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Complete Works (Everymans Library Classics)

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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.

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.

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.

Six months ago, I got into the habit of losing my mind. No day passed without some evidence of madness: depression, compulsion, mania, panic. Nothing helped--least of all the gray city where I live. One morning while reading this book, I felt my mind click back into place and I knew I would be all right. Since then, the Essays have been, for me, a touchstone of sanity. There is something about their boundaryless curiosity, their open admission of human frailty and mess, that pulls me back every time. It's a book of ideas that never forgets about blood, sweat and semen. Every day I sit with it there is some useful treasure. Today I was grateful to be reminded, "It is not victory if it does not end the war."

Or how about: "No quality embraces us purely and universally. If it did not seem crazy to talk to oneself, there is not a day I would not be heard growling at myself, 'Confounded fool!' And yet I do not intend for that to be my definition."

I distrust Montaigne's opinions on women and God--but to be right about mankind and life on Earth is a lot. As heavy as it is, this big book is always in my bag. Spend some time with it--it will help you stay sane.

"My library is in the third story of a tower; on the first is my chapel, on the second a bedroom with ante-chambers, where I often lie to be alone; and above it there is a great wardrobe. Adjoining my library is a very neat little room, in which a fire can be laid in winter, and which is pleasantly lighted by a window..." Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592) wrote in the chapter "On Three Kinds of Relationships". Montaigne liked being retired, seeking distance to a world of bloody fights between religious groups. Did these things develop, 400 years later? Montaigne tried to escape dogmatic thoughts finding a new way of writing and hammering out thoughts via his typical relaxed method of writing. Living 200 years earlier than the other genius of essay, the poor Soeren Kierkegaard, Montaigne was not as filled up with anxiety as the Danish philosopher - he instead managed to stay calm with a solid resource of optimism, though things outside his favorite tower often run very worse. His courageous goal was the overcoming of the stereotyped medieval conception of the world, in which humans usually had been overwhelmed by church- or government-authorities like puppets on a string. Montaigne established the departure to individual noticing, founded an anthropocentric view of world. This probably had something fresh to his contemporary readers. Montaignes program was to dip down in ones own mind: "Everyone, who is listening to his inner landscape of thoughts, is able to discover his identity, so that he is able to repel everything, which does not fit this." About his style of writing essayist Elias Canetti noticed: "Montaigne is most beautiful, because he does not hurry." Aged 17 Michel de Montaigne had ridden to Paris, to complete his humanistic education. There he had attached important relations, had operated with prostitutes notoriously and had squandered one the family wealth, until the father pulled the emergency brake and called him back to Bordeaux, where he had to begin a boring job at the local court (if we can trust the speculations of the French biographer Lacouture). Historically more secured is Montaigne's political identity: the France of his time had torn up, the faith splitting escalated in the "St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre" in Paris on 24 August 1572, bloody amuck in many other French cities followed, also in Montaigne's Bordeaux. He had been the mayor, and particularly in the second term of office 1583-85, he skillfully succeeded to calm down the parties (Catholics tried to slaughter the Protestant Huguenots). His "ideology-free" position had been developed in expanded studies of the classical philosophers - and in a thereupon diametrically opposite literary attempt to justify an own individual kind of thinking and writing: precisely analyzing human conditions (using oneself as the only field, we can explore without too much strange mistakes) without being paralyzed by social regulations of how to search and communicate. "I do not proclaim doctrines of faith, but not obligatory opinions, which you can classify as a gesture alike children, trying to show their experiments: they only want to learn, not to instruct or indoctrinate." The skeptical, further-asking, essentially open dialogue of Montaigne influenced such thinkers as Diderot, Lichtenberg or Nietzsche. His writing method encouraged philosophy, psychology - and hundreds of essayists. Indeed we hope, that Montaigne's voice will never get lost ...

Firstly Frames Tranlation is the one to buy. This book includes the travel journals and the essay in complete form by a great transaltor who is also thee great scholar on M. Montaigne.

What a wonderful book, It is by far in all the books I have read the best by far without measure. I held Shakespeare as the gold standard until I read the Essays. Then I found a richness of ideas and a elegance of language that is beyond comparison.

The Essays are intersting because of the topics but also because Montaigne is talking directly to you. He is a man who would rather speak to you and converse than write to you. Luckly this man did write for us. The essays often are relevant to this day. They give a great deal of history of philosphy and history of France and the world. But mostly they give us an intimate history of one man.

This is the one book for the desert island. It is over a thousand pages but will be read many times by myself. The Essays vary from a page and half to about 200 pages. They cover so many topics and are so full of digressions I recommend that you just dive in. As Montaigne aged his essays grew in complexty and length.

He is a friend that I will never lay eyes on. I usally hate onsided conversations but with Montaigne I am glad I got to hear him speak from the page.

