Montaigne
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My Summer with Montaigne: “Of Anger”
“It seemed to me as if I had myself written the book, in some former life, so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience.” – Emerson on Montaigne’s Essays Anger “moves us; our hand does not guide it, it guides our hand; it holds us, we do not hold it.” I am slow to Continue reading
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My Summer with Montaigne: “Of Solitude”, pt. III
“These essays are an attempt to communicate a soul. On this point at least he is explicit. It is not fame that he wants; it is not that men shall quote him in years to come; he is setting up no statue in the market-place; he wishes only to communicate his soul.” Virginia Woolf on Continue reading
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My Summer with Montaigne: “Of Solitude”, pt. II
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” Continue reading
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My Summer With Montaigne: “Of solitude”, pt. I
I thought it fitting to start this little project by considering Montaigne’s writings on solitude. I say this because this summer, like the past half dozen summers, I am again out in the woods and in the mountains. Though this existence isn’t solitude in the extreme, it is a degree of solitude. There are far Continue reading
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My Summer With Montaigne
A few years ago I fell into the habit of devoting a summer season to reading a specific writer, or genre. It was not intentional, it just evolved that way. This summer is no different, well, slightly different. Ten years ago I read Proust for the first time. Six of the seven volumes of À Continue reading
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Book Review: “How to Live, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts to Answer” by Sarah Bakewell
I was first introduced to Michel de Montaigne (1533 – 1592) about thirty years ago. I was in graduate school. I don’t remember the class, nor the other required readings. But I remember Montaigne. I eventually dropped out of graduate school, but Montaigne stayed with me. It was, perhaps, and I honestly mean this, the most Continue reading
...the house I live in... 