The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Books II-III) (Michel de Montaigne) (completed 1588)

My approach to Montaigne's Essays seems pretty typical - read them in bits and pieces over an extended period of time. Otherwise: too much to absorb.

The Essays are divided into three Books - I posted on Book I and the first half of Book II back in 2010, now have completed all three Books (except for just skipping around in the lengthy Apology for Raymond Semond).   

There's too much content to attempt to usefully summarize. 

I see that I dogeared a bunch of the essay "on husbanding your will" - written later in the author's life so perhaps especially congenial to me?  The notion of "starting carefully" - be wary what you start and how you start it - much easier to manage at the early stage rather than later.  You initially own a project, and then eventually it owns you.

Lots of discussion about the value of getting to know oneself - a high-value pursuit, invest your energy here.  Don't worry so much about judging others!  Best part is you will start seeing how little you know, how often you are swayed by priors.

As I wrote in 2010 - (1) much seems obvious, yet it is written in a way that's fresh and useful; and (2) somehow readers always see themselves in Montaigne's writings (even readers coming from disparate viewpoints and widely differing points in history).  Nobody can quite figure out how he achieves this.

Pretty clear that it continues to be well worth working through these. 

How to Live -or- A Life of Montaigne (Sarah Bakewell, 2010)

Wasn't sure how to approach this book - it had great reviews, and Montaigne is Montaigne; but the insipid self-help industry (of which this book smacks) typically is annoying, at best.  


After reading through (pretty quickly):  I would say this book comes down somewhere in the middle, but unfortunately more on the self-help side.  I don't recommend it; to the extent the book was interesting, it was mostly due to putting some context around Montaigne's life and times.  And that did have some value.

There are 20 chapters responding to the titular question ("How to live?") - with gems such as "Do a good job, but not too good a job;" "Reflect on everything; regret nothing;" "Be ordinary and imperfect;" etc.  You get the idea.

This is standard stuff for the self-help industry, which - like the weight loss industry - appears to be completely worthless, yet recession-proof.  Only a really wealthy society could actually blow $$ on this stuff.

So skip this book and just the read the Essays themselves, as folks have been doing for centuries.

quote-source

Partly because I use his quotes atop both of my principal blogs, I found this article (riffing on a Daily Beast writer (an odd reference for me)) to be interesting:  Montaigne: The Father of Us All.   ("Sullivan is right to hail Montaigne as the literary father of the blog and the world of blogging continues to move along the lines Montaigne first laid out.")

OK, what I'm doing here isn't along those lines at all, but still.  Montaigne = unusually interesting.

The Complete Essays of Montaigne (Book I) (translated by Donald Frame)

Jacque Barzun had raved about Montaigne; I liked Barzun's work a lot, and decided to take a tour through the essays. 800+ pages, written in late 16th century, looked like something I might scan through at best.

But about 50 pages in, I decided I needed to own this book. So went out and found a lightly-used hardcover version. Worked through Book I (of III, to use Super Bowl numbering) and about half of Book II before pausing. Not that I wasn't interested in going on - there just is too much to absorb.

Not sure how to describe this. Apparently the book was a staple for centuries, sat on bookshelves of most anyone with much education. How neat that folks like Pascal (to pick one from a very, very long list) worked through this, commented on it, praised it? Montaigne covers everyday and not-so-everyday topics in depth, or briefly. His style is conversational; loaded with quotes from classical sources; thoughtful; candid; seems like just the kind of person I would love to sit and talk with. When I went back and read the "introduction" section, it seems that my reaction is not unique (a better description would be "it's commonplace") - readers tend to see themselves in Montaigne's musings, even if different readers bring very different things to the book.

He was writing at a time when religious wars were quite violent in France.

I note a few sections here, but this book just needs to be read.

Of pedantry - includes a good discussion of the age-old distinction between book-learning and wisdom - this discussion never goes away.

I liked his discussion of the value of creating a written record, or diary; and his discussion of keeping written summaries of books he read so that he wouldn't entirely forget them. I'm going to use some of those quotes as a sort of frontispiece on two of my websites.

Much liked his discussion about being a father. Much liked his passages about worrying for the future, finances, etc.

Incredibly modern, incredibly pertinent. One of the few off-key notes is general dismissiveness toward the capabilities of women.

I generally don't write notes in books; I dog-ear pages that I find interesting. Which has led to ridiculous dog-earedness in the case of this volume.