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Montaigne: L'arte Di Vivere (2010)

by Sarah Bakewell(Favorite Author)

4.08 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

8864112316 (ISBN13: 9788864112312)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Fazi

review 1: A biography of literature's first essayist organized around twenty-one answers to the question: How to Live?Bakewell's exploration of Michel de Montaigne gives us a good sense of the man, his time and his philosophy...or rather his attempt to arrive at a philosophy. Montaigne was an admirer of the Skeptic and Stoic branches of Hellenic thought, which basically tells people to a) question everything and b) take life as it comes. This is a great prescription for studying the world and one's own mind, but wasn't all that conducive to one's health and safety in a time of religious fanaticism and civil strife. The author does a good job presenting the complicated political and religious conflicts of the time in a way that is understandable to those without specific knowledge ab... moreout life in 16th-century France. She also shows us how Montaigne, a politician as well as a thinker, managed to negotiate his way through these troubles while keeping his humanity in tact.Some chapters are harder work than others. Bakewell juggles three time lines: biographical, historical and literary. It requires time and close attention to take it all in. For me, it was the literary time line that lagged. All the intrigue about the many versions of the essays produced in Montaigne's lifetime and then the petty intellectual battles surrounding the editing and interpretation of the work through the centuries got a bit tedious. Nevertheless, this is an excellent introduction for Montaigne and it made me add his daunting ESSAYS to my reading list.
review 2: A biography of literature's first essayist organized around twenty-one answers to the question: How to Live?Bakewell's exploration of Michel de Montaigne gives us a good sense of the man, his time and his philosophy...or rather his attempt to arrive at a philosophy. Montaigne was an admirer of the Skeptic and Stoic branches of Hellenic thought, which basically tells people to a) question everything and b) take life as it comes. This is a great prescription for studying the world and one's own mind, but wasn't all that conducive to one's health and safety in a time of religious fanaticism and civil strife. The author does a good job presenting the complicated political and religious conflicts of the time in a way that is understandable to those without specific knowledge about life in 16th-century France. She also shows us how Montaigne, a politician as well as a thinker, managed to negotiate his way through these troubles while keeping his humanity in tact.Some chapters are harder work than others. Bakewell juggles three time lines: biographical, historical and literary. It requires time and close attention to take it all in. For me, it was the literary time line that lagged. All the intrigue about the many versions of the essays produced in Montaigne's lifetime and then the petty intellectual battles surrounding the editing and interpretation of the work through the centuries got a bit tedious. Nevertheless, this is an excellent introduction for Montaigne and it made me add his daunting ESSAYS to my reading list. less

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Reviews (see all)

tonimamasum

Borrowed this copy from the Castillo house. Reading this book made me glad that Montaigne's "Essays" is one of the few books that made the cut when we culled our books before moving to California. I read parts of it in one of my Core classes at Columbia, and I remember enjoying it, but I wasn't as taken with it at the time as I know Elise was. Bakewell's book was a great reminder that it is absolutely worth picking up again.Having just read a book about Stoicism, and also having been reading a Zen-influenced blog, it's impressive how many of Montaigne's characteristics resemble practices from these traditions: cultivating mindfulness and attention; cultivating acceptance of the world and gaining comfort with relinquishing control; seeing yourself as someone you need to build a relationship with just like anyone else. One of the threads running through Bakewell's book is that people of different eras and different persuasions have seen in Montaigne the things that they want to see--and I guess I am no different from any of them!

Hannah

(2.8) I was bamboozled at the outset. I thought this was Montaigne's essays with a little commentary. Instead. it's a lot of Commentary and a bit of the Essays. Nevertheless, Bakewell does a fine job of wending her way through Montaigne's life, his essays, and the reaction to his work down through the ages. Her conclusion that the Age's interpretation of Montaigne is more illuminated of the Age than Montaigne is obvious to anyone who's watched all the Star Trek iterations.

jessi_94

Incredibly well written. Fascinating and very enjoyable.

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