De Montaigne / Nemo Essays

1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-3-98677-208-6
Verlag: Tacet Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 15, 100 Seiten

Reihe: Essays

Welcome to the Essays collection. A special selection of the nonfiction prose from influential and noteworthy authors. This book brings some of best essays of Michel de Montaigne, across a wide range of subjects, including philosophy, literature and many more topics. Michel de Montaigne was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight. Many of his most relevant works were published by Tacet Books. The book contains the following texts: - Introduction by Edmund Gosse - Of Friendship - Of The Force Of Imagination - Of Cannibals - Of Drunkenness - Of Books - Of Solitude - Of Experience

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (28 February 1533 13 September 1592), also known as Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with intellectual insight.

Autoren/Hrsg.

De Montaigne, Michel

Nemo, August

Leseproben

The Author
By George Saintsbury2       Michel de Montaigne was a French essayist, was born, as he himself tells us, between eleven o'clock and noon on the 28th of February 1533. The patronymic of the Montaigne family, who derived their title from the chateau at which the essayist was born and which had been bought by his grandfather, was Eyquem. It was believed to be of English origin, and the long tenure of Gascony and Guienne by the English certainly provided abundant opportunity for the introduction of English colonists. But the elaborate researches of M. Malvézin (Michel de Montaigne, son origine et sa famille, 1875) proved the existence of a family of Eyquems or Ayquems before the marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine to Henry II. of England, though no connexion between this family, who were sieurs de Lesparre, and the essayist's ancestors can be made out. Montaigne is not far from Bordeaux, with which the Eyquem family had for some time been connected. Pierre Eyquem, Montaigne's father, had been engaged in commerce (a herring-merchant Scaliger calls him, and his grandfather Ramon had certainly followed that trade), had filled many municipal offices in Bordeaux, and had served under Francis I. in Italy as a soldier. He married Antoinette de Louppes (Lopez), descended from a family of Spanish Jews. The essayist was the third son. By the death of his elder brothers, however, he became head of the family. He had also six younger brothers and sisters. His father appears, like many other men of the time, to have made a hobby of education. Montaigne was not only put out to nurse with a peasant woman, but had his sponsors from the same class, and was accustomed to associate with it. He was taught Latin orally by servants (a German tutor, Horstanus, is especially mentioned), who could speak no French, and many curious fancies were tried on him, as, for instance, that of waking him every morning by soft music. But he was by no means allowed to be idle. A plan of teaching him Greek by some kind of mechanical arrangement is not very intelligible, and was quite unsuccessful. These details of his education (which, like most else that is known about him, come from his own mouth) are not only interesting in themselves, but remind the reader how, not far from the same time, Rabelais, the other leading writer of French during the Renaissance, was exercising himself, though not being exercised, in plans of education almost as fantastic. At six years old Montaigne was sent to the collège de Guienne at Bordeaux, then at the height of its reputation. Among its masters were Buchanan, afterwards the teacher of James I., and Muretus, one of the first scholars of the age. At thirteen Montaigne left the collège de Guienne and began to study law, it is not known where, but probably at Toulouse. In 1548 he was at Bordeaux during one of the frequent riots caused by the gabelle, or salt-tax. Six years afterwards, having attained his majority, he was made a counsellor in the Bordeaux parlement. In 1558 he was present at the siege of Thionville, in 1559 and 1561 at Paris, and in 1562 at the siege of Rouen. He was also much about the court, and he admits very frankly that in his youth he led a life of pleasure, if not exactly of excess. In 1565 he married Françoise de la Chassaigne, whose father was, like himself, a member of the Bordeaux parlement. Three years later his father died, and he succeeded to the family possessions. Finally, in 1571, as he tells us in an inscription still extant, he retired to Montaigne to take up his abode there, having given up his magistracy the year before. His health, never strong, had been further weakened by the hard living which was usual at the time. He resolved, accordingly, to retire to a life of study and contemplation, though he indulged in no asceticism except careful diet. He neither had nor professed any enthusiastic affection for his wife, but he lived on excellent terms with her, and bestowed some pains on the education of the only child (a daughter, Léonore) who survived infancy. In his study—a tower of refuge, separate from the house, which he has minutely described—he read., wrote, dictated, meditated, inscribed moral sentences which still remain on the walls and