This is the best stuff I’ve read in a long time.
What is /lit/s judgement?

>>24489808 (OP)
what does he talk about?

>>24489826
About everything, quite literally. About education, governing, virtues and vices, cultural topics, dealing with emotions; most of it is supplemented with historical examples. It’s awesome.

>>24489808 (OP)
He's too enthusiastic about nature and opposed to culture for my taste, 200 years before Rousseau.

He copied Plutarch, just read Plutarch

>>24489808 (OP)
Love this lil wigga like you wouldn’t believe

My favorite essay is probably On Friendship, but everything he writes is fantastic.

My judg[]ment is you haven't been reading a whole lot of anything for a long time.

>>24489808 (OP)
>jewish
>a privileged lukewarm bitch who did not have the balls to be either hot or cold
Either one is an instantaneous red card in my world. Dismissed.

>>24490062
A well informed, principled and well meaning take you’ve got there, my friend.

He's incredibly personable if you agree with him or not. The essays are really good.

>>24490019
I like the one on sadness. It’s a real cure for melancholy self indulgence

>>24489808 (OP)
Pseud magnate, obviously a great writer but not essential... If you read him you have to read Florio... reading Montaigne in these crappy modern translations is absurd

Montaigne is one of those writers I read years ago, and I've forgotten all the specific details of what I read, but I have a very pleasant feeling associated with my memories of reading him. This means I need to go back and read him again.

>>24492018
I’ve never heard of Florio. What has he written?

Just downloaded pic related
I hope he is easy to read

>>24489860
What does he say about culture?

Any other cozy and erudite essayists like him? I know of Rochefoucould but that's it.

>>24492186
Not quite the same, but check out Samuel Johnson.

>>24492179
Almost every point he makes, whether moral or not, is accompanied by examples in ancient history or his contemporary and these often concern how the ancients conducted themselves in comparison to his times. Most of it is military conduct or the relation between a ruler and his subjects. I would argue that these are also cultural phenomena.

>>24489808 (OP)
>>24492078
you cant tell he was a smart fellow by the sheer size of his fucking head

>C'est une perfection absolue et pour ainsi dire divine que de savoir jouir loyalement de son être.

Translation: In this moment, I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing. But because, I am englightened by my intelligence.

>>24489808 (OP)
Bald

>>24489980
Shakespeare copied both him and Plutarch. Guess there's no point reading Shakespeare.

>>24492018
If Shakespeare, Descartes, Byron, Emerson, Nietzsche, Flaubert, Proust, Gide, and Woolf are pseuds, then what are you, an ESL who cannot even spell magnet?

>>24489808 (OP)
I have always meant to read him, but I havent yet. I did read Bacon's essays, which I enjoyed immensely. Do you recommend any specific essays, or just choose one and dive in?

Also, have any anons ever read The Spectator, wrote by Addison and Steele?

>>24492179
Culture in the sense of 'human culture' isn't even a concept in general circulation until the 18th century, anon
Like Emerson, Whitman, and Nietzsche later his study was Himself: Montaigne was way ahead of his time

>>24492060
Florio was an Elizabethan translator; just as Arthur Golding's Ovid was a book that Shakespeare owned, so was Florio's Montaigne. His version is fun to read here and there, but if you're going to read Montaigne in English, read the Frame translation

>>24492738
Thank you. But my mother tongue is German, so I’m not reading him in English.

>>24492798
Kek. Obwohl meine Grosseltern sind Deutsch (Fränkisch--Würzburg) I'm pretty much 100% American these days. So far as finding an adequate German rendering is concerned: viel Glück.