the essay, like many a students' first attempts, simply a jumping off point for a long ramble interrupted by quotations. Over the years as he continues to write the essays become more confident and frequently longer, but they are bound together by his way of thinking about himself and his society. A way of thinking that often turns back to thinking about thinking in the broadest sense as in "when I am playing with my cat, how do I know she is not playing with me".
This can give the sense that he is looking in on his society as a stranger. For example in his contrast between the crowds of people eager to see the savage cannibals brought over from Brazil with savagery of the ongoing wars of religion in his native France. Possibly this is not so surprising as we learn in another essay that his Father had him brought up by a German teacher of Latin with the intention that Latin should be his first language . The result of Montaigne's Father's decision was that his family, their retainers and tenants all had to themselves to learn at least some Latin in order to talk to the young Montaigne as a child. The impression is that he grew up as a foreigner in his own country.
This of course could come across as tragic but the effect is comic. Montaigne notes the peasants in his area are still using Latin names for tools, it is as though Montaigne's father involved them all in a great game, on the basis of a singular educational notion, that are all still playing years later. Something of this playfulness matures in the son into an openness that allows him to see the peculiarity of his own point of view and to appreciate how far it is shaped by where he happens to stand.
February 17, 2015
Clive James says somewhere that certain people throughout history are like ambassadors from the present stationed in the past: though separated from us by centuries, to read them is to share in thoughts and feelings that we recognise intimately as our own. And this is what Montaigne has been for me since I started reading him several years ago. He is the first person in history who strikes me as modern – or at least, the first to put that modern sense of uncertainty and existential nerviness down on paper, to write something that is not didactic or improving or even purely entertaining, but animated instead by curiosity, doubt, overeducated boredom, trivial irritations.
The scepticism in particular has become probably his most famous quality – his best-known line nowadays is the rhetorical question, Que sçay-je? ‘What do I know?’ Certainly his essays – meaning ‘efforts’, ‘attempts’ – are endearingly open about how uncertain he is when it comes to any of the big questions. He doesn't bluster his way through his lack of knowledge, but faces it head-on with disarming cheerfulness, and his arguments themselves are not carefully structured means to approach knowledge, but rather meandering and conversational in a way that is completely unlike other writers of the time. Je parle au papier comme je parle au premier que je rencontre, he says – in John Florio's 1603 translation (on which much more later), ‘I speake unto Paper, as to the first man I meete.’ Still, his lack of expertise is something that regularly bothers him:
It's unlikely to worry any of his readers. The range of topics addressed by Montaigne is gloriously all-encompassing: stick a pin in the nearest encyclopaedia and he will have something to say on whatever subject has been thus perforated. And crucially, it's not just the big subjects like war, religion, diplomacy, the Classical tradition. It's also the minor stuff, the kind of things that you worry about in the bath – how annoying it is to have to get up early, whether people should talk over dinner or just shut up and eat, what to wear in bed. Like men through history, he frets that he can't last long enough during sex and that his cock is too small – but unlike Horace or the Earl of Rochester, he doesn't write grandiose poetry on the subject, he just moans about it in humdrum, day-to-day prose. You come to realise there is no issue he won't write about. ‘Of all naturall actions, there is none wherein I am more loath to be troubled or interrupted when I am at it,’ he announces, on doing a poo.
Of course that frankness, that ruthless self-analysis, means that when he does come to the big subjects he's often totally riveting. I loved reading his thoughts on religion, which are incredibly undogmatic and open-minded given the context of sixteenth-century Europe. In Book II, chapter 12 – one of the longest essays and often printed separately – he ostensibly sets out to defend Christianity, but in his clear-sighted assessment of the arguments against religion he articulates intelligent agnosticism better than many atheists. We are Christians because we are born here and now, he perceives; if people really believed in the precepts of their faith, they would be happy to die; and if there were any real reward after death it must be in some mortal way, otherwise we would no longer be ‘us’. Following his mind through these arguments is quite a thrill.
He also comments on current events, of all kinds. After France adopts the Gregorian calendar in December 1582, he takes the time to write irritably on the missing eleven days (a circumstance which leads him, via a typically Montanian series of tangents, to end up discussing the merits of sex with the disabled). And his thoughts on the Spanish conquest of the Americas – the full details of which were still then emerging – make for a welcome reminder that not everyone at the time was gung-ho about the excesses of the colonial project.
On gender relations he offers an intriguing mix of traditionalism and forward-thinking. He makes frequent off-hand remarks about the place of women which seem to suggest that he is pretty representative of his time – commenting, for instance, that if women want to read they should confine themselves to theology and a little poetry – but then at other times he can be amazingly progressive. A long essay ‘On some verses of Virgil’ (III.5) includes a fantastic investigation of sexual politics where he is unexpectedly thoughtful about the expectations placed on women by male society, and he rails against the hypocrisy of what we'd now call slut-shaming. His sympathy for those who do not fit patriarchal expectations shows that he grasps the fundamental point:
In the end, although he can't stop himself feeling instinctively that a woman's role is different from a man's, he recognises that much of this is down to social pressures, and his simple conclusion is in some ways centuries ahead of its time: les masles et femelles sont jettez en mesme moule: sauf l'institution et l'usage, la difference n'y est pas grande. ‘Male and female are cast in one same moulde; instruction and custome excepted, there is no great difference betweene them.’
Those of you who read French may be noticing here that Montaigne is often easier to understand than Florio. At first this was a surprise to me as I flicked between them, but it's a good illustration of the fact that English has changed a lot more in four hundred years than French has. Many were the times that I turned to the Middle French to illuminate what seemed an obscure passage in my native language. A Florio phrase like ‘it is enough to dip our pens in inke, too much, to die them in blood’ seems to have two or three possible interpretations. It's only when you read the original – c'est assez de tramper nos plumes en ancre, sans les tramper en sang – that you realise Florio's first comma is the fulcrum on which two perfectly-balanced halves of the sentence pivot.
Take another look at the very end of that quote on the conquest of Mexico, above. Montaigne's elegant chiasmus (horribles hostilitez…calamitez si miserables) has been abandoned; meanwhile, to the horrible hostilities and miserable calamities has been added a dose of ‘bloody dissipation’, on Florio's own initiative. Similar cases abound (he also translates bouleversée there as ‘topsiturvied’!), and to me they say something deeply significant about the two languages, at least as they existed then. One final example will make my point: here, Montaigne is discussing how strange it is that sex is something hidden and shameful, while death is a public glory:
The French is precisely assembled, and Florio ignores the precision entirely. Montaigne's exact, rhyming counterpoints (chacun fuit…chacun suit, faire…deffaire) are dropped in favour of a profusion of circumlocution (‘each one avoideth…all runne’, ‘making him…to destroy him being framed’). Where Montaigne is a Rolls-Royce engine, Florio is a cartoon jetpack. And yet! Where Florio fails to capture his source is precisely where he best represents the allusive, poly-synonymous essence of his own native tradition. While Montaigne convinces you that the genius of French lies in its clarity (Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français, as Antoine de Rivarol would say two hundred years later), Florio suggests that the genius of English lies by contrast in its ambiguity, and the best English writers of the time – which is to say the best English writers of all time, Shakespeare, Browne et al. – were precisely those who mastered its allusive and multivocabular messiness.
Well, I won't push that any further, and Montaigne himself would doubtless have disagreed. (‘Our speech hath his infirmities and defects, as all things else have,’ he says; and elsewhere, in a passage that warmed my anti-prescriptivist heart, ‘According to the continuall variation that hitherto hath followed our French tongue, who may hope that its present forme shall be in use fifty yeares hence?…We say it is now come to a full perfection. There is no age but saith as much of hirs.’) At any rate, reading these two writers together throws up all kinds of fascinating suggestions and contemplations, and it meant that I ended up reading basically all the essays twice (and two or three of them I read for a third time in MA Screech's modern English translation). For those curious about Florio, the NYRB has published a selection of his versions of the Essays under the intensely irritating title of Shakespeare's Montaigne, though neither Montaigne nor Florio need Shakespeare's coat-tails to ride on – and anyway, apart from one famous bit in The Tempest, the evidence for Shakespeare's having read Florio is not very exciting.
In the end though, whatever language you read Montaigne in, his humaneness and his sympathy will stay with you. By the time he writes the final volume he is at the end of his life, and his tone has not become bitter or regretful in the least. Everywhere he shows a desire to find a middle way between the intellectual and the physical, the elevated and the practical, which I find extremely cheering. The last chapter, ‘On Experience’, sums up the feelings about how life should be lived that he has been investigating throughout the essays, and as always his concern is not to criticise but instead to forgive, to understand, to encourage. He invented an entire genre, but no one has achieved greater effects with it than he did himself.
The scepticism in particular has become probably his most famous quality – his best-known line nowadays is the rhetorical question, Que sçay-je? ‘What do I know?’ Certainly his essays – meaning ‘efforts’, ‘attempts’ – are endearingly open about how uncertain he is when it comes to any of the big questions. He doesn't bluster his way through his lack of knowledge, but faces it head-on with disarming cheerfulness, and his arguments themselves are not carefully structured means to approach knowledge, but rather meandering and conversational in a way that is completely unlike other writers of the time. Je parle au papier comme je parle au premier que je rencontre, he says – in John Florio's 1603 translation (on which much more later), ‘I speake unto Paper, as to the first man I meete.’ Still, his lack of expertise is something that regularly bothers him:
Est-ce pas faire une muraille sans pierre, ou chose semblable, que de bastir des livres sans science et sans art? Les fantasies de la musique sont conduictes par art, les miennes par sort.
To write bookes without learning is it not to make a wall without stone or such like thing? Conceits of musicke are directed by arte, mine by hap.
It's unlikely to worry any of his readers. The range of topics addressed by Montaigne is gloriously all-encompassing: stick a pin in the nearest encyclopaedia and he will have something to say on whatever subject has been thus perforated. And crucially, it's not just the big subjects like war, religion, diplomacy, the Classical tradition. It's also the minor stuff, the kind of things that you worry about in the bath – how annoying it is to have to get up early, whether people should talk over dinner or just shut up and eat, what to wear in bed. Like men through history, he frets that he can't last long enough during sex and that his cock is too small – but unlike Horace or the Earl of Rochester, he doesn't write grandiose poetry on the subject, he just moans about it in humdrum, day-to-day prose. You come to realise there is no issue he won't write about. ‘Of all naturall actions, there is none wherein I am more loath to be troubled or interrupted when I am at it,’ he announces, on doing a poo.
Of course that frankness, that ruthless self-analysis, means that when he does come to the big subjects he's often totally riveting. I loved reading his thoughts on religion, which are incredibly undogmatic and open-minded given the context of sixteenth-century Europe. In Book II, chapter 12 – one of the longest essays and often printed separately – he ostensibly sets out to defend Christianity, but in his clear-sighted assessment of the arguments against religion he articulates intelligent agnosticism better than many atheists. We are Christians because we are born here and now, he perceives; if people really believed in the precepts of their faith, they would be happy to die; and if there were any real reward after death it must be in some mortal way, otherwise we would no longer be ‘us’. Following his mind through these arguments is quite a thrill.
He also comments on current events, of all kinds. After France adopts the Gregorian calendar in December 1582, he takes the time to write irritably on the missing eleven days (a circumstance which leads him, via a typically Montanian series of tangents, to end up discussing the merits of sex with the disabled). And his thoughts on the Spanish conquest of the Americas – the full details of which were still then emerging – make for a welcome reminder that not everyone at the time was gung-ho about the excesses of the colonial project.
…nous nous sommes servis de leur ignorance et inexperience à les plier plus facilement vers la trahison, luxure, avarice et vers toute sorte d'inhumanité et de cruauté, à l'exemple et patron de nos meurs. Qui mit jamais à tel pris le service de la mercadence et de la trafique? Tant de villes rasées, tant de nations exterminées, tant de millions de peuples passez au fil de l'espée, et la plus riche et belle partie du monde bouleversée pour la negotiation des perles et du poivre: mechaniques victoires. Jamais l'ambition, jamais les inimitiez publiques ne pousserent les hommes les uns contre les autres à si horribles hostilitez et calamitez si miserables.
we have made use of their ignorance and inexperience, to drawe them more easily unto treason, fraude, luxurie, avarice and all manner of inhumanity and cruelty, by the example of our life and patterne of our customes. Who ever raised the service of marchandize and benefit of traffick to so high a rate? So many goodly citties ransacked and raged; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmelesse people of all sexes, states and ages, massacred, ravaged and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest and the best part of the world topsiturvied, ruined and defaced for the traffick of Pearles and Pepper. Oh mechanicall victories, oh base conquest. Never did greedy revenge, publik wrongs or generall enmities, so moodily enrage and so passionately incense men against men, unto so horrible hostilities, bloody dissipation, and miserable calamities.
On gender relations he offers an intriguing mix of traditionalism and forward-thinking. He makes frequent off-hand remarks about the place of women which seem to suggest that he is pretty representative of his time – commenting, for instance, that if women want to read they should confine themselves to theology and a little poetry – but then at other times he can be amazingly progressive. A long essay ‘On some verses of Virgil’ (III.5) includes a fantastic investigation of sexual politics where he is unexpectedly thoughtful about the expectations placed on women by male society, and he rails against the hypocrisy of what we'd now call slut-shaming. His sympathy for those who do not fit patriarchal expectations shows that he grasps the fundamental point:
Les femmes n'ont pas tort du tout quand elles refusent les reigles de vie qui sont introduites au monde, d'autant que ce sont les hommes qui les ont faictes sans elles.
