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Text of the page (random words):
e the contrarians but with a couple of differences the first being that in this book the journal entries are arranged in chronological order from most recent to oldest as well as by subject matter the second is that the author is no longer exactly the same person he was when the first book came out in 2012 this for the simple reason that time never passes in vain as heraclitus said you cannot step into the same river twice the water in the river is never the same it is constantly moving so the river is never the same river twice one word on the title of the book a free spirited person can be many different things even at least apparently opposed to one another rather than harmonious or compatible because their heart is their compass and heart has no boundaries or rules imposed from outside when they are religious they tend to focus on the innermost teachings and truths of their religious faith rather than the letter of the scriptures and therefore they re often if not always on the verge of heresy they do not dwell on the past but resist a progress built on the destruction of traditions that go back many centuries and of the systematic denial of our history and civilization they are fiercely independent but can still develop a close emotional bond with those who provide for them and look to others for protection they deeply care about their beliefs and what they feel strongly about but seem to not worry at all except the bare minimum about normal stuff like money career success etc free spirited people are the salt of the earth they are not restful persons you never relax with these people they are inspiring and thought provoking challenging and uplifting men and women at their best they are contrarians in the best sense of the word and so they are somehow a step ahead of those to whom i dedicated my previous book some time ago i stumbled upon an excellent definition of that blessed kind of person a free spirit is not bound by this that matter materialism or opinion they sing dance and flow on the wind for they are at one with it they are nothing and everything void and expanse even space and time do not confine or define them for they are pure energy itself rasheed ogunlaru with that being said please note that free spirited does not mean self referential solipsistic or selfish quite the contrary it s because they are deeply in love with life humanity poetry music dance theater writing and so many other things that free spirited people are what they are if they flow on the wind it s because they are at one with it if they are self confident it s because they have faith in life as the french say tout se tient everything fits freedom itself is not an absolute not an either or proposition but a set of relations possibilities mixed with actualities likewise freedom of spirit which is the quintessence of human nature is basically the fruit of a compromise a miracle of balance and elegance ultimately free spirited people cannot but be the result of a coincidentia oppositorum the coincidence of opposites as the most elegant of essayists and a living miracle of balance and intellectual like michel de montaigne once said one may be humble out of pride which is certainly not a good thing but what if we apply the same scheme in positive rather than in negative terms well let s say for instance that one may be cheerful ironic out of seriousness easy going out of severity naive out of sophistication and so on hence montaigne s writing en chair et en os in the flesh as well as the imperceptibly subversive turns of his sentences and the slyly ironic tone that often creeps into his essays that s what free spirited people are made up of and why they are the salt of the earth by invoking blessings on the free in spirit i m trying to express the feeling i feel for them my deep admiration and gratitude for their very special contribution to mankind and society they are my north star my source of inspiration and the reason why i am what i am i would like to think that in whatever i write there is something the free spirited writers and thinkers of the past centuries would approve of likewise i hope what i write does not displease the free spirits of our day too much now for me there s nothing left to do but wish you happy reading and look forward to hearing from you with any questions or comments that you may have blessed are the free in spirit a journal in complicated times paperback ed isbn 13 979 8702016979 publication date february 5 2021 kindle ed asin b08w2dp9rc publication date february 4 2021 posted by s r piccoli a 12 49 pm no comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest etichette america bloggers books history italy s politics literature philosophy uk politics us politics october 16 2012 montaigne a 16th century blogger michel de montaigne s library tower someone says the best way to read montaigne is by sitting under a tree along a small river as the ancients used to do someone else says the only one place in which you can read montaigne is a library if possible one of those large 16th or 17th century libraries which adorn abbeys and aristocratic palaces throughout europe i personally tend to agree with the second opinion well lack of anything better i think my own small library must be enough but why in a library basically for two reason a portrait of michel de montaigne painting by thomas de leu the first is that in 1571 montaigne at age 38 retired to the library tower on his estate in the périgord and that s where he wrote his essays he had about a thousand books which was a lot at the time for a private library inscribed on the walls and beams of his tower room were 57 maxims in latin and greek taken from his books here are some examples o wretched minds of men o blind hearts in what darkness of life and in how great dangers is passed this term of life whatever its duration lucretius i do not understand sextus empiricus god permits no one but himself to magnify himself herodotus not knowing anything is the sweetest life sophocles i shelter where the storm drives me horace no one has ever known the truth and no one will know it xenophanes what man will account himself great whom a chance occasion destroys utterly euripides if any man thinks himself to be something when he is nothing he deceives himself letter of paul to the galatians 6 all things are too difficult for man to understand them ecclesiastes 1 the second is that as it is easily understandable montaigne was a man of books and above all that his essays are a textile of texts a book made of books to put it the way umberto eco did describing his own book in his postscript to the name of the rose even to those who don t know much about montaigne the above mentioned inscriptions may say a lot about the man in the tower now let s try to look into this subject a bit more thoroughly but let me say it first montaigne is one of my all time intellectual heroes friedrich nietzsche said of him that such a man wrote has truly augmented the joy of living on this earth i fully agree with him and yet i think that what better reflects my long lasting relationship with him is what another of montaigne s ardent admirers ralph waldo emerson said of him a single odd volume of cotton s translation of the essays remained to me from my father s library when a boy it lay long neglected until after many years when i was newly escaped from college i read the book and procured