Reading the Essays of Montaigne, post 1

It’s time I started another slow read, a couple of pages a day of a work that floats around in the culture but that I haven’t read, or want to reread. It’s been deeply rewarding so far to have read Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu, George Eliot’s Middlemarch, St Augustine’s Confessions and The Iliad. There are many books that could fill this early morning slot. The one that has successfully nudged for my attention an has been available, is the essays of Michel de Montaigne.

My only direct encounter with Montaigne was 50 years ago when I embarked on a French Honours course at university, but after a couple of weeks wrestling with Middle French, I gave up the struggle. I remember absolutely nothing of Montaigne from those weeks.

David Malouf may have sowed the seed of my desire to revisit him by quoting him at the beginning of his 2011 Quartlerly Essay, The Happy Life (my blog post). Then, most recently, David Runciman devoted an episode of his History of Ideas: Past, Present, Future podcast to Montaigne’s booklength essay, Apology for Raimond Sebon. I borrowed a copy from my local library and began reading yesterday, the 1st of March, 444 years to the day from when Montaigne signed his note ‘To the Reader’, which tries to discourage me from reading any further:

So, reader, I am myself the substance of my book, and there is no reason why you should waste yourleisure on so friviolous and unrewarding a subject

We’ll see.

I’m starting out with the Penguin Classic edition of essays selected, translated and introduced by J. M. Cohen. This book dates from 1959, and must be returned to the library before I can read it all at my slow pace, so I may switch to another edition somewhere along the line. But here goes!