Status Updates From Shakespeare's Montaigne: Th...

The premeditation of death is a fore-thinking of liberty. He who hath learned to die, hath unlearned to serve.

i picked up this book to alternate with mirror (partly because i’m worried about my slow progress and partly because that book is arduous and seldom rewarding without guidance) i love essays and i can already tell that i’m going to adore this essayist, who is frank and vulnerable and for gods sake french. what more could one ask for? i expect to progress faster in this book than the other.

John Florio has a neat way of translating the Latin phrases with which Michel de Montaigne sprinkles his essays:
...Ipsa felicitas, se nisi temperat, premit.
Felicity itself, unless it tempers itself, distempers us.
That's from an essay caller 'We Taste Nothing Purely' and this line, Excessive joy hath more severity than jollity reminded me of William Blake's 'Proverbs of Hell: Excessive joy weeps

The senses are the beginning and end of human knowledge.
Invenies primis ab sensibus esse creatam
Notitiam veri, neque sensus posse refelli,
Quid maiore fide porro, quad sensus haberi
Debet? (Lucretius)
You shall find knowledge of the truth at first was bred
From our first senses, nor can senses be misled.
What, then our senses should
With us more credit hold?
(I'm enjoying John Florio's Latin translations a lot)

E'l silentio an or suole
Haver prieghi e parole (Tacitus)

Silence also hath a way,
Words and prayers to convey (Florio)

His quidam signis atque haec exempla sequuti,
Esse apibus partem divinae mentis et haustus
Aethereas dixere (Virgil)

Some by these signs, by these examples moved,
Said that in bees there is and may be proved
Some taste of heav'nly kind,
Part of celestial mind. (Florio)

Si l’espine nou pique quand nai
A peine que pique jamai
A thorn, unless at first it prick
Will hardly ever pierce to the'quick
Ubi jam validis quassatum est viribus ævi
Corpus, et obtusis ceciderunt viribus artus,
Claudicat ingenium, delirat linguaque mensque
When once the body by shrewd strength of years
Is shak't, and limbs drawn-down from strength that wears
Wit halts, both tongue and mind
Do daily dote, we find

Of the Cannibals: I find (as far as I have been informed) there is nothing in that nation that is either barbarous or savage, unless men call that barbarism which is not common to them. As, indeed, we have no other aim of truth and reason than the example and 'idea' of the opinions and customs of the country we live in. Where is ever perfect religion, perfect policy, perfect and complete use of all things..

On Friendship:Those (others)we call friends are but acquaintancestiedtogether by someoccasion. In the amity I speak of, (M's friendship with Etienne La Boétie) they intermix themselves one in the other with so universal a commixture that they can no more find the seam that conjoined themtogether. If (asked)wherefore I loved him, I feel it cannot be expressed but by answering: Because it was he, because it was myself.