Essay
Essays
Essais
Michel de Montaigne · 1580
Opening lines
LA plus commune façon d’amollir les cœurs de ceux qu’on a offenſez, lors qu’ayant la vengeance en main, ils nous tiennẽt à leur mercy, c’eſt de les eſmouuoir par ſummiſſion à commiſeratiõ & à pitié : Toutesfois la brauerie, et la conſtance, moyens tous contraires, ont quelquefois ſerui à ce meſme effect.
The most common way of softening the hearts of those we have offended, when, with vengeance in their hands, they hold us at their mercy, is to move them by submission to commiseration and pity: and yet bravery and constancy, entirely contrary means, have sometimes served to the same end.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from fr.wikisource.org
Synopsis
Retired to his estates, a gentleman from the Périgord undertakes to take himself as the subject of his book. The chapters, divided into three books, each start from a subject, friendship, education, death, cannibals, and move forward “à saut et à gambade”, without a fixed plan, weighing opinions rather than reaching conclusions.
Context
The first edition appeared in Bordeaux in 1580 from Simon Millanges, in two books; the 1588 edition, in Paris from Abel L'Angelier, adds a third book and many additions. A copy of that edition, covered with corrections and additions in the author's hand up to his death, is kept at the municipal library of Bordeaux. Marie de Gournay published a posthumous edition in 1595 which departs from it in places.
Who it is for
A very long work, in sixteenth-century French, best read in a modernised version and in fragments.
Prizes and reception
Translated into English as early as 1603 by John Florio, it has since appeared in many translations, among them that of M. A. Screech for Penguin in 1991.
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