Women are not altogether in the wrong, when they refuse the rules of life prescribed to the World, forsomuch as onely men have established them without their consent.
In the end, although he can't stop himself feeling instinctively that a woman's role is different from a man's, he recognises that much of this is down to social pressures, and his simple conclusion is in some ways centuries ahead of its time: les masles et femelles sont jettez en mesme moule: sauf l'institution et l'usage, la difference n'y est pas grande. ‘Male and female are cast in one same moulde; instruction and custome excepted, there is no great difference betweene them.’
Those of you who read French may be noticing here that Montaigne is often easier to understand than Florio. At first this was a surprise to me as I flicked between them, but it's a good illustration of the fact that English has changed a lot more in four hundred years than French has. Many were the times that I turned to the Middle French to illuminate what seemed an obscure passage in my native language. A Florio phrase like ‘it is enough to dip our pens in inke, too much, to die them in blood’ seems to have two or three possible interpretations. It's only when you read the original – c'est assez de tramper nos plumes en ancre, sans les tramper en sang – that you realise Florio's first comma is the fulcrum on which two perfectly-balanced halves of the sentence pivot.
Take another look at the very end of that quote on the conquest of Mexico, above. Montaigne's elegant chiasmus (horribles hostilitez…calamitez si miserables) has been abandoned; meanwhile, to the horrible hostilities and miserable calamities has been added a dose of ‘bloody dissipation’, on Florio's own initiative. Similar cases abound (he also translates bouleversée there as ‘topsiturvied’!), and to me they say something deeply significant about the two languages, at least as they existed then. One final example will make my point: here, Montaigne is discussing how strange it is that sex is something hidden and shameful, while death is a public glory:
Chacun fuit à le voir naistre, chacun suit à le voir mourir. Pour le destruire, on cerche un champ spacieux en pleine lumiere; pour le construire, on se musse dans un creux tenebreux et contraint. C'est le devoir de se cacher et rougir pour le faire; et c'est gloire, et naissent plusieurs vertus de le sçavoir deffaire.
Each one avoideth to see a man borne, but all runne hastily to see him dye. To destroy him we seeke a spacious field and a full light, but to construct him we hide our selves in some darke corner and worke as close as we may. It is our dutie to conceale our selves in making him; it is our glory, and the originall of many vertues to destroy him being framed.
The French is precisely assembled, and Florio ignores the precision entirely. Montaigne's exact, rhyming counterpoints (chacun fuit…chacun suit, faire…deffaire) are dropped in favour of a profusion of circumlocution (‘each one avoideth…all runne’, ‘making him…to destroy him being framed’). Where Montaigne is a Rolls-Royce engine, Florio is a cartoon jetpack. And yet! Where Florio fails to capture his source is precisely where he best represents the allusive, poly-synonymous essence of his own native tradition. While Montaigne convinces you that the genius of French lies in its clarity (Ce qui n'est pas clair n'est pas français, as Antoine de Rivarol would say two hundred years later), Florio suggests that the genius of English lies by contrast in its ambiguity, and the best English writers of the time – which is to say the best English writers of all time, Shakespeare, Browne et al. – were precisely those who mastered its allusive and multivocabular messiness.
Well, I won't push that any further, and Montaigne himself would doubtless have disagreed. (‘Our speech hath his infirmities and defects, as all things else have,’ he says; and elsewhere, in a passage that warmed my anti-prescriptivist heart, ‘According to the continuall variation that hitherto hath followed our French tongue, who may hope that its present forme shall be in use fifty yeares hence?…We say it is now come to a full perfection. There is no age but saith as much of hirs.’) At any rate, reading these two writers together throws up all kinds of fascinating suggestions and contemplations, and it meant that I ended up reading basically all the essays twice (and two or three of them I read for a third time in MA Screech's modern English translation). For those curious about Florio, the NYRB has published a selection of his versions of the Essays under the intensely irritating title of Shakespeare's Montaigne, though neither Montaigne nor Florio need Shakespeare's coat-tails to ride on – and anyway, apart from one famous bit in The Tempest, the evidence for Shakespeare's having read Florio is not very exciting.
In the end though, whatever language you read Montaigne in, his humaneness and his sympathy will stay with you. By the time he writes the final volume he is at the end of his life, and his tone has not become bitter or regretful in the least. Everywhere he shows a desire to find a middle way between the intellectual and the physical, the elevated and the practical, which I find extremely cheering. The last chapter, ‘On Experience’, sums up the feelings about how life should be lived that he has been investigating throughout the essays, and as always his concern is not to criticise but instead to forgive, to understand, to encourage. He invented an entire genre, but no one has achieved greater effects with it than he did himself.
Il a passé sa vie en oisiveté, disons nous; je n'ay rien faict d'aujourd'huy.--Quoy, avez vous pas vescu? C'est non seulement la fondamentale mais la plus illustre de vos occupations…. Avez vous sceu mediter et manier vostre vie? vous avez faict la plus grande besoigne de toutes. Pour se montrer et exploicter nature n'a que faire de fortune: elle se montre egallement en tous estages et derriere, comme sans rideau. Composer nos meurs est nostre office, non pas composer des livres, et gaigner, non pas des batailles et provinces, mais l'ordre et tranquillité à nostre conduite.
Hee hath passed his life in idleness, say we; alas! I have done nothing this day. What, have you not lived? It is not only the fundamentall, but the noblest of your occupation. […] Have you knowen how to meditate and mannage your life? you have accomplished the greatest worke of all. For a man to shew and exploit himselfe nature hath no neede of fortune; she equally shewes herselfe upon all grounds, in all sutes, before and behinde, as it were without curteines, welt, or gard. Have you knowne how to compose your manners? you have done more than he who hath composed bookes. Have you knowne how to take rest? you have done more than be who hath taken Empires and Citties.
December 17, 2023
Going through The Essays, getting lost in them to find oneself there, trying everything to always come back to oneself, to this man who, the first, chooses only to study himself to try to understand a little nothing of this that it is, is a unique reading experience. We see the thought of a man constructed small essays from the first book, which compile others' ideas of these old models, Seneca, Plutarch, and Lucretia, that we gradually forget in the long and tortuous all-out reflections of the third book, which, by concentrating on the essential, on Michel de Montaigne, the only thinkable object, escapes towards all the great human themes, vanity, usefulness, honesty, will, and experience. For Montaigne, nothing is stable; nothing is final. Nothing was resolving once and for all, not even his own identity, that he can only graze by deforming it in a continuous movement. If it was one, this failure could have resulted in absolute pessimism. But Montaigne is not relatively modern. He sees that everything is relative, vague, and elusive. Still, Montaigne continues to sink into himself, finds nothing concrete there, and clings to the established order, Nature, and divine wisdom. He questions everything while being deeply conservative; he breaks all fashionable ideas and adheres to custom without being fooled; he only wants to think for himself and ceaselessly cites past references. In short, Montaigne is excessive and wise, witty and crude, ancient and modern, dead and alive. His essays are what make writing the most active and human.
Read
September 20, 2024I bought this gargantuan book seven years ago with the firm intention of reading its 1350 pages someday. I suspect I didn't fully believe I ever would but I have a great capacity for hope.
Until last year, the book lay unopened, though not entirely pristine, because in my ongoing hope, I'd placed it on a shelf underneath a coffee-table where I wouldn't forget about it, and eventually a glass of wine was spilled on the table drenching the book underneath so that now the edges of all its pages are wine tinged. That was a fitting baptism because there was a vineyard attached to Michel de Montaigne's chateau, and wine is still produced there today, five hundred years after Montaigne's time. One of the wines the present day owners make is called 'Les Essais'.
Not that Montaigne talks about wine very often in the course of the essays because wine has always been a matter of course in France—it's simply what you drink with your food on a daily basis. But still it's interesting to note that in the 107 essays, wine does get mentioned 107 times. Some of those references are in the Latin and Greek quotes which Montaigne liked to sprinkle liberally throughout the essays, so not only do we hear a little about the habits of wine drinking in his own time but we also hear about wine-drinking among the Greeks going back to the time of Homer and Plato (Plato recommends copious wine drinking once you reach the age of forty, by the way). That was a time when Chian wine was highly prized, according to the Greek writer Plutarch, whom Montaigne references frequently. One of the Plutarch stories he relays to us is about Diogenes, who, when asked what kind of wine he liked, said, 'Someone else's!'
Montaigne also quotes Romans writers such as Horace, Ovid and Pliny on many matters, but on wine drinking too. Some of those quotes talk of the much prized Falernian wine, a white wine from the slopes of Mount Falernus south of Rome which must have been very high in alcohol because apparently you could set a match to it!
Montaigne seems to have read Erasmus on wine drinking too, and in line with what Erasmus recommended, he drank a 'moderate' amount a day in his prime (that amount would be the equivalent of a litre, or one and a half pints today). Later, when Montaigne was in poor health (he suffered from kidney stones in his fifties and sixties) he watered his wine, but he also put wine in his water—he refused to drink one without the other, maintaining that wine-drinking is one of the last pleasures left in older age. He talks about the seat of bodily pleasures changing throughout his life, moving from his feet when he was a child running about all day, to his loins when he was a young adult (a time he remembers very fondly), to settling in his gullet in middle age when he'd learned to better savor what he ate and drank.
He had a favorite drinking glass too, a small one, because he liked to be able to empty it completely before topping it up. And he rejected completely the idea of drinking wine out of any receptacle that wasn't clear—he says he drank with his eyes as much as with his tastebuds. I identify with him on many of those practices—except drinking a litre a day or watering my wine. I must be like the Germanic peoples whom Montaigne says would never be caught mixing water with wine—though he also claims they gulped it down as if it were water, but that they were all the healthier for it.
He mentions too that the people in his part of France used wine as a medicine. They heated it and mixed it with herbs and spices to make a kind of mulled wine which was often a successful remedy. Generally though, he hadn't much time for medical remedies, especially not the sort that doctors of his day recommended—such as fasting and purging. He seems to have had a great fear of doctors and would rather avoid them. He relies instead on his own experience of what works for him and his body, and notes that eating roast lamb always nourishes him and drinking wine always warms him. They are two of my favourite things!
At the beginning of this review you might have wondered why it took me so long to open this wine-stained book that had lain on the shelf for six or seven years. A big part of it was fear. Fear of suffering through a mountain of very long and possibly boring essays—but as Montaigne says on the subject of suffering, the fear of it is sometimes the worst part. I can truly agree with him now because I didn't suffer nearly as much as I feared, and really hardly at all. Admittedly, that was partly due to the great group of friends who incited me to finally open the book in 2023. I'd posted a review years ago of Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in which I'd admitted abandoning her book because I thought I'd much rather read the man himself (that must have been around the time I bought this book). So last year when someone pulled that old review out of the archives, I quickly found myself with a group of friends eager to take me at my word and to keep me company while reading Montaigne. My good friend Kalliope created a group complete with separate discussion threads for the many essays—57 in Book I, 37 in Book II, and 13 in Book III—so that was a lot of discussion threads. Thanks again, Kalliope.
The members of the group filled those discussion threads with a mountain of observations over the course of our Montaigne year (which had 16 months as it turned out), and I only have to look back at the comments to get an instant reminder of all our impressions—though if I tried to extract my own main impressions out of all of that, I'd become so bogged down that this review would never see the light of a GR day! And if I've learned anything from Montaigne it's to not get too side-tracked in a piece of writing that you forget the intention you started out with (he often almost did). So I'm going to finish this review by adding only a few non-wine-related highlights that have stuck in my mind.
As someone who often talks about herself in the course of writing book reviews (for better or worse), I noted with satisfaction that Montaigne recognised that he was going against the grain of his times by devoting a book of essays entirely to his own opinions about his own self and about his own life (the focus on himself as subject is more predominant in the later essays than in the earlier ones). It seems he took seriously the adage about the unexamined life not being worth living, and so he set about examining his own life in great detail, the bad as well as the good, in order to know how to completely enjoy and appreciate being alive, savoir jouir de son être.
I really related to that 'savoir être' idea, how to be happy in your own self. I also liked that he wanted to examine everything about himself that he himself was aware of, whether good or bad, and come to terms with it all. He admits, for instance, that he prefers spending time in his tower library surrounded by his books and his writings, and feels no guilt about neglecting the work that went with being the Seigneur of a large chateau and a vast estate—or about not knowing the first thing about wine-making or farming.
And when he was appointed Mayor of neighbouring Bordeaux, he was quite happy to do no more than the minimum required to keep the post functioning, leaving the task of improving the position—and the glory that might go with that—to his successor.
Next to sitting quietly with his books, he liked best to travel, spending months at a time away from home—not worrying about the wife and daughter he had left behind (they are rarely mentioned in his essays (which might be seen as discretion—or not)).
His travels took him across France and Italy, and he usually journeyed on horseback spending eight or nine hours a day in the saddle, something he loved to do even up to a few years before he died (he'd had military experiences on and off throughout his life which might explain his ease on horseback).
He mentions too that his idea of a good death would be to die while traveling in some strange place where no one would cry over him, preferably Venice—perhaps because he had a bad attack of kidney stones while visiting that city and must have thought he was facing certain death there.
He also says he would not have minded facing death on a battlefield because Death itself was not something he feared, only the prolonged pain of dying from an illness.
