A LIFE WITH MONTAIGNE

Reading Montaigne is delicious.

I remember the first time I read his essays I just got stuck in them. Ever since, I always have them close at hand.

More than humanistic, human. Perhaps the first essayist, Montaigne was so close to the sublime and the banal, and he did it in first person, in a frank, naked dialogue with himself. Sometimes humorous, sometimes ironic, sometimes in an obvious and conscious contradiction, sometimes direct, sometimes sinuous, always human, essentially human. Pessimistic, lucid, skeptical, entertaining, surprising, accomplice. It’s amazing how contemporary his essays are, despite being five hundred years old. They have everything.

If you may enjoy Montaigne, do it, read his essays. And if you prefer to start with a very well done introduction, read this biography of Montaigne recently written by Sarah Bakewell -it will provide a synthesis of this human being rigorously honest and lucid who, perhaps unintentionally, gives us clues about how to live… humanely.

Kisses, hugs,

Álex