This was our last bedtime read-aloud book. Montaigne invented the essay form which, as the author says, is also a lot like a blog. He wrote essays on disparate subjects: how to behave when an angry mob wants to kill you, whether good manners require you to be at home when an important personage wants to pay you a visit (no), how to help a friend when he's afraid of being impotent on his wedding night.
He was writing in a difficult time--the 16th century--when Protestants and Catholics were slaughtering each other, princes were conspiring against each other, and the plague was ravaging the population. Montaigne's voice (through Bakewell) always comes through as reasonable and full of good will. When we finished the book I was very fond of Montaigne and not ready to say au revoir,
so I ordered the Essays on Kindle.
And this is our bedtime reading at present. Now I'm going to make some cultural generalizations and you might want to sign out.
Still here? OK, you know how we were taught in writing classes not to use ten words when two would do, to get to the point without a lot of verbiage and never, never, never to write run-on sentences? A lot of these rules probably came from Strunk and White's Elements of Style. Well, the French (among others) don't adhere to the style favored in American English. They love run-on sentences. Here's Montaigne on education:
'Tis the custom of pedagogues to be eternally thundering in their pupil's ears, as they were pouring into a funnel, whilst the business of the pupil is only to repeat what the others have said: now I would have a tutor to correct this error, and, that at the very first, he should according to the capacity he has to deal with, put it to the test, permitting his pupil himself to taste things. . . . .
And on and on he goes. I can't hold the beginning of the sentence in my Strunk-conditioned head long enough to know what's going on at the end of it. You may think this is because the Essays are from the 16th century, but I can assure you, having translated many contemporary philosophical articles, that the French style has not changed.
I wonder if this is why the French seem so much more nuanced in their attitudes and opinions than Americans. Or perhaps, as exemplified by our lamentable past president, we just "don't do nuance," comparatively speaking, in our language or thought.