He reminds us that death happens, not because we may be sick, but because we are alive, so we should value life while we have it and see death as the inevitable end-part of life. Tu ne meurs pas parce que tu es malade, tu meurs parce que tu es vivant. In spite of all those references to death, he says that we shouldn't waste too much living time thinking about dying!
He didn't believe in any afterlife that could be imagined by our mortal minds—the two things were irreconcilable to him. In that, he was probably unlike his Catholic contemporaries but in other respects he seemed to keep to the Church of Rome's teachings, at least publicly. He lived during a time in France when many turned away from Rome and embraced Protestantism, which resulted in the sixteenth-century Religious Wars which raged in France for most of his lifetime. He was no theologian however and was content to leave theological matters to the Doctors of Theology at the Sorbonne University in Paris. In one of the final essays, he talks of the fine wines those theologians were famous for quaffing, and which he calls 'vin théologal et sorbonnique'. When I read that line, I smiled because I remembered that Montaigne's contemporary, François Rabelais, also mentioned that famous 'vin théologal et sorbonnique' in his Gargantua books which, incidentally, begin and end with his characters quaffing wine, or to say it in Rebalais style, en train de chopiner le vin.
So I think I'll do the same with this wine-themed review and finish by saying that during the sixteen months I spent reading Montaigne's essays, and sipping some good wine, j'ai chopiné du 'vin philosophal et montaignique'!
Until last year, the book lay unopened, though not entirely pristine, because in my ongoing hope, I'd placed it on a shelf underneath a coffee-table where I wouldn't forget about it, and eventually a glass of wine was spilled on the table drenching the book underneath so that now the edges of all its pages are wine tinged. That was a fitting baptism because there was a vineyard attached to Michel de Montaigne's chateau, and wine is still produced there today, five hundred years after Montaigne's time. One of the wines the present day owners make is called 'Les Essais'.
Not that Montaigne talks about wine very often in the course of the essays because wine has always been a matter of course in France—it's simply what you drink with your food on a daily basis. But still it's interesting to note that in the 107 essays, wine does get mentioned 107 times. Some of those references are in the Latin and Greek quotes which Montaigne liked to sprinkle liberally throughout the essays, so not only do we hear a little about the habits of wine drinking in his own time but we also hear about wine-drinking among the Greeks going back to the time of Homer and Plato (Plato recommends copious wine drinking once you reach the age of forty, by the way). That was a time when Chian wine was highly prized, according to the Greek writer Plutarch, whom Montaigne references frequently. One of the Plutarch stories he relays to us is about Diogenes, who, when asked what kind of wine he liked, said, 'Someone else's!'
Montaigne also quotes Romans writers such as Horace, Ovid and Pliny on many matters, but on wine drinking too. Some of those quotes talk of the much prized Falernian wine, a white wine from the slopes of Mount Falernus south of Rome which must have been very high in alcohol because apparently you could set a match to it!
Montaigne seems to have read Erasmus on wine drinking too, and in line with what Erasmus recommended, he drank a 'moderate' amount a day in his prime (that amount would be the equivalent of a litre, or one and a half pints today). Later, when Montaigne was in poor health (he suffered from kidney stones in his fifties and sixties) he watered his wine, but he also put wine in his water—he refused to drink one without the other, maintaining that wine-drinking is one of the last pleasures left in older age. He talks about the seat of bodily pleasures changing throughout his life, moving from his feet when he was a child running about all day, to his loins when he was a young adult (a time he remembers very fondly), to settling in his gullet in middle age when he'd learned to better savor what he ate and drank.
He had a favorite drinking glass too, a small one, because he liked to be able to empty it completely before topping it up. And he rejected completely the idea of drinking wine out of any receptacle that wasn't clear—he says he drank with his eyes as much as with his tastebuds. I identify with him on many of those practices—except drinking a litre a day or watering my wine. I must be like the Germanic peoples whom Montaigne says would never be caught mixing water with wine—though he also claims they gulped it down as if it were water, but that they were all the healthier for it.
He mentions too that the people in his part of France used wine as a medicine. They heated it and mixed it with herbs and spices to make a kind of mulled wine which was often a successful remedy. Generally though, he hadn't much time for medical remedies, especially not the sort that doctors of his day recommended—such as fasting and purging. He seems to have had a great fear of doctors and would rather avoid them. He relies instead on his own experience of what works for him and his body, and notes that eating roast lamb always nourishes him and drinking wine always warms him. They are two of my favourite things!
At the beginning of this review you might have wondered why it took me so long to open this wine-stained book that had lain on the shelf for six or seven years. A big part of it was fear. Fear of suffering through a mountain of very long and possibly boring essays—but as Montaigne says on the subject of suffering, the fear of it is sometimes the worst part. I can truly agree with him now because I didn't suffer nearly as much as I feared, and really hardly at all. Admittedly, that was partly due to the great group of friends who incited me to finally open the book in 2023. I'd posted a review years ago of Sarah Bakewell's How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in which I'd admitted abandoning her book because I thought I'd much rather read the man himself (that must have been around the time I bought this book). So last year when someone pulled that old review out of the archives, I quickly found myself with a group of friends eager to take me at my word and to keep me company while reading Montaigne. My good friend Kalliope created a group complete with separate discussion threads for the many essays—57 in Book I, 37 in Book II, and 13 in Book III—so that was a lot of discussion threads. Thanks again, Kalliope.
The members of the group filled those discussion threads with a mountain of observations over the course of our Montaigne year (which had 16 months as it turned out), and I only have to look back at the comments to get an instant reminder of all our impressions—though if I tried to extract my own main impressions out of all of that, I'd become so bogged down that this review would never see the light of a GR day! And if I've learned anything from Montaigne it's to not get too side-tracked in a piece of writing that you forget the intention you started out with (he often almost did). So I'm going to finish this review by adding only a few non-wine-related highlights that have stuck in my mind.
As someone who often talks about herself in the course of writing book reviews (for better or worse), I noted with satisfaction that Montaigne recognised that he was going against the grain of his times by devoting a book of essays entirely to his own opinions about his own self and about his own life (the focus on himself as subject is more predominant in the later essays than in the earlier ones). It seems he took seriously the adage about the unexamined life not being worth living, and so he set about examining his own life in great detail, the bad as well as the good, in order to know how to completely enjoy and appreciate being alive, savoir jouir de son être.
I really related to that 'savoir être' idea, how to be happy in your own self. I also liked that he wanted to examine everything about himself that he himself was aware of, whether good or bad, and come to terms with it all. He admits, for instance, that he prefers spending time in his tower library surrounded by his books and his writings, and feels no guilt about neglecting the work that went with being the Seigneur of a large chateau and a vast estate—or about not knowing the first thing about wine-making or farming.
And when he was appointed Mayor of neighbouring Bordeaux, he was quite happy to do no more than the minimum required to keep the post functioning, leaving the task of improving the position—and the glory that might go with that—to his successor.
Next to sitting quietly with his books, he liked best to travel, spending months at a time away from home—not worrying about the wife and daughter he had left behind (they are rarely mentioned in his essays (which might be seen as discretion—or not)).
His travels took him across France and Italy, and he usually journeyed on horseback spending eight or nine hours a day in the saddle, something he loved to do even up to a few years before he died (he'd had military experiences on and off throughout his life which might explain his ease on horseback).
He mentions too that his idea of a good death would be to die while traveling in some strange place where no one would cry over him, preferably Venice—perhaps because he had a bad attack of kidney stones while visiting that city and must have thought he was facing certain death there.
He also says he would not have minded facing death on a battlefield because Death itself was not something he feared, only the prolonged pain of dying from an illness.
He reminds us that death happens, not because we may be sick, but because we are alive, so we should value life while we have it and see death as the inevitable end-part of life. Tu ne meurs pas parce que tu es malade, tu meurs parce que tu es vivant. In spite of all those references to death, he says that we shouldn't waste too much living time thinking about dying!
He didn't believe in any afterlife that could be imagined by our mortal minds—the two things were irreconcilable to him. In that, he was probably unlike his Catholic contemporaries but in other respects he seemed to keep to the Church of Rome's teachings, at least publicly. He lived during a time in France when many turned away from Rome and embraced Protestantism, which resulted in the sixteenth-century Religious Wars which raged in France for most of his lifetime. He was no theologian however and was content to leave theological matters to the Doctors of Theology at the Sorbonne University in Paris. In one of the final essays, he talks of the fine wines those theologians were famous for quaffing, and which he calls 'vin théologal et sorbonnique'. When I read that line, I smiled because I remembered that Montaigne's contemporary, François Rabelais, also mentioned that famous 'vin théologal et sorbonnique' in his Gargantua books which, incidentally, begin and end with his characters quaffing wine, or to say it in Rebalais style, en train de chopiner le vin.
So I think I'll do the same with this wine-themed review and finish by saying that during the sixteen months I spent reading Montaigne's essays, and sipping some good wine, j'ai chopiné du 'vin philosophal et montaignique'!
Read
October 28, 2018Tonight, all across America, tens of thousands of teenagers - perhaps hundreds of thousands - sit in front of laptops, writing essays. It is the most dreaded homework assignment for many of them, and if they go on to college, it will be the assignment most cited as making them lose sleep, their printer to break, their grandmother to die, their car to break down, etc. etc.
Tonight, all across America, tens of thousands of teachers and professors count and recount the remaining essays in their grading pile. It is their most dreaded teaching activity. It is painstaking. It is grammar. It is word by word.
In 1580, Michel de Montaigne, the world's first essayist and self-acknowledged inventor of the genre, set out to "attempt." Attempt what? He did not know, nor did he care whether he succeeded. He wanted only to write to understand himself better. And who better to do it? As he writes, he is the world's greatest expert on the subject! And there is no subject more important to him!
And so, he isn't bothered if his essay on experience turns into an essay on farting. Farting is experience, after all! And he will also write what his mustache smells like, and that he likes scratching the insides of his ears, and that we say bless you after we sneeze because the air is coming out of our heads, not our butts (and he'll write, don't laugh! I read it in Socrates!) He needs the high of books and the low of lived bodily experience to express himself - and the goal here is to express himself and to understand himself. There is no other goal. He is not practicing his grammar or making a logical argument or finding three examples of imagery in Ovid. No. It's just an attempt.
Compare to the hamburger essays that we force down our childrens' throats these days (the standardized 5-paragraph essay is sometimes even called the hamburger essay - it's got bread (fluff!), you see, at the beginning and end, and three ingredients or examples). We say this hamburger should look like these hamburgers. Say the same thing at the beginning and the end - do not attempt anything. Nothing should change. Nothing is tried, tested. Everything should be so logical, correct. Do not explore. Just do these three things. Do them again and again, and most importantly, do them like this on the test.
It saddens me to see this form die at the hands of standardized testing. To attempt to write about ones experiences or things one has read - with no expectations, except the expectation of a journey through the mind, where one may bump into all sorts of wonders and miraculous objects and familiar or unfamiliar skeletons. But no. Sorry kids - hamburgers for everyone!
Tonight, all across America, tens of thousands of teachers and professors count and recount the remaining essays in their grading pile. It is their most dreaded teaching activity. It is painstaking. It is grammar. It is word by word.
In 1580, Michel de Montaigne, the world's first essayist and self-acknowledged inventor of the genre, set out to "attempt." Attempt what? He did not know, nor did he care whether he succeeded. He wanted only to write to understand himself better. And who better to do it? As he writes, he is the world's greatest expert on the subject! And there is no subject more important to him!
And so, he isn't bothered if his essay on experience turns into an essay on farting. Farting is experience, after all! And he will also write what his mustache smells like, and that he likes scratching the insides of his ears, and that we say bless you after we sneeze because the air is coming out of our heads, not our butts (and he'll write, don't laugh! I read it in Socrates!) He needs the high of books and the low of lived bodily experience to express himself - and the goal here is to express himself and to understand himself. There is no other goal. He is not practicing his grammar or making a logical argument or finding three examples of imagery in Ovid. No. It's just an attempt.
Compare to the hamburger essays that we force down our childrens' throats these days (the standardized 5-paragraph essay is sometimes even called the hamburger essay - it's got bread (fluff!), you see, at the beginning and end, and three ingredients or examples). We say this hamburger should look like these hamburgers. Say the same thing at the beginning and the end - do not attempt anything. Nothing should change. Nothing is tried, tested. Everything should be so logical, correct. Do not explore. Just do these three things. Do them again and again, and most importantly, do them like this on the test.
It saddens me to see this form die at the hands of standardized testing. To attempt to write about ones experiences or things one has read - with no expectations, except the expectation of a journey through the mind, where one may bump into all sorts of wonders and miraculous objects and familiar or unfamiliar skeletons. But no. Sorry kids - hamburgers for everyone!
