Essays

“Essays” by Michel de Montaigne (1533–1892) have long become a desktop book of wisdom for European readers. Unlike many other books that played their role and then disappeared from the scene, the aphorisms of this French thinker have never known oblivion since their first publication in 1580. Shakespeare, Francis Bacon, Voltaire, Denis Diderot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Locke, Byron, Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Marina Tsvetaeva—hardly any intellectual has resisted the charm of Montaigne’s penetrating mind and noble person, hardly anyone hasn’t appreciated his openness, breadth of interests, and depth of erudition.

Montaigne is witty and quick, ironic and trustworthy, free of gloomy lecturing—and therefore more than appropriate today, in an age of fast pleasures and still a lingering aftertaste. That is why Montaigne is read even now.