The very first blogger?

You might ask who was the first blogger. Quite by chance, on holiday and looking for something to read in a pile of books in a rented apartment, I came across a book I had always wanted to read – the essays of Montaigne. Sporadically I had come across references to it and they had often seemed intriguing. But I had never read it. Now was my chance.

I immediately realised that these essays (essais = tries) of Montaigne were in fact nothing but blogs; fairly lengthy blogs perhaps but nonetheless blogs. Each essay addresses a subject and tells us what Montaigne knows about it. Sometimes that isn't very much; at other times we get many pages. Always there are many quotations from the classical authors such as Senecca, Horace Virgil etc. But what makes the reading worthwhile are the opinions expressed: always positive and clear and often saying things that are as relevant today as when they were first written over 400 years ago. A single sentence will leap out of the page with a quintessential curtain-lifting thought. It is Montaigne's opinions that I am going to comment on in this and following blogs. I know that over the centuries many people have have written about Montaigne, so I don't expect to produce anything that is new. But Montaigne's own introduction to his essays starts “my sole purpose in writing this book has been a private and domestic one”. In that spirit I am simply recording my immediate reaction to some of his essays, to help me (and maybe a reader or two of these blogs) understand how they might have meaning today.

The edition of the essays that I found was the Penguin Classics one: Michel de Montaigne, Essays Translated with an Introduction by J M Cohen (1958). This is only a partial edition of about 1/3 rd of the essays, but certainly adequate for me to get started. The essays were published in three books, additions being added in each successive edition. You can download the complete works, in a 19th century translation, from Project Gutenberg. This is often heavier going than the Cohen version; 19th century English can be rather elaborate. But it does have some exquisite translations such as: “a man's accusations of himself are always believed; his praises never” which in Cohen is the more leaden “what [a man] says in his disfavour is always believed, but when he commends himself he arouses distrust”.

There are certainly sections of the essays that strike no chords with me: a comparison of Seneca and Plutarch or an analysis of the strengths of Tacitus. But leaving these aside there is much that seems of relevance today, even if you have to take account of social context. I'll try in a few brief blog entries to point out some of the Montaigne's thoughts that I find intriguing.