May 19, 2016
فساد قرن با همکاری فرد فرد ما پدید می آید: کسانی با خیانت و کسانی با بی عدالتی یا بی دینی یا ستمگری یا حرص و آز و یا درنده خویی، هرکس بر حسب توان خود. ضعیف ترین کسان با حماقت و بطالت و بیکارگی. و من در زمره ی اینانم. میشل دو مونتنی
نخستین بار نام مونتنی در کتاب مکتب های ادبی رضا سیدحسینی به چشمم خورد. مقاله ای از مونتنی در انتهای فصل باروک برای روشن کردن فضای فکری رایج آن دوره. مقاله ارتباط مستقیمی با موضوع فصل نداشت و اطلاعات جدیدی نیز ارائه نمی کرد، با این حال بخاطر شیوه ی استدلال و اندیشه ی ناب مونتنی ( که در آن دوره بسیار درخشان و در حکم نگین جریان روشنفکری فرانسه جای دارد)، مجذوب نوشته هایش شدم. مونتنی فرانسوی، از اندیشمندان و متفکران اومانیست قرن شانزده میلادی ست. یک شکاک (تنها ابلهان اند که مطمئن اند) با تفکر انتقادی و یک ماتریالیست. او موضع خاصی به دین ندارد و حتی در بعضی موارد به دفاع از جایگاه کلیسا بر می خیزد، با این حال او بارها به شیوه های گوناگون تکرار می کند که باید از هر تفکر جزمی دوری کرد و در مقالاتش نیز همین شیوه را پیش می گیرد. مونتنی اشاره ی خاصی به مابعدالطبیعه نمی کند و از سویی روح و جسم را متحد و غیرقابل تفکیک می داند. این موضوع را می توان مهر تاییدی بر ماتریالیست بودن او دانست. مونتنی شیفته ی اعتدال و میانه روی تفکر یونانی ست و در نگارش مقالات، پیوسته به آثار اندیشمندان و نویسندگان یونان و روم باستان رجوع می کند و در مقابل به مخالفت با باروک می پردازد. آثار مونتنی پس از او بر کلاسیسم تاثیر عمده ای گذاشت، از این رو می توان وی را از پیشروان اصلی کلاسیسم فرانسوی دانست، هرچند که آثار وی در ساختار و محتوا آنچنان کلاسیک نیست. او با صداقت تمام زشتی ها انسان را یادآور می شود و حقارت او را تصویر می کند
آیا می توان چیزی به مضحکی این آفریده بینوا و نزار تصور کرد که نه تنها مالک خود نیست بلکه در معرض آزارهای همه چیزهاست و با این همه، خود را خواجه و سرور کائناتی می داند که شناخت کمترین جز آن در توانش نیست، چه رسد به اینکه بر آن فرمان راند. در لجنزار و کودزار جهان آشیان دارد و به بدترین و بیجانترین و گندیدهترین بخش کائنات، در پایینترین طبقه ی سرای و هرچه دورتر از گنبد افلاک، با پستترین جانوران در بند و میخکوب استو بیان این موضوع بدین شیوه در تضاد با اصول کلاسیسم است. مونتنی همواره و در همه چیز، حتی در حرفه ی خودش، پیروی از قوانین طبیعت را توصیه می کند: هروقت بیمار شوم، دست طبیعت را آزاد می گذارم و می پندارم که برای دفاع از خود در برابر حمله هایی که به آن می شود، به چنگ و دندان مجهز شده است
دریاره تتبعات
مونتنی در این کتاب موضوعات گوناگون را بررسی و در مورد آنها به تفصیل به بحث می نشیند. هدف او از این کار تنها یک چیز است: قضاوت قوه ی داوری خود. تتبعات موضوع واحدی ندارد و مونتنی در این اثر از هر چمن گلی می چیند و از هر دری سخنی می راند. آنچه که به مطالب انسجام می دهد، شخصیت خود نویسنده ست. مونتنی موضوع محوری کتاب خود است و نمی توان تتبعات را جدا از شخصیت وی خواند و فهمید. در تتبعات می گوید: من شخصیت خود را به مثابه ی مضمون و موضوع بر خویشتن عرضه داشته ام. بیش از آنچه کتابم مرا ساخت، من آن را نپرداختم و این موضوع به تتبعات صداقت و بی پیرایگی خاصی می بخشد که جاذبه ی اصلی کتاب است. مونتنی همچون آینه، به نقد تفکر، کردار و حتی جسم خویش می نشیند، آنچنان که اعتراف می کند از نقد و قضاوت و سخن دشمنان نمی ترسد، زیرا کسی نمی تواند بدتر از آنچه خود درباره ی کتاب و خویش گفته سخنی بر زبان براند. پیام تتبعات را می توان در سوال "چگ��نه باید زیست؟" خلاصه کرد. و مونتی به این سوال اینگونه پاسخ می دهد: در لحظه و مطابق میل طبیعت با لذتی مقرون به فضیلت و تقوا
July 13, 2020
Inventer--and perfecter--of the "trial composition," essayer. None better, after four centuries, though we have improved lying through essays. We call it "news": global warming? What global warming. NSA Spying? What spying--all legal.
Montaigne can be read a page or two daily, like Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selbourne," Thoreau's Journals, Emily Dickinsons' poems, or the Bible. Two centuries before Natural History of Selbourne, Montaigne doubts "Natural Laws," says no-one agrees on the four said to exist, nor in specific national laws, "which the mere crossing of a river turns into a crime"(II.26). No, the only laws are divine, though there, too, some in France made legal what was previously a capital offense--the footnote says, "M was probably thinking of the Protestant faith." (Montaigne's own mother's family was Protestant, converting from Judaism--Antoinette Louppe; his father, Pierre Eyquem, a Catholic businessman who became mayor of Bordeaux, and bought the Montaigne estate. xx)
"Of the elephants it may be said they share with us a kind of religion; for they may be seen, after several ablutions and purifications, to raise thier trunks, as we do our arms, of their own accord to stand with their eyes fixed in the direction of the rising sun, in a long meditation and contemplation"(II.460).
Montaigne's favorite Latin poem was Vergil's Georgics, though he quotes Horace a lot; he prefers Terence to Plautus, from whom Shakespeare gleaned whole plays. I prefer Plautus, largely for his colloqial Latin and his wit. Montaigne also undervalues Ovid, Shakespeare's other great source of stories and of wit--Donne literally steals one of Ovid's Amores or Ars Amatoria (see my review).
Michel himself warns of the "Danger of too much reading," but that is pious reading, withdrawing from the world, even not eating and thereby endangering one's health. Lively, witty reading does not endanger; "For my part, I love such books as are either easy and entertaining, and that tickle my fancy, or give me comfort" (I. 244).
On the "Custom of Wearing Clothes," "How many men, especially in Turkey, go naked as a matter of religion!..." One man in sable asked a cheerful beggar in the street how he could bear the cold, "And you sir, you have your face uncovered; now, I am all face"(I.225).
Renaissance sumptuary laws prevented the middle class from wearing aristocrat's clothes, which in England they could only wear on stage. The laws prevented wearing of velvet and gold braid, also silks. But in the mourning for Henry II so many wore black silk that it positively went out of fashion. Montaigne salutes Zaleucus of the Locrians, ruling that "A woman of free condition may not be followed by more than one maid, unless she be drunk...That, excepting keepers of brothels, no man shall wear a ring of gold upon his finger"(I.264).
Read in the Oxford Standard Authors, 1927 hardback.
Montaigne can be read a page or two daily, like Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selbourne," Thoreau's Journals, Emily Dickinsons' poems, or the Bible. Two centuries before Natural History of Selbourne, Montaigne doubts "Natural Laws," says no-one agrees on the four said to exist, nor in specific national laws, "which the mere crossing of a river turns into a crime"(II.26). No, the only laws are divine, though there, too, some in France made legal what was previously a capital offense--the footnote says, "M was probably thinking of the Protestant faith." (Montaigne's own mother's family was Protestant, converting from Judaism--Antoinette Louppe; his father, Pierre Eyquem, a Catholic businessman who became mayor of Bordeaux, and bought the Montaigne estate. xx)
"Of the elephants it may be said they share with us a kind of religion; for they may be seen, after several ablutions and purifications, to raise thier trunks, as we do our arms, of their own accord to stand with their eyes fixed in the direction of the rising sun, in a long meditation and contemplation"(II.460).
Montaigne's favorite Latin poem was Vergil's Georgics, though he quotes Horace a lot; he prefers Terence to Plautus, from whom Shakespeare gleaned whole plays. I prefer Plautus, largely for his colloqial Latin and his wit. Montaigne also undervalues Ovid, Shakespeare's other great source of stories and of wit--Donne literally steals one of Ovid's Amores or Ars Amatoria (see my review).
Michel himself warns of the "Danger of too much reading," but that is pious reading, withdrawing from the world, even not eating and thereby endangering one's health. Lively, witty reading does not endanger; "For my part, I love such books as are either easy and entertaining, and that tickle my fancy, or give me comfort" (I. 244).
On the "Custom of Wearing Clothes," "How many men, especially in Turkey, go naked as a matter of religion!..." One man in sable asked a cheerful beggar in the street how he could bear the cold, "And you sir, you have your face uncovered; now, I am all face"(I.225).
Renaissance sumptuary laws prevented the middle class from wearing aristocrat's clothes, which in England they could only wear on stage. The laws prevented wearing of velvet and gold braid, also silks. But in the mourning for Henry II so many wore black silk that it positively went out of fashion. Montaigne salutes Zaleucus of the Locrians, ruling that "A woman of free condition may not be followed by more than one maid, unless she be drunk...That, excepting keepers of brothels, no man shall wear a ring of gold upon his finger"(I.264).
Read in the Oxford Standard Authors, 1927 hardback.
September 3, 2009
I kind of half jokingly refer to this book as "the introverts bible". Certainly a must read, especially for those of us who live a more contemplative life. The Essays are moving and funny, edifying, and at times very sad. Montaigne's observations range from the very specific and particular to the huge and universal. I don't always agree with what he says, but I am engaged nonetheless. I feel as I read this book that I'm always in conversation with him.
I know I will be reading and re-reading The Essays throughout the course of my whole life. I know that my understanding for them will deepen and change. Montaigne himself continued to edit the essays until his death. This sort of journey is much of what the book is about... all culminating in the most moving essay of them all: "On Experience."
I recommend this edition especially for its fantastic translator. It is wholly accessible while at the same time maintaining the humor and beauty of Montaigne's words.
I know I will be reading and re-reading The Essays throughout the course of my whole life. I know that my understanding for them will deepen and change. Montaigne himself continued to edit the essays until his death. This sort of journey is much of what the book is about... all culminating in the most moving essay of them all: "On Experience."
I recommend this edition especially for its fantastic translator. It is wholly accessible while at the same time maintaining the humor and beauty of Montaigne's words.
December 4, 2016
Sabahattin Eyüboğlu'nun muhteşem çevirisi ve derlemesiyle okuma şansı bulduğum Montaigne'in "Denemeler / Essays" eseri yazarın hayata dair düşüncelerini kendi tecrübeleriyle samimi bir dille paylaştığı kapağını her açtığınızda sizle konuşan tek kelimeyle mükemmel bir başucu başyapıtı. Gönül isterdi ki Eyüboğlu 1400 sayfalık tüm eseri bizlere çevirebilseydi; çünkü "Denemeler"i okurken nadir yaşadığım o kitabın bitmemesini istediğim hislerini tekrar yaşadım. Her okuduğumda hayata olan bakış açımı değiştiren eserde herhalde çizmediğim satır kalmadı. Homeros'tan Cicero'ya bir sürü edebi referans barındıran kitaptan Montaigne'in neden bu kadar yüce bir yazar olduğunu anlamamak mümkün değil. Felsefe alanında çığır açan samimi ve yalın bakış açısıyla kendine farklı bir yer edinen Montaigne'in diğerlerinin aksine kimseye bir şey kanıtlamama çabasına hayran kalıyorsunuz. Montaigne hayatı kendi için yaşıyor; doğruları kendi için arıyor ve öğreniyor; kitabı da kendi için yazıyor aslında. Çünkü bu hayat kendimize ait;, biz kendimizi sevmezsek, kendimize saygı göstermezsek ve dikkat etmezsek başkaları neden etsin. "Denemeler" kalbimde bambaşka bir yer etti benim. Tekrar tekrar okunması gereken gerçek bir başyapıt olmakla beraber umarım ülkemizde de tam versiyonunun kaliteli bir çevirisi raflarda yerini alır. Montaigne'i çevirebilmek için öncelikle Montaigne'i anlamak gerektiğine inanıyorum; bu yüzden de ona layık bir tam çeviriyi okuyabilecek miyiz açıkçası pek emin değilim.
03.12.2016
İstanbul, Türkiye
Alp Turgut
http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...
03.12.2016
İstanbul, Türkiye
Alp Turgut
http://www.filmdoktoru.com/kitap-labo...
January 17, 2023
5 years after starting this, I finally finished it. At one point I was asked if it was normal to have a crush on a man who died 450 years ago, I do not pretend to know the answer to that but in many ways the 5 years I spent with him did feel like a strange marriage. At times I couldn’t get enough of him, reading his musings on everything from cannibals to how to raise children at every available opportunity and at others, needing a break, I left him unattended.
What draws me to him is his curiosity about the world and his ability to consider a multitude of views and opinions. Each page is littered with quotes from Latin or Greek writers which he uses, not to support his views but as a starting point to explore what he thinks of things. He does not judge and looks at everything as a unique consideration, so unlike today where opinions can only be polarised and there is scant interest in hearing an opposing view let alone giving it any ground. He judges no one, his famous assertion that that, ‘nothing human is alien to me’ seems to be one that he lived by as well as espoused. Remarkably frank, he is very aware of his own failings both professionally, personally and physically and shares them with us in a spirit of openness rather than seeking sympathy. Over the 5 years I read this book I watched Montaigne grow old, his health start to fail, he suffered from kidney stones which must have been agony at that time with no cure or pain relief, and his opinions change – the final section has him revisiting some topics he had previously written on and taking a different stance.
