princessleia4life's review against another edition
2.0
I didn't like his style. He kept jumping from subject to subject.
5teverin0's review against another edition
I didn't so much give up on this book, as I came to the realization that it's just not the kind of book I can read cover to cover. I will continue to dip in and out of it, whenever the mood strikes, as I very much enjoy it. I just enjoy it more in small doses.
lizbusby's review against another edition
3.0
Interesting thoughts. Takes a while to get used to all the Greek and Roman references if you aren't up on classics.
casparb's review against another edition
3.0
This is a 1200+ page brick, so it is with some relief that I put it on the shelf. In all honesty, I cannot recommend this complete version - there's a 400-500 page selected edition that would be a better use of time.
Something that soon strikes the reader of this mammoth project is that Montaigne could have used a good editor. I'm sure that inventing the form of the essay (cheers Mike) complicates this, but a deft hand could have easily halved the length of many of these essays.
Now that the whining is out of the way - praise! I've never encountered a better contemporary insight into Renaissance thought and its development from the ancients. I was particularly surprised by how un-prudish it is: Montaigne is perfectly willing to discuss sex and peripheral activities (including, in detail, his own preferences). I had a great time learning about female semen.
When the collection is this large, they can't all be winners. It took about 1000 pages for them to really pick up for me - I'm aware that this may be off-putting for some. But when they do - there is little so human in the world.
Something that soon strikes the reader of this mammoth project is that Montaigne could have used a good editor. I'm sure that inventing the form of the essay (cheers Mike) complicates this, but a deft hand could have easily halved the length of many of these essays.
Now that the whining is out of the way - praise! I've never encountered a better contemporary insight into Renaissance thought and its development from the ancients. I was particularly surprised by how un-prudish it is: Montaigne is perfectly willing to discuss sex and peripheral activities (including, in detail, his own preferences). I had a great time learning about female semen.
When the collection is this large, they can't all be winners. It took about 1000 pages for them to really pick up for me - I'm aware that this may be off-putting for some. But when they do - there is little so human in the world.
gellok's review against another edition
5.0
This is an excellent book for a comprehensive view into pre-enlightenment stoic thought. Montaigne offers various commentaries on politics, law, honor, relationships, education, etc. "An Apologie of Raymond Sebond" is also in this anthology, and it appears to be very well translated.
The introduction provides a commodious account of Montaigne's life, his medical issues (which inform a decent amount of his stoic thought), and his social background.
The translator does an incredible job of maintaining Montaigne's natural wit and charm along with his firm moral and philosophical commitments whilst writing in moments of both physical and mental pain. The book offers a well-structured and detailed view of writings not often read nowadays, certainly in academia.
The introduction provides a commodious account of Montaigne's life, his medical issues (which inform a decent amount of his stoic thought), and his social background.
The translator does an incredible job of maintaining Montaigne's natural wit and charm along with his firm moral and philosophical commitments whilst writing in moments of both physical and mental pain. The book offers a well-structured and detailed view of writings not often read nowadays, certainly in academia.
grubstlodger's review against another edition
5.0
Every year, I try and tackle at least one big beast. Last year was Ulysses and before that was Don Quixote and this year I went for The Complete Essays of Michel de Montaigne.
I started reading in late February, reading a few essays interspersed with the short novels in Popular Fiction by Women 1660 - 1730 but as coronavirus took over the world and lockdown was enforced, I (like many others) found it harder to concentrate and the two together were too dense and difficult to read, so having read the first of the three books I took up children’s books and shorter fiction. However, by August, things were returning to something like normality and I took myself off to my parents’ house out of London, I got back down to Montaigne and read the next two books. I probably would not normally have mentioned this factor in my reading of Montaigne were the conditions not exceptional and if it wasn’t something Montaigne would probably have mentioned himself if he were in a similar position.
Montaigne said that to read his essays was very much like meeting him, that there was very little difference in personality between the two and if he was accurate about this, I would very much like to have met him. They are drawn from two major areas, his life experiences and his reading though he probably would have said that his reading was a life experience. There’s also a progression through the essays, with early ones being shorter and more based on his reading, whereas the later were longer and drew more from his life.
Typically an essays starts with a reference to something Montaigne has recently read and then follows the thought process that he takes from that. He pulls in all sorts of other texts, life experience and increasingly peculiar little anecdotes. We learn about a man who killed himself by deep-throating a sponge on a stick to wipe arses with, about the man who had his arm grilled in torture and looks on calmly, of the children who convinced their whole village that a ghost was abroad.
In some ways the book reminded of one of my first challenge reads, The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. There is the same fondness for peculiar stories, the same overstuffing of detail, the same fondness for a detour or a rant. Samuel Johnson (in a quote I kind find right now) said that Burton was best when he lets his own voice take over, and so does Montaigne.
We find out a lot about Montaigne in The Essays, that he was raised to speak Latin and still regards it as his first language. That he was a flashy dresser and a bit of a lady’s man in his youth, that he once slept with a lame prostitute because he was told they were the best kind- though he’s unsure if that lies in his imagination, his (poor) memory or because it is actually true. He even uses this folk belief to show how rational argument can lead a good user anywhere, making several plausible(ish) arguments for why this might be the case.
