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Title: Michel de Montaigne - The Complete Essays (Penguin Classics) by Michel De Montaigne, M.A. Screech ISBN: 0-14-044604-4 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: September, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $23.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: inappropriate and embarrassing
Comment: It is innappropriate and embarrassing to reduce Montaigne to a "rating," but I must naturally give him the highest possible. Harold Bloom has said that what Dante left unexplored about human nature, Shakespeare plumbed. I would dare to include Montaigne in that select group also. If stranded on an island with only the Comedy, Shakespeare's plays, and Montaigne's essays, one would still have the entire world available. But this book does not need my praises anymore than the sun does to go on shining.
I will say a word about the translation. M. A. Screech gives the best available English translation of all the essays in a single volume, a blessing for we unfortunate ones who cannot meet this genius in his own tongue. Screech is engaging and humorous, qualities that the French doubtless posesses, and one gets the sense that a good portion of Montaigne survives the journey into English. Penguin Classics delivers again.
Rating: 5
Summary: Shakespeare liked it. So will you
Comment: Montaigne wrote what he called "essays", in the sense of "attempts" - he was trying to find out what he thought about stuff. It helped that he'd read a great deal, led a pretty full life and had known some interesting people, although one of his great virtues is that he seems to have found them more interesting than they themselves probably thought they were.
Pascal struggled all his life with the example of Montaigne. The problem for Pascal was that he was only really concerned with one thing - God's grace - and he was scandalised that Montaigne didn't seem to find it that big a deal. MM will write as readily about theological disputes and poetry as he will about sex, forgetfulness and his own stupidity. Apart from anything else, he was perhaps the first person to observe that nobody can pretend that his s*** doesn't stink (I can't remember the exact page, but then there _are_ over a thousand.)
There's a lifetime's reading in here. For such a big fat classic of a book it reads like it was written yesterday, although if it _had_ been written yesterday, he'd've been all over Hello! magazine by now.
Wisdom is maybe underrated these days, but Montaigne isn't just spouting off. This is not a 16th century evening with Morrie. You can see him thinking. He _encourages_ you. (What a great word "encourage" is.) It's not that bad for about fourteen quid.
Rating: 5
Summary: Our Humanity Is Timeless
Comment: When reading Montaigne's essays, I had to continually pinch myself out of the notion that I was reading the innermost secrets of a thoroughly modern human being. Far from the reaches of cell phones, televisions, automobiles, miracle drugs, 7-11 stores and the internet, Michel De Montaigne (1533-1592) via his essays, at once conveys the essence of the universal human condition, and imparts to us a sense of relief and liberation; that our life's journey, beneath all the trappings of the times, share their essential qualities: the challenges, triumphs, tragedies, passions, ironies and humor. With remarkable wit, Montaigne draws characters out of the history books, particularly the classics, and demonstrates to us that our human foibles date not just to HIS own times, but to the dawn of humanity and civilization itself. I read the Penguin Classics edition of the essays, translated by Dr. M. A. Screech, and must say that it is among the best translations of any book I have ever read. Dr. Screech employs an entertaining, colorful and evocative vocabulary which succeeds both in clarity of communication as well as painting vivid and rich pictures for our mind's eye to feast upon. Perhaps Montaigne's most charming quality is his self-effacing and modest demeanor. Never tooting his own horn, except perhaps to lay bare his bad memory or some other perceived fault, the following is one example of thousands which reflects his humor and humility. Wishing to deliver a critique of great intellectual and rhetorical importance, Montaigne instead settles for: "I would say of them the same as Cicero (if I could talk as well as he could.)"
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Title: The Essays (Penguin Classics) by Francis Bacon, John Pitcher ISBN: 0140432167 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: January, 1986 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais, Burton Raffel ISBN: 0393308065 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: September, 1991 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) by Saint Augustine, Henry Chadwick ISBN: 0192833723 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: April, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: Meditations (Penguin Classics) by Marcus Aurelius, Maxwell Staniforth, Marcus ISBN: 0140441409 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: October, 1964 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Pensees (Penguin Classics) by Blaise Pascal, A. J. Krailsheimer ISBN: 0140446451 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: December, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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