This is a remarkable insight into a man’s mind, his opinions and how he came to them. It is the whole world explored in a domestic home. It is strange to find yourself relating in so many ways to someone separated by centuries from you, but he is proof that human nature is unchanging. So much is witty and wise and quotable that my phone is full of screenshots of snippets that made me laugh or struck me as very true.
If you undertake to take Montaigne into your life, congratulations you won’t regret it. Your life will be enriched by getting to know the man. Just be aware that the headings of the essays are not always indicative of what will follow as his writings are like a pleasant walk where you meander off the path to follow interesting diversions. It is also worth reading them in order as you can then see him mature and refer back to his earlier writings.
“To conclude: there is no permanent existence either in our being or in that of objects. We ourselves, our faculty of judgment and all mortal things are flowing and rolling ceaselessly; nothing certain can be established about one from the other, since both judged and judging are ever shifting and changing.” “
What draws me to him is his curiosity about the world and his ability to consider a multitude of views and opinions. Each page is littered with quotes from Latin or Greek writers which he uses, not to support his views but as a starting point to explore what he thinks of things. He does not judge and looks at everything as a unique consideration, so unlike today where opinions can only be polarised and there is scant interest in hearing an opposing view let alone giving it any ground. He judges no one, his famous assertion that that, ‘nothing human is alien to me’ seems to be one that he lived by as well as espoused. Remarkably frank, he is very aware of his own failings both professionally, personally and physically and shares them with us in a spirit of openness rather than seeking sympathy. Over the 5 years I read this book I watched Montaigne grow old, his health start to fail, he suffered from kidney stones which must have been agony at that time with no cure or pain relief, and his opinions change – the final section has him revisiting some topics he had previously written on and taking a different stance.
This is a remarkable insight into a man’s mind, his opinions and how he came to them. It is the whole world explored in a domestic home. It is strange to find yourself relating in so many ways to someone separated by centuries from you, but he is proof that human nature is unchanging. So much is witty and wise and quotable that my phone is full of screenshots of snippets that made me laugh or struck me as very true.
If you undertake to take Montaigne into your life, congratulations you won’t regret it. Your life will be enriched by getting to know the man. Just be aware that the headings of the essays are not always indicative of what will follow as his writings are like a pleasant walk where you meander off the path to follow interesting diversions. It is also worth reading them in order as you can then see him mature and refer back to his earlier writings.
“To conclude: there is no permanent existence either in our being or in that of objects. We ourselves, our faculty of judgment and all mortal things are flowing and rolling ceaselessly; nothing certain can be established about one from the other, since both judged and judging are ever shifting and changing.” “
July 17, 2024
Personally I favour an obscure mute life which slips by
I'd dipped in and out of these essays before for work but this is the first time I've read them through in total - and I have to confess to being a bit underwhelmed. I think it's Montaigne's reputation as a philosopher (he isn't), as a great thinker (he isn't) and as a sort of sixteenth century Everyman (he's certainly not) which set up expectations that have now crumbled in the face of an actual full engagement with Montaigne's own writings.
A lot of this review is, as ever, completely subjective. At heart, Montaigne is conservative and essentially supports the status quo both culturally and politically: as he says about his time as Mayor of Bordeux, 'I had nothing to do except to preserve things and to keep them going; those are dull and unnoticeable tasks'. He describes the qualities of his term in office, flaws and all, as being someone with 'no memory, no concentration, no experience, no drive; no hatred either, no ambition, no covetousness, no ferocity'. It's honest, for sure, so there's that! But these are the words of someone, as we would say, overly privileged through an accident of birth who feels entitled to status, authority and power but no responsibility.
This is completely in keeping with Montaigne's politics, domestic and wider, which seep through these essays: he is so misogynistic that it's laughable; he makes barely a mention of the vast household that must support his house and estates and admits that he doesn't know how to speak comfortably to servants and anyone who works under or for him; and he supports the rank and hierarchy that places the king at the top of the social pyramid with barely-hidden contempt, in some places, for the vast 'mob' of French people who live at the bottom.
All this is typical for the sixteenth century, you might argue, and - to some extent - that's right. But this is also a time of huge intellectual ferment when traditional ideas were being challenged in all kinds of way, whether the questioning of the doctrines of the Catholic church, the flattening of social structures brought about by a nascent 'middle class' of bureaucrats, traders, artists, writers and 'civil servants', or the ongoing querelle des femmes, a humanist debate across Europe about the nature and place of gender, especially the role of women. This is a time famous for its queens (Mary I, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Catherine de Medici, Isabella of Spain just for starters), for religious reformation, for the growth of republicanism partly influenced by the classical Roman texts that Montaigne reveres. But I'm not completely sure that all this upheaval and early modernism is essentially captured in Montaigne's essays.
On the last point, the 'renaissance' of classical learning, Montaigne undoubtedly has the utmost respect for Greek and Latin literature. I can't help wondering, though, how many texts he's read in full. To be fair, humanist education was centred on florilegia i.e. anthologies of pre-cut axioms and short extracts from the classics that didn't necessarily encourage original thinking or even an engagement with the full texts themselves. This was partly because classical texts were still in the process of being emended and printed and remained expensive. School boys (and the few girls who were able to be educated) created common-place books where they copied out extracts often under pre-determined headings such as 'friendship', 'virtue', and 'honour' - and we can see this technique reflected in Montaigne's essays where he so often drops in a two or three line quotation to illustrate his point, even if it's vastly out of context for the text from which it comes.
It may well be that I do Montaigne a disservice here: I certainly know that his copy of Lucretius' De Rerum Natura is still extant and shows extensive marginalia along with an epigraph in which Montaigne imagines Lucretian atoms coming together at a point in the future to create an other Montaigne!
Nevertheless, I found it disappointing that Montaigne himself discusses the fact that these essays say things he's long known or thought: they're not the results of new thinking or research or debate. They're accepting of conventional ways of thinking and knowing and living; they don't challenge or probe or tentatively strike new ground. Even when Montaigne sounds less reactionary such as when he discusses exploration and colonialism, he's following in the footsteps of Jesuit priests, for example, who wrote records of their horrified experience of the exploitation of people and places in the New World.
Montaigne is a Stoic and thus one of his greatest values is moderation, not something to be sneezed at. Yet, at the same time, he promotes disengagement: he doesn't want passion, he doesn't believe in a struggle for change, he thinks all ambition is bad (I might agree with him in the case of ambition for money or power, but what about ambition for social justice or fairness?)
In the end, for me (and I know many people will disagree which is fine), these are the essays of a man with the money, land, estates, status and power who can afford to retreat into his, literal, tower (though definitely not ivory!) and ramble around his books and write with no concern for what an audience might think or what work his thoughts might do in the world. There are things I can relate to such as when he talks about the vagaries of humanity or how to live in the face of inevitable death or his deep love for his friend, La Boétie - but, too often, I find Montaigne's thoughts unsurprising and, I admit, superficial and somewhat pedestrian. I'm glad I've read these essays but they rather fade against the prose writings, for me, of fellow sixteenth century 'thinkers' like Philip Sidney and John Donne.
With thanks to the Montaigne group, especially Fionnuala, David, Kalliope, J.C., and Dianneb who have been delightful companions through Montaigne.
December 7, 2018
فسادِ قرن با همکاری فرد فردِ ما پدید می آید: کسانی با خیانت و کسانی با بی عدالتی یا بی دینی یا ستمگری یا حرص و آز یا درنده خویی، هر کس بر حسب توانِ خود؛ ضعیف ترین کسان با حماقت و بطالت و بیکارگی. و من در زمره ی اینانم
صفخه ی آخر 224
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خواندن این گزیده برای همگان راهگشاست به گمانم. که مونتنی بنای کا�� را گذاشته است بر نقد خود. بر درخودفرورفتن و رفتن. این فرو رفتن اما با جدا شدن از خود پدید می آید. روزگار مونتنی، مانند روزگار ما فرو رفته در لجه ی لجن آلود تعصب ها و بی خردی هاست. انگار که آزاردهنده ترین است این برای او و سپس گوشه گیری اش و دور شدن اش و به خود برگشتن اش. بنابراین او خود را به نقد می کشد و خود را محکوم می داند تا آنچه را از بشر دانسته است(با خوانده های بسیارش و تفکر در نوشته ها و احوال خردمندان باستان تا زمانه ی خودش) پیش رو قرار دهد از راهِ خودش. نقد را از خود آغاز می کند تا این درس را بیاموزد که بنای ویرانی از درونِ فرد فردِ جامعه پدید می آید. نقدِ خود برای نقدِ احوال زمانه و چه چیزی هوشمندانه تر از این
بگویم که گویا کتاب یک بار بیشتر به چاپ نرسیده است و چه بسا یافتنش بسیار دشوار. اما پیشنهاد می کنم برای شناختِ آگاهانه و آشنایی دقیق تر با جستارهای مونتنی و خودش، کتابِ در باب دوستی و دو جستار دیگر با بازگردانِ جانانه و عیار بالای خانم دکتر قدکپور از انتشارات گمان را ابتدا بخوانید. در مقدمه ی آن کتاب شرحِ تمیزی از مونتنی و جستارهای او به دست داده شده است. و سه جستار بی کم و کاست در آن کتاب برای خواندن هست. تتبعات بیشتر به دل خواهد نشست پس از آن آشنایی، که تتبعات گزیده و چکیده ای ست از تمامِ سه جلد نوشته های مونتنی
مونتنی یک برهنگی روح و فکر و جان پدید می آورد خواندنش برای آدمیزاد. شاید برای ما فارسی زبان ها که دسترسی به مجموعه ی کامل نداریم داوری کردن چندان روا نباشد اما با همین اندک خوانده ها بسیار و بسیار می شود آموخت و ای کاش که به کار ببنیدیم آنها را
و حال پایان سخن اینکه، آن بالانشینانِ خیالِ خام برده از دانش و هوش و قدرت، ای کاش و فقط تنها ای کاش؛ کمی، آنی، اندکی چشم های نابینای روح خود را باز می کردند بر خردمندی و می دانستند که ژرفای جهالتهشان چگونه یک سرزمین را می تواند تا ژرف ترینِ تاریکی ها فرو اندازد. مردمان چگونه فرو می روند در تعفن و از بوی آن لذت می برند هر دم و چگونه آیندگان اگر بیایند بپذیرند بزرگی ی این نادانی ی شیراز بندی شده را؟ مکتوب و ثبت شده را؟ چگونه. و پرسش پایانی و بی پایان: چرا انسان این همه اصرار دارد به نادانی و تقدیسِ جهالت؟ به بی خبر بودن و ماندن در بی خبری؟ تن دادن به فقرِ فکر و سر در آخور دروغ زنان فرو بردن؟ آیا این از سرشت آدمی ست؟ آیا این سرنوشت بشر است؟ نادانی و نادانی و نادانی، آری هست آیا
خواندن مونتنی این خراش های عمیق و خون آلود و دردناک را هم بر جان دارد، اما مگر برای همین زخم ها نیست که نمی شود رها کرد. نمی شود سکوت کرد. نمی شود نشد
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بعد که کتاب تمام شده بود و من می رفتم بندر که بروم کنارِ دریا و حالِ هوا خوب بود و این ترانه ی تا اندازه ای تازه را گوش می کردم از گروه بُمرانی به نام خارجی. و خیال می کردم که یک روز نه شاید دور و بی گمان نه ابدن نزدیک؛ دلم برات تنگ می شه. این را به خالو گفتم که داشت تورش را می کشید به قایق. صیدِ دیشب هیچ نداشته بود انگار. دستِ خالی. سیگار روی لب. و اتفاقن آفتابِ قشنگی هم می بارید
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سپاس از دوستِ گودریدزی خانم رویا که انگیزه و سببِ گشتن، جُستن و خواندنِ تتبعات خوندن نوشته ی(ریوی یو) دقیق او هم بود بر کتاب
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سپاس از آقای شادمان که نامه ها و بسته ها را هر روز جا به جا می کند و سپاسگزاری کردن از او برای تمامِ روز دلش را شاد می کند
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سپاس از یک عصرِ پاییزِ دل انگیز که من کتاب را در قفسه ی کتابخانه ای متروک، دور از تمام آدمیزادها یافته بودم سرمست
سپاس از خنده های شبیه تر از شعر تو به غزل
1397/09/15
صفخه ی آخر 224
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خواندن این گزیده برای همگان راهگشاست به گمانم. که مونتنی بنای کا�� را گذاشته است بر نقد خود. بر درخودفرورفتن و رفتن. این فرو رفتن اما با جدا شدن از خود پدید می آید. روزگار مونتنی، مانند روزگار ما فرو رفته در لجه ی لجن آلود تعصب ها و بی خردی هاست. انگار که آزاردهنده ترین است این برای او و سپس گوشه گیری اش و دور شدن اش و به خود برگشتن اش. بنابراین او خود را به نقد می کشد و خود را محکوم می داند تا آنچه را از بشر دانسته است(با خوانده های بسیارش و تفکر در نوشته ها و احوال خردمندان باستان تا زمانه ی خودش) پیش رو قرار دهد از راهِ خودش. نقد را از خود آغاز می کند تا این درس را بیاموزد که بنای ویرانی از درونِ فرد فردِ جامعه پدید می آید. نقدِ خود برای نقدِ احوال زمانه و چه چیزی هوشمندانه تر از این
بگویم که گویا کتاب یک بار بیشتر به چاپ نرسیده است و چه بسا یافتنش بسیار دشوار. اما پیشنهاد می کنم برای شناختِ آگاهانه و آشنایی دقیق تر با جستارهای مونتنی و خودش، کتابِ در باب دوستی و دو جستار دیگر با بازگردانِ جانانه و عیار بالای خانم دکتر قدکپور از انتشارات گمان را ابتدا بخوانید. در مقدمه ی آن کتاب شرحِ تمیزی از مونتنی و جستارهای او به دست داده شده است. و سه جستار بی کم و کاست در آن کتاب برای خواندن هست. تتبعات بیشتر به دل خواهد نشست پس از آن آشنایی، که تتبعات گزیده و چکیده ای ست از تمامِ سه جلد نوشته های مونتنی
مونتنی یک برهنگی روح و فکر و جان پدید می آورد خواندنش برای آدمیزاد. شاید برای ما فارسی زبان ها که دسترسی به مجموعه ی کامل نداریم داوری کردن چندان روا نباشد اما با همین اندک خوانده ها بسیار و بسیار می شود آموخت و ای کاش که به کار ببنیدیم آنها را
و حال پایان سخن اینکه، آن بالانشینانِ خیالِ خام برده از دانش و هوش و قدرت، ای کاش و فقط تنها ای کاش؛ کمی، آنی، اندکی چشم های نابینای روح خود را باز می کردند بر خردمندی و می دانستند که ژرفای جهالتهشان چگونه یک سرزمین را می تواند تا ژرف ترینِ تاریکی ها فرو اندازد. مردمان چگونه فرو می روند در تعفن و از بوی آن لذت می برند هر دم و چگونه آیندگان اگر بیایند بپذیرند بزرگی ی این نادانی ی شیراز بندی شده را؟ مکتوب و ثبت شده را؟ چگونه. و پرسش پایانی و بی پایان: چرا انسان این همه اصرار دارد به نادانی و تقدیسِ جهالت؟ به بی خبر بودن و ماندن در بی خبری؟ تن دادن به فقرِ فکر و سر در آخور دروغ زنان فرو بردن؟ آیا این از سرشت آدمی ست؟ آیا این سرنوشت بشر است؟ نادانی و نادانی و نادانی، آری هست آیا
خواندن مونتنی این خراش های عمیق و خون آلود و دردناک را هم بر جان دارد، اما مگر برای همین زخم ها نیست که نمی شود رها کرد. نمی شود سکوت کرد. نمی شود نشد
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بعد که کتاب تمام شده بود و من می رفتم بندر که بروم کنارِ دریا و حالِ هوا خوب بود و این ترانه ی تا اندازه ای تازه را گوش می کردم از گروه بُمرانی به نام خارجی. و خیال می کردم که یک روز نه شاید دور و بی گمان نه ابدن نزدیک؛ دلم برات تنگ می شه. این را به خالو گفتم که داشت تورش را می کشید به قایق. صیدِ دیشب هیچ نداشته بود انگار. دستِ خالی. سیگار روی لب. و اتفاقن آفتابِ قشنگی هم می بارید
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سپاس از دوستِ گودریدزی خانم رویا که انگیزه و سببِ گشتن، جُستن و خواندنِ تتبعات خوندن نوشته ی(ریوی یو) دقیق او هم بود بر کتاب
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سپاس از آقای شادمان که نامه ها و بسته ها را هر روز جا به جا می کند و سپاسگزاری کردن از او برای تمامِ روز دلش را شاد می کند
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سپاس از یک عصرِ پاییزِ دل انگیز که من کتاب را در قفسه ی کتابخانه ای متروک، دور از تمام آدمیزادها یافته بودم سرمست
سپاس از خنده های شبیه تر از شعر تو به غزل
1397/09/15
Want to read
September 10, 2016A Montaigne essay a day keeps the doctor away.