Montaigne was one of those paradoxical characters who was both utterly lazy and completely devoted. His essays are like he is. Lazy, glad (but not too glad), and content to let the blasted world roll by with all of its absurdities and madnesses. Yet he is also taut and tense, intellectually stimulated and willing to stimulate.
Montaigne was wise because he was one of those rare characters who accepted his own humanity without the need to curse at it, exalt it, make it seem ordinary, and make it seem simple. I almost wrote that he made complexity look simple; he almost made it look easy. He did that by have interests that were as broad as that most capacious of faces - the face of the universe. But add to that Montaigne's central conviction that in the sight of God all things are small and you begin to get at the unobtrsively strange and humane part of his art. He combines (in his interests) things that are profoundly trivial and things that are profoundly - ah - profound.
Montainge has been described as a cheerful sceptic and no few harsh and ecstatic souls have been outraged by such a combination. But his cheer was based on the fact that he was both a sceptic and a man of faith - a man of faith before this dreadful age (the age we live in) settled in with its grand bifurcation between the assertive intellect born in the Renaissance was left to battle the pseudo-faith of the fundamentalist Christians. Montaigne would have been politely bewildered to have to speak to either Karl Marx or Jerry Falwell. They would have seemed both absurd and absurdly deranged to him. He was too balanced.
He was and remains a great corrective to our mystical tendencies. He does not cancel them out but he does smack them in the teethe and put them into order. He despised that perennial human desire to destroy humanity in the name of a state higher than humanity.

Montaigne explained his own purpose for writing these essays: To create a portrait of himself. Not a physical portrait of his appearance, but a portrait of his character, his thoughts and ideas. Based on this literary portrait of Michel de Montaigne, I believe I would have liked the man immensely if I had been able to meet him.
The book is huge & intimidating and the subject matter seems incredibly dry at first glance, but once you start reading, the language of this immaculate translation will lull you into almost believing that Montaigne himself is talking to you. His writing style can best be described as conversational; he rambles, philosophizes, quotes classical authors, loses his initial train of thought... and every minute of it is fascinating and enjoyable. He wrote about everything, his favorite topics being history and philosophy, his true subject always, of course, being himself. He explores the Big Universal Issues like death and honor and morality, and I was amazed to see how well he had everything figured out nearly 500 years ago. Montaigne was apparently a model of sanity and maturity despite his outward persona of a self-deprecating and amiably eccentric country gentleman. Every few pages I found myself nodding my head in agreement and admiration of something he had written.
The Everyman's Library edition is very well-made, though a bit too thick to be held comfortably in the hands for long periods. Simply as a physical object this book is worth the purchase price, and based on the merit of its contents it would be a bargain at three or four times the cost. Definitely, definitely buy this book. It is potentially life-changing.

This is great reading from the all but forgotten past. Montaigne writes about himself, so you get a deep feel for his persona, opinions, humor, and experiential wisdom, and in fact, about being human in general. Read one essay at a time, or hundreds of pages in one sitting. Its all good.

"My library is in the third story of a tower; on the first is my chapel, on the second a bedroom with ante-chambers, where I often lie to be alone; and above it there is a great wardrobe. Adjoining my library is a very neat little room, in which a fire can be laid in winter, and which is pleasantly lighted by a window..." Michel de Montaigne (1533 - 1592) wrote in the chapter "On Three Kinds of Relationships". Montaigne liked being retired, seeking distance to a world of bloody fights between religious groups. Did these things develop, 400 years later? Montaigne tried to escape dogmatic thoughts finding a new way of writing and hammering out thoughts via his typical relaxed method of writing. Living 200 years earlier than the other genius of essay, the poor Soeren Kierkegaard, Montaigne was not as filled up with anxiety as the Danish philosopher - he instead managed to stay calm with a solid resource of optimism, though things outside his favorite tower often run very worse. His courageous goal was the overcoming of the stereotyped medieval conception of the world, in which humans usually had been overwhelmed by church- or government-authorities like puppets on a string. Montaigne established the departure to individual noticing, founded an anthropocentric view of world. This probably had something fresh to his contemporary readers. Montaignes program was to dip down in ones own mind: "Everyone, who is listening to his inner landscape of thoughts, is able to discover his identity, so that he is able to repel everything, which does not fit this." About his style of writing essayist Elias Canetti noticed: "Montaigne is most beautiful, because he does not hurry." Aged 17 Michel de Montaigne had ridden to Paris, to complete his humanistic education. There he had attached important relations, had operated with prostitutes notoriously and had squandered one the family wealth, until the father pulled the emergency brake and called him back to Bordeaux, where he had to begin a boring job at the local court (if we can trust the speculations of the French biographer Lacouture). Historically more secured is Montaigne's political identity: the France of his time had torn up, the faith splitting escalated in the "St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre" in Paris on 24 August 1572, bloody amuck in many other French cities followed, also in Montaigne's Bordeaux. He had been the mayor, and particularly in the second term of office 1583-85, he skillfully succeeded to calm down the parties (Catholics tried to slaughter the Protestant Huguenots). His "ideology-free" position had been developed in expanded studies of the classical philosophers - and in a thereupon diametrically opposite literary attempt to justify an own individual kind of thinking and writing: precisely analyzing human conditions (using oneself as the only field, we can explore without too much strange mistakes) without being paralyzed by social regulations of how to search and communicate. "I do not proclaim doctrines of faith, but not obligatory opinions, which you can classify as a gesture alike children, trying to show their experiments: they only want to learn, not to instruct or indoctrinate." The skeptical, further-asking, essentially open dialogue of Montaigne influenced such thinkers as Diderot, Lichtenberg or Nietzsche. His writing method encouraged philosophy, psychology - and hundreds of essayists. Indeed we hope, that Montaigne's voice will never get lost ...