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93 of 93 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Complete -- at last!, October 15, 2003
Donald Frame's translations of Montaigne's essays have long been considered one of the two finest contemporary translations available, M.A. Screech's excellent version being the other. The essays speak for themselves, or at least should. Their popularity is well known and well deserved, and there are a number of fine essay collections available. What's great about this edition is that included with the classic essays are a few extant letters and Montaigne's travel journals, which were lost until almost two hundred years after his death. These additional pieces are not going to rival the essays in popularity -- the letters are few and formal, for instance -- but if you enjoy the mind of Montaigne you'll enjoy these extra inclusions. Between June of 1580 and December of 1581, Montaigne -- with four other nobles and a variety of servants -- traveled through France, Germany, Switzerland and Italy before returning to Bordeaux. In the journals you'll find more evidence of the author's deeply interested view of the world around him, set out in that seemingly (and charmingly) haphazard, humane style found in spades in the essays. In one entry, for instance, you'll find him retelling (with a straight face?) a local story he has heard of a young girl who jumped up and down so strenuously during play that she turned into a boy (Montaigne claims that at least a few locals back up this tale); in other entries you'll find him more down to earth, describing, for instance, the little stoves in the homes of Germany, or the tiles that lined some of the homes in what is now Switzerland, or the murals on the walls of Jeanne D'Arc's father's home. By 1581, when Montaigne visited Rome, the treasures of the Vatican had become a mandatory stop on any well-informed traveller's itinerary. To his delight, Montaigne was shown ancient Roman and ancient Chinese manuscripts, the love letters of Henry VIII, and the classics of history and philosophy. Then, as now, the Vatican Library was one of the greatest in the Western world. This journal is an interesting view of 16th-century Europe (the architecture, the topography, the manners and customs) through a master stylist's eyes. It's nice to have back in print an edition of Montaigne's complete works, especially since it uses Donald Frame's translations.
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46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the best and most nearly complete montaigne, June 29, 2010
i'll leave the other reviews to describe the substance of montaigne's book and his unique place in literature -- a favorite read of shakespeare and emerson -- and focus instead on the merits of this edition. this is the single best volume to own if you want to encounter the skeptical and humanist montaigne in english. i am a fluent reader in the middle french of montaigne's text and own the "old" bibliothèque de la pléiade edition of his complete works. i'll say categorically that donald frame's translation is superior both to the older version by charles cotton and william hazlitt (pleasing for its antiquarian savor, but a hard slog for the average reader) and the recent versions by j.m. cohen and m.a. screech (both in paperback from penguin books). frame is much more accurate than all the others at reproducing montaigne's virile, brusque and improvisatory sentence structures, and best captures his lively and pregnant contrasts in the choice of vulgar, colloquial, informal, formal and ironically fussy expressions. all translations (and, in fact, almost all french editions) modernize the text in various ways. translations break up montaigne's longer paragraphs, and use periods to separate the sentences strung together with semicolons, but frame is the least drastic with these and other "modernizing" changes, and best conveys the subtle changes in tempo that are characteristic of montaigne's style. every edition of a "classical" text depends in part on a critical apparatus to clarify the historical period and the author's references to other works. the everyman editions are exemplary in choosing a noted authority to write the general introduction (here, the philosopher stuart hampshire) and in providing a synoptic chronology of the author's life with parallel columns for the literary context and historical events. the translator (frame) has penned a brief introduction explaining the history of the text, which evolved through additions and deletions across three major versions. these changes are indicated by superscript letters (A, B or C) which are essential in any edition of montaigne, as the later changes often take the train of thought into unexpected tangents, personal disclosures, or reconsidered opinions. (these comments apply to the "bordeaux" edition accepted as the definitive french text when frame made his translation.) finally, this edition is handsomely yet inexpensively produced with a sewn binding under hard covers in slate blue cloth (a ribbon placeholder is part of the binding), and is printed on creamy, firm paper in an accessibly large type face. you will very likely want montaigne to accompany you across your life and this is an edition that will withstand both time, frequent reading, and your own mark ups and annotations. unfortunately, there is in this edition no index to proper names or topics (unlike the original frame edition published by stanford university press). and this is not truly a *complete* edition of montaigne, as it omits the notations he made to the "ephemerides" of beuther, and the 57 latin and greek quotations that montaigne had engraved on the ceiling beams of his tower library. these classical aphorisms are something like an outline of his personal philosophy -- the single greek word "epekho" or "i suspend my judgment" perhaps summarizes them all. and this edition lacks citations to the original latin, greek and french works quoted inline by montaigne: it is annoying to stumble upon a remarkable quotation from juvenal, seneca, cicero, or plutarch, and not be able to locate the original version. these quibbles aside, this is a beautifully translated and handsomely produced edition of a remarkable and truly stimulating landmark in the genre of biographically informed philosophical essay. i strongly encourage readers who enjoy montaigne to look into sarah bakewell's superb recent biography, "How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer", which is available at amazon and uses the pagination of this everyman edition to reference quotations from montaigne's essays, journal and letters.
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45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful, complete collection, August 17, 2003
The late Donald Frame's translation is, as Harold Bloom credits, superb. Add to it the quality and aesthetics of the Everyman's series and this is an unbeatable edition of Montaigne's works. I plan to buy several copies of this edition as gifts.
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