BOOK I
1. We reach the same end by discrepant means ★★★★
2. On sadness ★★★★
3. Our emotions get carried away beyond us
4. How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones
5. Whether the governor of a besieged fortress should go out and parley
6. The hour of parleying is dangerous
7. That our deeds are judged by the intention
8. On idleness ★★★★★
9. On liars ★★★★★
10. On a ready or hesitant delivery ★★★★
11. On prognostications
12. On constancy
13. Ceremonial at the meeting of kings
14. That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
15. One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without a good reason
16. On punishing cowardice
17. The doings of certain ambassadors
18. On fear
19. That we should not be deemed happy till after our death
20. To philosophize is to learn how to die
21. On the power of the imagination
22. One man’s profit is another man’s loss
23. On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law
24. Same design: differing outcomes
25. On schoolmasters’ learning
26. On educating children
27. That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities
28. On affectionate relationships
29. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boëtie
30. On moderation
31. On the Cannibals
32. Judgements on God’s ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence
33. On fleeing from pleasures at the cost of one’s life
34. Fortune is often found in Reason’s train
35. Something lacking in our civil administrations
36. On the custom of wearing clothing
37. On Cato the Younger
38. How we weep and laugh at the same thing
39. On solitude ★★★★
* Review here.
40. Reflections upon Cicero
41. On not sharing one’s fame
42. On the inequality there is between us
43. On sumptuary laws
44. On sleep ★★★
45. On the Battle of Dreux
46. On names
47. On the uncertainty of our judgement
48. On war-horses
49. On ancient customs
50. On Democritus and Heraclitus
51. On the vanity of words
52. On the frugality of the Ancients
53. On one of Caesar’s sayings
54. On vain cunning devices
55. On smells
56. On prayer
57. On the length of life
BOOK II
1. On the inconstancy of our actions
2. On drunkenness
3. A custom of the Isle of Cea
4. ‘Work can wait till tomorrow’
5. On conscience
6. On practice
7. On rewards for honour
8. On the affection of fathers for their children
9. On the armour of the Parthians
10. On books
11. On cruelty
12. An apology for Raymond Sebond
13. On judging someone else’s death
14. How our mind tangles itself up
15. That difficulty increases desire
16. On glory
17. On presumption
18. On giving the lie
19. On freedom of conscience
20. We can savour nothing pure
21. Against indolence
22. On riding ‘in post’
23. On bad means to a good end
24. On the greatness of Rome
25. On not pretending to be ill
26. On thumbs
27. On cowardice, the mother of cruelty
28. There is a season for everything
29. On virtue
30. On a monster-child
31. On anger
32. In defence of Seneca and Plutarch
33. The tale of Spurina
34. Observations on Julius Caesar’s methods of waging war
35. On three good wives
36. On the most excellent of men
37. On the resemblance of children to their fathers
BOOK III
1. On the useful and the honourable
2. On repenting
3. On three kinds of social intercourse
4. On diversion
5. On some lines of Virgil
6. On coaches
7. On high rank as a disadvantage
8. On the art of conversation
9. On vanity
10. On restraining your will
11. On the lame
12. On physiognomy
13. On experience
BOOK I
1. We reach the same end by discrepant means ★★★★
2. On sadness ★★★★
The force of extreme sadness inevitably stuns the whole of our soul, impeding her freedom of action.
Chi puo dir com'egli arde e in picciol fuoco –
[He who can describe how his heart is ablaze is burning on a small pyre]
Petrarch, Sonnet 137.
3. Our emotions get carried away beyond us
4. How the soul discharges its emotions against false objects when lacking real ones
5. Whether the governor of a besieged fortress should go out and parley
6. The hour of parleying is dangerous
7. That our deeds are judged by the intention
8. On idleness ★★★★★
When the soul is without a definite aim she gets lost; for, as they say, if you are everywhere you are nowhere.
Variam semper dant otia mentis
[Idleness always produces fickle changes of mind]
Lucan, Pharsalia, IV, 704.
9. On liars ★★★★★
10. On a ready or hesitant delivery ★★★★
We can see that in the case of the gift of speaking well: some have such a prompt facility and (as we say) such ease in ‘getting it out’, that they are always ready anywhere: others, more hesitant, never speak without thinking and working it all out beforehand.
11. On prognostications
12. On constancy
13. Ceremonial at the meeting of kings
14. That the taste of good and evil things depends in large part on the opinion we have of them
15. One is punished for stubbornly defending a fort without a good reason
16. On punishing cowardice
17. The doings of certain ambassadors
18. On fear
19. That we should not be deemed happy till after our death
20. To philosophize is to learn how to die
21. On the power of the imagination
22. One man’s profit is another man’s loss
23. On habit: and on never easily changing a traditional law
24. Same design: differing outcomes
25. On schoolmasters’ learning
26. On educating children
27. That it is madness to judge the true and the false from our own capacities
28. On affectionate relationships
29. Nine-and-twenty sonnets of Estienne de La Boëtie
30. On moderation
31. On the Cannibals
32. Judgements on God’s ordinances must be embarked upon with prudence
33. On fleeing from pleasures at the cost of one’s life
34. Fortune is often found in Reason’s train
35. Something lacking in our civil administrations
36. On the custom of wearing clothing
37. On Cato the Younger
38. How we weep and laugh at the same thing
39. On solitude ★★★★
That is to say, let the rest be ours, but not so glued and joined to us that it cannot be pulled off without tearing away a piece of ourselves, skin and all.
* Review here.
40. Reflections upon Cicero
41. On not sharing one’s fame
42. On the inequality there is between us
43. On sumptuary laws
44. On sleep ★★★
Reason directs that we should always go the same way, but not always at the same pace.
45. On the Battle of Dreux
46. On names
47. On the uncertainty of our judgement
48. On war-horses
49. On ancient customs
50. On Democritus and Heraclitus
51. On the vanity of words
52. On the frugality of the Ancients
53. On one of Caesar’s sayings
54. On vain cunning devices
55. On smells
56. On prayer
57. On the length of life
BOOK II
1. On the inconstancy of our actions
2. On drunkenness
3. A custom of the Isle of Cea
4. ‘Work can wait till tomorrow’
5. On conscience
6. On practice
7. On rewards for honour
8. On the affection of fathers for their children
9. On the armour of the Parthians
10. On books
11. On cruelty
12. An apology for Raymond Sebond
13. On judging someone else’s death
14. How our mind tangles itself up
15. That difficulty increases desire
16. On glory
17. On presumption
18. On giving the lie
19. On freedom of conscience
20. We can savour nothing pure
21. Against indolence
22. On riding ‘in post’
23. On bad means to a good end
24. On the greatness of Rome
25. On not pretending to be ill
26. On thumbs
27. On cowardice, the mother of cruelty
28. There is a season for everything
29. On virtue
30. On a monster-child
31. On anger
32. In defence of Seneca and Plutarch
33. The tale of Spurina
34. Observations on Julius Caesar’s methods of waging war
35. On three good wives
36. On the most excellent of men
37. On the resemblance of children to their fathers
BOOK III
1. On the useful and the honourable
2. On repenting
3. On three kinds of social intercourse
4. On diversion
5. On some lines of Virgil
6. On coaches
7. On high rank as a disadvantage
8. On the art of conversation
9. On vanity
10. On restraining your will
11. On the lame
12. On physiognomy
13. On experience
February 15, 2011
Montaigne is one of my all-time favorite dudes - truly a bridge between eras and endowed with enough sagacity and wisdom to guide a nation. Wonderful and warm humanity and sparklingly sere humor, but he can chuck 'em, too: a handful of quiet paragraphs from his essays on Liars and Cowards scorches the flesh from deceitful bones and craven limbs.
Thanks to a screw-up by the company I ordered Screech's translation from I received two copies - one for my desk at the office, one for the table beside my bed at home. At work or at rest, Montaigne leads you true.
BTW - if the entire collection of essays seems too daunting a challenge, or too heavy to comfortably hold, there's an abridgement with an outstandingly smooth and literary translation by J. M. Cohen - perhaps more elegant than Screech's, more suave, but with all the edges sanded and hence less true to le Gros Guyennoise.
Thanks to a screw-up by the company I ordered Screech's translation from I received two copies - one for my desk at the office, one for the table beside my bed at home. At work or at rest, Montaigne leads you true.
BTW - if the entire collection of essays seems too daunting a challenge, or too heavy to comfortably hold, there's an abridgement with an outstandingly smooth and literary translation by J. M. Cohen - perhaps more elegant than Screech's, more suave, but with all the edges sanded and hence less true to le Gros Guyennoise.
December 3, 2023
Montaigne (1533 - 1592)
LES ESSAIS
For me to understand the classical author, I always try to situate his setting in time.
So I find it significant that he wrote this book only about fifty years after the start of the Renaissance. The Medieval Times in Europe.
He was a wealthy, well-educated French nobleman living at his family estate, Chateau de Montaigne, in Dordogne, France. There he dwelled on the upper floors of a large round tower, surrounded by over a thousand books. All the classics in Latin I imagine. He should be an honorary member of Good Reads.
He seems to have spent his younger years traveling on horseback through Europe, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, to study people and traditions and to look for medication to try and heal his malady of kidney stones.
He started writing Essays in 1572, thirty-nine years old.
From the very beginning of the publications, around 1580 the Essais attracted great attention and fame.
Over the centuries, from these medieval times, thousands of comments and many hundreds of books have been written about the Essais.
I will try to write down a few short comments on my perception and understanding.
The subjects of the essays are mainly a random selection of the human character and behavior in the various situations of life, and Montaigne’s contributions of strengths, weaknesses, and experiences.