the remaining volumes i remember the delight and wonder in which i lived with it it seemed to me as if i had myself written the book in some former life so sincerely it spoke to my thought and experience from montaigne or the skeptic in representative men that s exactly what happened to me except the way i came into possession of the essays i bought the two volumes of them at 50 off when i was twenty something in a bookstore in rome which is also where more or less in the same period i happened to find emerson s representative men another source of inspiration throughout my entire life along with the other books by the same author that is why when i happen to pass by that place i cannot help but feel the deepest gratitude and a bit of nostalgia michel eyquem de montaigne was a skeptic but of a very different sort from the one we are familiar with in fact he was not the kind of skeptic who basically believes in nothing who refuses to take anything on faith who takes issue with organized religion and things like these yes he was a man who doubted almost everything but at the same time he was a good catholic one who believed all that the church taught and prescribed without reservation strange enough isn t it but strange as it might seem that s perhaps what i like most about him and yes i know the saying is if ifs and buts were candy and nuts we d all have a merry christmas but luckily or unfortunately depending on the point of view if we reason philosophically broadly speaking we cannot do without them shakespeare who was perhaps montaigne s most famous reader and admirer john florio s translation of the essais became available to him in english in 1603 knew that very well at any rate according to many scholars but you don t need to be a genius to come to the same conclusion montaigne s influence is clearly evident in hamlet and king lear and this both with regard to the language and to the skepticism that characterizes both plays to say nothing about the whole monologue of the tempest which seems cribbed from florio s translation of the essais as sarah bakewell pointed out in her how to live a life of montaigne in one question and twenty one answers yet as i said before montaigne s skepticism is different from any kind of skepticism we are accustomed to take the following passage from the apology for raimond sebond book the second chapter xii it were to do wrong to the divine goodness did not the universe consent to our belief the heavens the earth the elements our bodies and our souls all things concur to this we have but to find out the way to use them they instruct us if we are capable of instruction for this world is a sacred temple into which man is introduced there to contemplate statues not the works of a mortal hand but such as the divine purpose has made the objects of sense the sun the stars the water and the earth to represent those that are intelligible to us the invisible things of god says st paul appear by the creation of the world his eternal wisdom and divinity being considered by his works quite an interesting statement for a skeptic isn t it and how about the following one our outward and inward structure is full of imperfection but there is nothing useless in nature not even inutility itself nothing has insinuated itself into this universe that has not therein some fit and proper place book the third chapter i this of course also echoes the great renaissance philosophical architectures according to which the universe is a vast and wonderful chain of relationships from the stars to plants to rocks and to men but this is no surprise because montaigne is in a sense the epitome of a renaissance man along with marsilio ficino and count giovanni pico della mirandola while in another sense because of his skepticism he takes a step beyond otherwise why the 19th century american transcendentalist ralph waldo emerson would have been such an admirer of him yet apart from his sui generis skepticism what also amazes me about montaigne is the way he writes about himself here is what he says about his being a writer i am not at all ambitious that any one should love and esteem me more dead than living the humour of tiberius is ridiculous but yet common who was more solicitous to extend his renown to posterity than to render himself acceptable to men of his own time if i were one of those to whom the world could owe commendation i would give out of it one half to have the other in hand let their praises come quick and crowding about me more thick than long more full than durable and let them cease in god s name with my own knowledge of them and when the sweet sound can no longer pierce my ears it were an idle humour to essay now that i am about to forsake the commerce of men to offer myself to them by a new recommendation i make no account of the goods i could not employ in the service of my life such as i am i will be elsewhere than in paper my art and industry have been ever directed to render myself good for something my studies to teach me to do and not to write i have made it my whole business to frame my life this has been my trade and my work i am less a writer of books than anything else book the second chapter xxxviii to madame de duras but perhaps the greatest secret of his success and the main reason why this 16th century writer is still alive and well is that as william hazlitt put it in taking up his pen he did not set up for a philosopher wit orator or moralist but he became all these by merely daring to tell us whatever passed through his mind in his essays says sarah bakewell h e wrote as if he were chatting to his readers just two friends whiling away an afternoon in conversation montaigne raised questions rather than giving answers he wrote about whatever caught his eye war psychology animals sex magic diplomacy vanity glory violence hermaphroditism self doubt most of all he wrote about himself and was amazed at the variety he found within i cannot keep my subject still he said it goes along befuddled and staggering with a natural drunkenness his writing followed the same wayward path in other words we may well say that he was a blogger before blogs existed a 16th century blogger perhaps even more enlightening in this regard is the following passage from book the first chapter l the judgment is an utensil proper for all subjects and will have an oar in everything which is the reason that in these essays i take hold of all occasions where though it happen to be a subject i do not very well understand i try however sounding it at a distance and finding it too deep for my stature i keep me on the shore and this knowledge that a man can proceed no further is one effect of its virtue yes one of those of which it is most proud one while in an idle and frivolous subject i try to find out matter whereof to compose a body and then to prop and support it another while i employ it in a noble subject one that has been tossed and tumbled by a thousand hands wherein a man can scarce possibly introduce anything of his own the way being so beaten on every side that he must of necessity walk in the steps of another in such a case tis the work of the judgment to take the way that seems best and of a thousand paths to determine that this or that is the best i leave the choice of my arguments to fortune and take that she first presents to me they are all alike to me i never design to go through any of them for i never see all of anything neither 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