We learn a great deal about his body parts and his health. Previously, when I had just dipped into The Essays, I was struck by how often he mentioned his penis so on this read through I kept a tally. If my tally is correct, he mentioned it 56 times throughout the course of the book. He also mentions the scabs on his arse, the pain of kidney stones, the time he was knocked out in a riding accident and how the pain his ingrowing toenails made him see the world less positively then when he didn’t have them.
We learn about him socially, that he’s not very good with small talk, that he refuses to lie, even the truth may hurt someone else’s feelings - even a time when telling the truth risked his life. There are numerous mentions of his friend Étienne de La Boétie, the relationship he valued most in his life and the cause of the most wonderful sentences about friendship;
“If someone were to ask me why I loved him, I feel that it could not be expressed, except by answering ‘Because it was him; because it was me.’”
Another important figure in Montaigne’s life was his father, whom he obviously respected and admired a great deal. I get the sense that Montaigne was someone who laboured under great expectations to which he didn’t live up. He regards himself as essentially lazy and not particularly clever, “Nobody forecast that I would turn out bad, only useless.”
The turning point in the book, between the shorter, more literary based essays and the longer, personal ones seems to be The Apology for Raymond Sebond, an essay that is, in itself, over 150 pages long. In defending a book about man being able to learn about God by looking at nature, it severely questions man’s ability to learn at all. Turning to Pyrrhonic scepticism, the call is constantly, “What do I know?” I’m glad I’d read book about ancient scepticism before (Ancient Scepticism by Harald Thorsrud), as it helped me unpack what is a very dense essay. I was not surprised to find it influenced the writing as Descartes, though he uses scepticism as a tool more than a point itself. (Very rare my philosophy degree ever comes in handy).
Montaigne constantly wrote and rewrote the essays until shortly before his death. As such, the book as I have it, seems almost patchwork at times, with frequent interpolations of texts A, B and C, not including modern footnotes. The translation by MA Screech balances a sense of the age of the text (started 1572) and a sense of a frank and colloquial language which allows the text to be readable without seeming too modern or hip.
I would encourage any reader to experience of reading the whole text through if possible. As Montaigne said, “Every abridgement of a good book is a daft one.” Not only that, it’s only by reading it through that the ebb and flow of the book can be properly appreciated. Montaigne is not the same man at the end of it as he is at the beginning and even though he rewrote earlier sections, there is something fascinating about watching a man change as the pages turn. While An Apology for Raymond Sebond is the essay that Penguin choose for their mini black spine classics and although On Conversation is the essay most included in compilations, if you are to read only one essay, I recommend the last essay, On Experience.
For a start, On Experience sums up what it’s like to read the essays as a whole. It includes all his main ideas; the fallibility of human knowledge, his wonder and warmth for humanity he finds through examining himself, his fondness for quote and anecdote and his shifting focus from philosophy as a means of learning how to die well to his acceptance on what a wonderful thing it can be to live well. The essay ends with a triumphant fanfare to, not only a life well lived but a life lived as all. “Life is it’s own objective.”
“What great fools we are! ‘He has spent his life in idleness,’ we say. ‘I haven’t done much today.’ - ‘Why! Have you not lived? That is not only the basic of your employments, it is the most glorious.’”
And on that glorious note the essay, the book, Montaigne’s life work ends (except for a little arse joke of course.)
aria_izikdzurko's review against another edition
5.0
Where to start... after a month of carrying Montaigne in my bag at all times, I feel as though I know him. I would, in fact, very much like to know him: by all appearances, he was a kind, virtuous, honest man. He laid bare his entire entity for public scrutiny in an attempt to probe the inner workings of consciousness and human nature. This is not a book of pompous statements, but a book of questions, a book which feels more like a conversation with the author than a one-way lecture.
I felt I had to fully digest and think about each essay in this mammoth of a book; as Montaigne reminds us, "we only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at the tongue's end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad." Oop. I guess there won't be any skimming of paragraphs here.
Furthermore, "Men are apt presently to inquire, does such a one understand Greek or Latin? Is he a poet? or does he write in prose? But whether he be grown better or more discreet, which are qualities of principal concern, these are never thought of. We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned". I suppose I can't go bragging about finishing this book, either, not without a guilty conscience. Ah well, it was worth the journey, each and every page.
I felt I had to fully digest and think about each essay in this mammoth of a book; as Montaigne reminds us, "we only labour to stuff the memory, and leave the conscience and the understanding unfurnished and void. Like birds who fly abroad to forage for grain, and bring it home in the beak, without tasting it themselves, to feed their young; so our pedants go picking knowledge here and there, out of books, and hold it at the tongue's end, only to spit it out and distribute it abroad." Oop. I guess there won't be any skimming of paragraphs here.
Furthermore, "Men are apt presently to inquire, does such a one understand Greek or Latin? Is he a poet? or does he write in prose? But whether he be grown better or more discreet, which are qualities of principal concern, these are never thought of. We should rather examine, who is better learned, than who is more learned". I suppose I can't go bragging about finishing this book, either, not without a guilty conscience. Ah well, it was worth the journey, each and every page.