From the 107 subjects in his three books, I will mention just a few: sadness, laziness, liars, consistency, fear, cannibalism, friendship, learning how to die, etc.
First, I found the reading difficult, even though my French Edition is praised as modern and easy to read. Progress was slow, almost every sentence needed to be studied, turned around, and digested.
Then there are many references on the subjects, in Latin, to Classic authors, like Epicurus, Seneca, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Lucrecia, Martial, and many others. To a point where you wonder where you read Montaigne’s ideas and where he draws from his mentors.
As mentioned by the enthusiastic editor of my edition: The Essays seems to have been written for all times, with so much wisdom in one book, it needs to be read over and over again, one will always find something new to be discovered.
The main quality I found, is his poetic style of writing his happy selection of vocabulary, and his way of painting each image in beautiful colors.
A soft, friendly, indolent philosophy of life.
LES ESSAIS
For me to understand the classical author, I always try to situate his setting in time.
So I find it significant that he wrote this book only about fifty years after the start of the Renaissance. The Medieval Times in Europe.
He was a wealthy, well-educated French nobleman living at his family estate, Chateau de Montaigne, in Dordogne, France. There he dwelled on the upper floors of a large round tower, surrounded by over a thousand books. All the classics in Latin I imagine. He should be an honorary member of Good Reads.
He seems to have spent his younger years traveling on horseback through Europe, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy, to study people and traditions and to look for medication to try and heal his malady of kidney stones.
He started writing Essays in 1572, thirty-nine years old.
From the very beginning of the publications, around 1580 the Essais attracted great attention and fame.
Over the centuries, from these medieval times, thousands of comments and many hundreds of books have been written about the Essais.
I will try to write down a few short comments on my perception and understanding.
The subjects of the essays are mainly a random selection of the human character and behavior in the various situations of life, and Montaigne’s contributions of strengths, weaknesses, and experiences.
From the 107 subjects in his three books, I will mention just a few: sadness, laziness, liars, consistency, fear, cannibalism, friendship, learning how to die, etc.
First, I found the reading difficult, even though my French Edition is praised as modern and easy to read. Progress was slow, almost every sentence needed to be studied, turned around, and digested.
Then there are many references on the subjects, in Latin, to Classic authors, like Epicurus, Seneca, Cicero, Virgil, Horace, Juvenal, Lucrecia, Martial, and many others. To a point where you wonder where you read Montaigne’s ideas and where he draws from his mentors.
As mentioned by the enthusiastic editor of my edition: The Essays seems to have been written for all times, with so much wisdom in one book, it needs to be read over and over again, one will always find something new to be discovered.
The main quality I found, is his poetic style of writing his happy selection of vocabulary, and his way of painting each image in beautiful colors.
A soft, friendly, indolent philosophy of life.
April 18, 2021
"in me omnis spes est mihi" yani diyor ki "bütün umudum kendimde". 20 yıl önce falan okumuştum, hala aynı etkide çarpabilen nadir cümlelerden.
July 10, 2021
A very colourful collection of thoughts/essays, written in a time when it was not a habit yet to expose oneself. I admire Montaigne's honesty and straightforwardness. He observes daily live and especially his own behavior. The extensive use of latin citations (as was common by humanists of that time) was irritating at first, but I got used to it. From a historical point of view his longer essay "Apology for Raymond Sebond" was very interesting; in it Montaigne pointedly acknowledges the limitations of reason.
My only issue with this book is that Montaigne kind of propagates mediocraty a bit too much. For him that was in line with the very popular stoicism of his time.
My only issue with this book is that Montaigne kind of propagates mediocraty a bit too much. For him that was in line with the very popular stoicism of his time.
May 2, 2012
so easy to read again and again. if you let him, montaigne will be your buddy for life. this is the great-great-great grandfather of the best blog on life you've read.
August 9, 2017
Boşuna 'Montaigne-Denemeler' olmamış bu kitap. Yazıldığı çağ ve ismi itibariyle hep kasvetli, ağır bir şeyler beklemiş ve okumayı ertelemiştim. Türk eğitim sisteminde hemen karşınıza çıkarıldığı için yirmi sene kadar ertelemiş olabilirim okumayı. Yalın ve hala geçerli bir felsefenin aktarıcısıymış aslında. Neyse ki okuyarak bu kaybımı telafi ettim.
January 26, 2019
Para que servem esses píncaros elevados da Filosofia, em cima dos quais nenhum ser humano se pode colocar, e essas regras que excedem a nossa prática e as nossas forças? Vejo frequentes vezes proporem-nos modelos de vida que nem quem os propõe tem alguma esperança de seguir ou, o que pior é, desejo de o fazer.
Ao pesquisar sobre Montaigne (na tentativa de melhor o entender e perdoá-lo pelos comentários pouco abonatórios sobre as mulheres) li que é considerado, por piada, o primeiro "bloguista". Faz-me algum sentido pelo carácter dos textos filosóficos, mas de leitura acessível, que abrangem variados assuntos relacionados com o ser humano, as relações entre eles e a sociedade.
Escritos há mais de quatrocentos anos, estes ensaios continuam a manter actualidade (as pessoas não mudam muito...) e identifiquei-me em vários pontos com a sua forma de pensar, embora Montaigne entendesse que eu não os deveria ler. (*)
Não me considero uma feminista desvairada mas, caramba, não consigo não me sentir "picada" quando as mulheres são vistas como adereços para agrado dos homens; incapazes de sentimentos belos e puros como o Da Amizade (**); preguiçosas, fúteis, vaidosas e exploradoras dos maridos (***). Compreendo que era a postura da época mas, se Montaigne continua vivo ainda hoje pela sua modernidade de pensamento, não posso aceitar a sua visão obsoleta, mesquinha e negativa de metade da humanidade.
Apenas transcrevi algumas frases que justificam a estrela negativa; tudo o resto é cinco estrelas e teria que transcrever quase todo o livro.
(*) "Se as mulheres prendadas de nascença me quisessem dar ouvidos, contentar-se-iam com fazer valer os seus dons naturais e próprios. (...) Que mais precisam que de viver amadas e honradas? (...) Se, no entanto, as incomodar ficarem atrás de nós seja no que for, e quiserem, por curiosidade, ter parte nos livros, é a poesia um entretenimento adequado às suas necessidades: é uma arte folgazã e subtil, adornada e palradora, toda ela prazer e exibição, como elas. Na parte da Filosofia, poderão respingar os argumentos que as ensinem a ajuizar dos nossos comportamentos e maneiras de ser, a defenderem-se das nossas traições, a regrar a impetuosidade dos seus próprios desejos e a suportar com resignação a rudeza de um marido, a importunidade dos anos e das rugas e outras coisas semelhantes. É esta, no máximo, a parte do saber que eu lhes destinaria."
(**)"A capacidade normal das mulheres não está à altura de uma confiança mútua e recíproca como a de que se nutre esse santo liame [a amizade], nem tão-pouco a alguma delas parece ser assaz constante para sustentar o vínculo de um nó tão apertado e duradouro (...) não há nenhum exemplo de que o sexo feminino haja sido capaz de lá chegar."
(***) Em muitos lares, irrita-me ver o marido regressar pelo meio-dia, carrancudo e deprimido, do desassossego dos negócios, enquanto a mulher se acha ainda a pentear-se e a ataviar-se ao toucador. É ridículo e injusto que a ociosidade das nossas mulheres seja sustentada com o nosso suor e o nosso trabalho."
Ao pesquisar sobre Montaigne (na tentativa de melhor o entender e perdoá-lo pelos comentários pouco abonatórios sobre as mulheres) li que é considerado, por piada, o primeiro "bloguista". Faz-me algum sentido pelo carácter dos textos filosóficos, mas de leitura acessível, que abrangem variados assuntos relacionados com o ser humano, as relações entre eles e a sociedade.
Escritos há mais de quatrocentos anos, estes ensaios continuam a manter actualidade (as pessoas não mudam muito...) e identifiquei-me em vários pontos com a sua forma de pensar, embora Montaigne entendesse que eu não os deveria ler. (*)
Não me considero uma feminista desvairada mas, caramba, não consigo não me sentir "picada" quando as mulheres são vistas como adereços para agrado dos homens; incapazes de sentimentos belos e puros como o Da Amizade (**); preguiçosas, fúteis, vaidosas e exploradoras dos maridos (***). Compreendo que era a postura da época mas, se Montaigne continua vivo ainda hoje pela sua modernidade de pensamento, não posso aceitar a sua visão obsoleta, mesquinha e negativa de metade da humanidade.
Apenas transcrevi algumas frases que justificam a estrela negativa; tudo o resto é cinco estrelas e teria que transcrever quase todo o livro.
(*) "Se as mulheres prendadas de nascença me quisessem dar ouvidos, contentar-se-iam com fazer valer os seus dons naturais e próprios. (...) Que mais precisam que de viver amadas e honradas? (...) Se, no entanto, as incomodar ficarem atrás de nós seja no que for, e quiserem, por curiosidade, ter parte nos livros, é a poesia um entretenimento adequado às suas necessidades: é uma arte folgazã e subtil, adornada e palradora, toda ela prazer e exibição, como elas. Na parte da Filosofia, poderão respingar os argumentos que as ensinem a ajuizar dos nossos comportamentos e maneiras de ser, a defenderem-se das nossas traições, a regrar a impetuosidade dos seus próprios desejos e a suportar com resignação a rudeza de um marido, a importunidade dos anos e das rugas e outras coisas semelhantes. É esta, no máximo, a parte do saber que eu lhes destinaria."
(**)"A capacidade normal das mulheres não está à altura de uma confiança mútua e recíproca como a de que se nutre esse santo liame [a amizade], nem tão-pouco a alguma delas parece ser assaz constante para sustentar o vínculo de um nó tão apertado e duradouro (...) não há nenhum exemplo de que o sexo feminino haja sido capaz de lá chegar."
(***) Em muitos lares, irrita-me ver o marido regressar pelo meio-dia, carrancudo e deprimido, do desassossego dos negócios, enquanto a mulher se acha ainda a pentear-se e a ataviar-se ao toucador. É ridículo e injusto que a ociosidade das nossas mulheres seja sustentada com o nosso suor e o nosso trabalho."
February 21, 2012
My favorite philosopher, he's anecdotal rather than dialectical/dialogue or logical/mathematical/linguistical. He was the first writer, certainly the first philosopher, who talked about personal experience of living in the body, with a great generosity of spirit towards the flaws of the human being. He's companionable, he makes you feel that being human is a noble and worthwhile thing, even if you're sick or grumpy or overwhelmed with your own failures. People should throw out all their self-help books and stick with Montaigne.
April 25, 2023
След 6 прочетени есета, няма смисъл с Монтен да се мъчим взаимно. Проблемът не в във Франция на 16-ти век, а в надутия, назидателен тон на Монтен. Като класически досадник той не забравя да натърти “аз”, “аз” и пак “аз”. Мърморкото дори и “изолиран” в имението си (колко да е изолиран все пак един аристократ с прислуга и земи?), си търси поводи за мърморене, а темите от философията от античността та до неговия днешен ден са не по-лош избор от всеки друг. Желанието за превъзходство над клетия невеж читател направо блика.
Може причината да е донякъде в начина на изразяване и поднасяне, който в никакъв случай не е обичайния за днешния ден. Тежестта, натруфеността, дегизираната като скромност претенция и позирането не са типични само за Монтен. Но дори и под избраната форма на общуване винаги се усеща отношението на автора. И това на Монтен изобщо не ми харесва и буди радикала в мен, при цялата му слава на влиятелен класик.
Може причината да е донякъде в начина на изразяване и поднасяне, който в никакъв случай не е обичайния за днешния ден. Тежестта, натруфеността, дегизираната като скромност претенция и позирането не са типични само за Монтен. Но дори и под избраната форма на общуване винаги се усеща отношението на автора. И това на Монтен изобщо не ми харесва и буди радикала в мен, при цялата му слава на влиятелен класик.
August 31, 2016
Montenj je moj drug i učitelj <3
Od sve filozofije koju sam čitala (a recimo da sam čitala sve iole bitno, do Kanta. Od Kanta nastaje viševekovna pomrčina u mom čitanju filozofa i traje sve do današnjih dana*) niko mi nije ovako na ličnom nivou drag i prisno poznat. Kad god uzmem Eseje, dovoljno je dvadeset-trideset strana i već se potpuno zanesem i smeškam a Montenj me samo šarmira svojom beskrajnom duhovitošću, tolerancijom i opuštenošću prema životu. Nekako: dobar, pametan, običan čovek, ali super običan čovek, bez trunke sujete i naduvenosti, uvek spreman za šalu na svoj račun, a opet ne bez hrabrosti da osudi razne užase od istrebljenja Indijanaca (čega u Evropi tog doba jedva da su ljudi bili svesni) do lova na veštice (a koliko je tu morao da se ograđuje, jasno je da su glave letele i za manje). I ubrzo se izgubi svaki vremenski i prostorni odmak i ostane samo neko koga znam, i to baš dobro poznajem, i volim.
Dobro, ovo je prvi put da sam pročitala sve tri knjige od početka do kraja, ali nisam želela (ni autor to jelte ne bi želeo) da čitam na silu, ovo je knjiga koju treba uzimati s vremena na vreme, i gustirati, i biti srećan što postoji.