rafters, annotated his books, some of which are still in existence, and in other ways gave himself up to a learned ease. He was not new to literature. In his father's lifetime, and at his request, he had translated the Theologia naturalis of Raymund de Sabunde, a Spanish schoolman (published 1569). On first coming to live at Montaigne he edited the works of his deceased friend Étienne de la Boétie, who had been the comrade of his youth, who died early, and who, with poems of real promise, had composed a declamatory and school-boyish theme on republicanism, entitled the Contr' un, which is one of the most over-estimated books in literature. But the years of his studious retirement were spent on a work of infinitely greater importance. Garrulous after a fashion as Montaigne is, he gives us no clear idea of any original or definite impulse leading him to write the famous Essays. It is very probable that if they were at first intended to have any special form at all it was that of a table-book or journal, such as was never more commonly kept than in the 16th century. It is certainly very noticeable that the earlier essays, those of the first two books, differ from the later in one most striking point, in that of length. Speaking generally, the essays of the third book average fully four times the length of those of the other two. This of itself would suggest a difference in the system of coniposition. These first two books appeared in 1580, when their author was forty-seven years old. They contain, as at present published, no fewer than ninety-three essays, besides an exceedingly long apolog for the already mentioned Raymund Sabunde, in which some have seen the kernel of Montaigne's philosophy. The book begins with a short avis (address to the reader), opening with the well-known words, “ C'est 'icy un livre de bon foy, lecteur," and sketching in a few lively sentences the character of meditative egotism which is kept up throughout. His sole object, the author says, is to leave for his friends and relations a mental portrait of himself, defects and all; he cares neither for utility nor for fame. The essays then begin, without any attempt to explain or classify their subjects. Their titles are of the most diverse character. Sometimes they are proverbial sayings or moral adages, such as “ Par divers moyens on arrive à pareille fin," “ Qu'il ne faut juger de notre heur qu'aprés la mort,” " Le profit de l'on est le dommage de l'aultre.” Sometimes they are headed like the chapters of a treatise on ethics: “De la tristesse,” “De l'oisiveté,” “ De la peur," “ De l'amitié.” Sometimes a fact of some sort which has awaked a train of associations in the mind of the writer serves as a title, such as “ On est puni de s'opiniastrer à uno place sans raison." “ De la bataille de Dreux," &c. Occasionally the titles seem to be deliberately fantastic, as “ Des puces," “ De l'usage de se vestir." Sometimes, though not very often, the sections are in no proper sense essays, but merely commonplace book entries of singular facts or quotations, with hardly any comment. These point to the haphazard or indirect origin of them, which has been already suggested. But generally the essay-character—that is to say, the discussion of a special point, it may be with wide digressions and divergences—displays itself. The digressions are indeed constant, and sometimes have the appearance of being absolutely wilful. The nominal title, even when most strictly observed, is rarely more than a starting-point; and, though the brevity of these first essays for the most part prevents the author from journeying very far, he contrives to get to the utmost range of his tether. Quotations are very frequent. In 1571 he had received the order of Saint-Michel; in 1574 was with the army of the duke de Montpensier; two years later was made gentleman-in-ordinary to Henry III., and next year again to Henry of Navarre. He visited Paris occasionally, and travelled for health or pleasure to Cauterets, Eaux Chaudes and elsewhere. But his health grew worse and worse, and he was tormented by stone and gravel. He accordingly resolved to journey to the baths of Lucca. Late in the 18th century a journal was found in the chateau of Montaigne giving an account of this journey, and it was published in 1774; part of it is written in Italian and part dictated in French, the latter being for the most part the work of a secretary or servant. Whatever may be the biographical value of this work, which has rarely been reprinted with the Essays themselves, and the MS. of which disappeared early, it is almost entirely destitute of literary interest. The course of the journey was first northwards to PlumbIères, then by Basel to Augsburg and Munich, then through Tirol to Verona and Padua in Italy. Montaigne visited most of the famous cities of the north and centre, staying five months at Rome, where he had an audience of the pope and was made a Roman citizen, and finally establishing himself at the baths of Lucca for nearly as long a time. There he received news of his election as mayor of Bordeaux with a peremptory royal endorsement enjoining residence, and after some time journeyed homewards. The tour contains much minute information about roads, food, travelling, &c., but the singular condition in which it exists and...