*čitanje Ničea i Vitgenštajna ne računam, to je bilo mladalačko pomodarstvo, a Vitgenštajna, iskreno, ništa nisam ni razumela :/
Od sve filozofije koju sam čitala (a recimo da sam čitala sve iole bitno, do Kanta. Od Kanta nastaje viševekovna pomrčina u mom čitanju filozofa i traje sve do današnjih dana*) niko mi nije ovako na ličnom nivou drag i prisno poznat. Kad god uzmem Eseje, dovoljno je dvadeset-trideset strana i već se potpuno zanesem i smeškam a Montenj me samo šarmira svojom beskrajnom duhovitošću, tolerancijom i opuštenošću prema životu. Nekako: dobar, pametan, običan čovek, ali super običan čovek, bez trunke sujete i naduvenosti, uvek spreman za šalu na svoj račun, a opet ne bez hrabrosti da osudi razne užase od istrebljenja Indijanaca (čega u Evropi tog doba jedva da su ljudi bili svesni) do lova na veštice (a koliko je tu morao da se ograđuje, jasno je da su glave letele i za manje). I ubrzo se izgubi svaki vremenski i prostorni odmak i ostane samo neko koga znam, i to baš dobro poznajem, i volim.
Dobro, ovo je prvi put da sam pročitala sve tri knjige od početka do kraja, ali nisam želela (ni autor to jelte ne bi želeo) da čitam na silu, ovo je knjiga koju treba uzimati s vremena na vreme, i gustirati, i biti srećan što postoji.
*čitanje Ničea i Vitgenštajna ne računam, to je bilo mladalačko pomodarstvo, a Vitgenštajna, iskreno, ništa nisam ni razumela :/
October 28, 2019
O kadar güzel ki.
September 29, 2017
Normalde beğendiğim kitaplar için, "bu kitaba bir şans verin" derim. Denemeler içinse diyorum ki bırakın kitap size bir şans versin. Kitap öylesine güzel ki ilk sayfadan değerini anlıyorsunuz ve eşsiz bir şeyi elinizde tuttuğunuzu fark ediyorsunuz.
Bana doğru gelen hiçbir şey yoktur ki yanlış gibi de gelmesin.
Ben İş Bankası Yayınlarından çıkan baskısını okudum, kitabın başında Sabahattin Eyüboğlu'nun yıllar içinde yazdığı üç önsöz vardı. Önsözler hem çok güzel hemde sizi kitaba çok iyi hazırlıyor.
Düşüncelerimizin en iyi aynası hayatlarımızın akışıdır.
Denemeler'i oldukça yavaş ve özümseyerek okudum, en iyi yoğunlaşabileceğim anları seçerek okudum, günlerce elime almadığım oldu çünkü onu en iyi anlara sakladım ve bitmesin diye uğraş versem de bitti.
Her insanda, insanlığın bütün halleri vardır.
Kitapta bir sürü deneme var ve hepsi hayattan bir çok konuyu ele alıyor. Her bir deneme anlatmak istediğini hem çok güzel bir biçimde anlatıyor hem de fazla tek bir sözcük olmadan. Kitabı yıllarca susuzluk çeken birinin su içeceği gibi içtim, tadı hala damağımda, baş ucu kitabım oldu. Artık sık sık bu sudan içeceğim muhtemelen.
İnsan hayatı denen bu yolculukta benim bulduğum en iyi nevale kitaplardır ve ondan yoksun anlayışta insanlara çok acırım.
Montaigne bir abi, bir dost gibi, dertleşmek, danışmak ve sohbetinden bir parçaya dahil olabilmek eşsiz bir fırsat. Her sayfa da onu daha çok sevdim ve keşke onu görebilsem, konuşsa da saatlerce dinlesem dedim.
Velhasılı kelam, Denemeler anlatılmaz, okuyun, bırakın kitap size bir şans versin.
Bana doğru gelen hiçbir şey yoktur ki yanlış gibi de gelmesin.
Ben İş Bankası Yayınlarından çıkan baskısını okudum, kitabın başında Sabahattin Eyüboğlu'nun yıllar içinde yazdığı üç önsöz vardı. Önsözler hem çok güzel hemde sizi kitaba çok iyi hazırlıyor.
Düşüncelerimizin en iyi aynası hayatlarımızın akışıdır.
Denemeler'i oldukça yavaş ve özümseyerek okudum, en iyi yoğunlaşabileceğim anları seçerek okudum, günlerce elime almadığım oldu çünkü onu en iyi anlara sakladım ve bitmesin diye uğraş versem de bitti.
Her insanda, insanlığın bütün halleri vardır.
Kitapta bir sürü deneme var ve hepsi hayattan bir çok konuyu ele alıyor. Her bir deneme anlatmak istediğini hem çok güzel bir biçimde anlatıyor hem de fazla tek bir sözcük olmadan. Kitabı yıllarca susuzluk çeken birinin su içeceği gibi içtim, tadı hala damağımda, baş ucu kitabım oldu. Artık sık sık bu sudan içeceğim muhtemelen.
İnsan hayatı denen bu yolculukta benim bulduğum en iyi nevale kitaplardır ve ondan yoksun anlayışta insanlara çok acırım.
Montaigne bir abi, bir dost gibi, dertleşmek, danışmak ve sohbetinden bir parçaya dahil olabilmek eşsiz bir fırsat. Her sayfa da onu daha çok sevdim ve keşke onu görebilsem, konuşsa da saatlerce dinlesem dedim.
Velhasılı kelam, Denemeler anlatılmaz, okuyun, bırakın kitap size bir şans versin.
March 25, 2015
A French aristocrat shares his personal opinions
6 January 2013
Normally I would wait until I have finished a book to write a commentary, however this book is a lot different in that is contains a large collection of essays on a multiple of subjects. Secondly, I have not been reading this book continually, but rather picking it up, reading a few essays, and then putting it down again. I originally read a selection of these essays but when I finished it I decided to get my hands on a complete version, preferably hardcover, and it has been sitting next to my bed for the last two years (and I am only up to the second book of essays as of this writing – in fact I have only written comments on essays from two of the books).
This, as I mentioned, is a complete collection, however it is an older translation by John Florio, a contemporary of Montainge, which means that the English is quite archaic, though still quite readable. The only thing that stands out is the spelling (and since there was no real standardised spelling back then, this is understandable). Florio was also a contemporary of Shakespeare, so marking Florio down because of his spelling is sort of like doing the same with Shakespeare (and English has evolved a lot since then).
Anyway, this post is actually quite long, in fact longer than what Goodreads allows me to post, so instead of spilling over into the comments, I have instead decided to post the commentary in my blog (which also allows for better presentation that Goodreads, though not by much since it is Blogger – I hope to go over to Wordpress sometime soon, but due to time commitments I am not able to at this stage).
6 January 2013
Normally I would wait until I have finished a book to write a commentary, however this book is a lot different in that is contains a large collection of essays on a multiple of subjects. Secondly, I have not been reading this book continually, but rather picking it up, reading a few essays, and then putting it down again. I originally read a selection of these essays but when I finished it I decided to get my hands on a complete version, preferably hardcover, and it has been sitting next to my bed for the last two years (and I am only up to the second book of essays as of this writing – in fact I have only written comments on essays from two of the books).
This, as I mentioned, is a complete collection, however it is an older translation by John Florio, a contemporary of Montainge, which means that the English is quite archaic, though still quite readable. The only thing that stands out is the spelling (and since there was no real standardised spelling back then, this is understandable). Florio was also a contemporary of Shakespeare, so marking Florio down because of his spelling is sort of like doing the same with Shakespeare (and English has evolved a lot since then).
Anyway, this post is actually quite long, in fact longer than what Goodreads allows me to post, so instead of spilling over into the comments, I have instead decided to post the commentary in my blog (which also allows for better presentation that Goodreads, though not by much since it is Blogger – I hope to go over to Wordpress sometime soon, but due to time commitments I am not able to at this stage).
January 2, 2021
Montaigne strikes me as one of those writers that I would love to have living in our current day. I think we could be friends. He can be self-deprecating and humble, never stubborn because he knows the absolute truth is beyond human comprehension, but hopeful in a greater purpose behind our existence, and he is always curious about anything and everything, which for him can house clues to a greater mystery and a better way for society to engage with this life. And in general, he seems like a very funny guy, one you'd love hanging out at your dinner table sharing a glass of eau de vie.
His "Essays" are a look into the mind and soul of this great thinker. They are a diary of his thoughts about things he has observed or read, things which puzzle him and things which annoy him. He often writes in a stream of consciousness which is tangential and circumstantial, feeling more like a stand-up comedy routine: "And what's up with people doing such and such? Why is this a thing? Who does that!" Montaigne probably had ADD, and he even admits to this fact as best he can, as he lived centuries before any DSM, complaining about how he can't remember jack, and has a hard time focusing. So he rambles on about things that often have no relationship to his supposed subject, and he uncovers more than he discovers, leaving us with a sense of comfort that we are not alone in our fears, wonders, and confusion. In reading Montaigne, we grow to accept and even embrace these mysteries with a healthier approach to life.
In keeping with the comic tradition, Montaigne is truly funny, and sometimes even vulgar. When his wit isn't being sharpened with scepticism and the deconstruction of human customs and behavior, he is wondering why the Romans wiped their asses with a coarse sponge on a stick, quips about cuckholds and impotence, and quotes fart jokes of the ancients.
As an example, he comments on how so many nations have religions that have in common the recommended abstinence from sex and cultural mores that restrict women to behaviors that deny their own sexual needs. He states how these attitudes toward sex causes a lot of neurotic behavior and degrades rather than elevates women and all of society, though he admits that perhaps our sex organs do look a bit silly and perhaps we have good reason to be ashamed, his own "parts" having lately become "shameful and pitiful" as he reaches middle age.
I particularly enjoyed his words regarding our own mortality. He is open and honest about his fear of death, but encourages us all to accept death gracefully as necessary and perhaps even part of the beautiful machine to which we all belong. "All the time you live you steal from life, living at life's expense... No one ever dies before their time. The time you leave behind was no more yours than that which passed before your birth, and concerns you no more."
Now, the "Essays" is one massive book, and I would recommend anyone wishing to experience this masterwork to do one of the following:
1) Read Donald Frame's "Twenty-nine Essays," which selects the best and most representative of these writings. You will truly get a good feel for the work as a whole from this classic collection.
2) Read just a few of the entire "Essays" a day. Do not attempt to speed-read in order to get through all of them. Savor them. Think about them. It might take you all year. You might want to go back and revisit your favorites for the rest of your life. Make notes and highlights on what struck a chord with you and why. Montaigne himself says that he can't remember what he read unless he marks up a book with his own notes and writes his own review about it. I suspect he would have been very active on Goodreads! So follow his example and then compare your notes with how you feel and think several years from now. In that way, this book not only serve as a portal into Montaigne's soul, but a reflection of your own. It's that kind of work.
His "Essays" are a look into the mind and soul of this great thinker. They are a diary of his thoughts about things he has observed or read, things which puzzle him and things which annoy him. He often writes in a stream of consciousness which is tangential and circumstantial, feeling more like a stand-up comedy routine: "And what's up with people doing such and such? Why is this a thing? Who does that!" Montaigne probably had ADD, and he even admits to this fact as best he can, as he lived centuries before any DSM, complaining about how he can't remember jack, and has a hard time focusing. So he rambles on about things that often have no relationship to his supposed subject, and he uncovers more than he discovers, leaving us with a sense of comfort that we are not alone in our fears, wonders, and confusion. In reading Montaigne, we grow to accept and even embrace these mysteries with a healthier approach to life.
In keeping with the comic tradition, Montaigne is truly funny, and sometimes even vulgar. When his wit isn't being sharpened with scepticism and the deconstruction of human customs and behavior, he is wondering why the Romans wiped their asses with a coarse sponge on a stick, quips about cuckholds and impotence, and quotes fart jokes of the ancients.
As an example, he comments on how so many nations have religions that have in common the recommended abstinence from sex and cultural mores that restrict women to behaviors that deny their own sexual needs. He states how these attitudes toward sex causes a lot of neurotic behavior and degrades rather than elevates women and all of society, though he admits that perhaps our sex organs do look a bit silly and perhaps we have good reason to be ashamed, his own "parts" having lately become "shameful and pitiful" as he reaches middle age.
I particularly enjoyed his words regarding our own mortality. He is open and honest about his fear of death, but encourages us all to accept death gracefully as necessary and perhaps even part of the beautiful machine to which we all belong. "All the time you live you steal from life, living at life's expense... No one ever dies before their time. The time you leave behind was no more yours than that which passed before your birth, and concerns you no more."
Now, the "Essays" is one massive book, and I would recommend anyone wishing to experience this masterwork to do one of the following:
1) Read Donald Frame's "Twenty-nine Essays," which selects the best and most representative of these writings. You will truly get a good feel for the work as a whole from this classic collection.
2) Read just a few of the entire "Essays" a day. Do not attempt to speed-read in order to get through all of them. Savor them. Think about them. It might take you all year. You might want to go back and revisit your favorites for the rest of your life. Make notes and highlights on what struck a chord with you and why. Montaigne himself says that he can't remember what he read unless he marks up a book with his own notes and writes his own review about it. I suspect he would have been very active on Goodreads! So follow his example and then compare your notes with how you feel and think several years from now. In that way, this book not only serve as a portal into Montaigne's soul, but a reflection of your own. It's that kind of work.
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