Michel de Montaigne. Essays. Volume 3
Мишел дьо Монтен. Опити. Том 3
Category: Philosophy
Language: Bulgarian

   The Essays of Michel de Montaigne are contained in three books and 107 chapters of varying length. They were originally written in Middle French and were originally published in the Kingdom of France. Montaigne's stated design in writing, publishing and revising the Essays over the period from approximately 1570 to 1592 was to record "some traits of my character and of my humours." The Essays were first published in 1580 and cover a wide range of topics. The Essays exercised an important influence on both French and English literature, in thought and style.

   Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Lord of Montaigne (1533—1592) was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance, known for popularizing the essay as a literary genre. His work is noted for its merging of casual anecdotes and autobiography with serious intellectual insight; his massive volume Essays contains some of the most influential essays ever written. Montaigne had a direct influence on Western writers, including Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Albert Hirschman, William Hazlitt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Stefan Zweig, Eric Hoffer, Isaac Asimov, and possibly on the later works of William Shakespeare. In his own lifetime, Montaigne was admired more as a statesman than as an author. The tendency in his essays to digress into anecdotes and personal ruminations was seen as detrimental to proper style rather than as an innovation, and his declaration that, "I am myself the matter of my book", was viewed by his contemporaries as self-indulgent. In time, however, Montaigne would come to be recognized as embodying, perhaps better than any other author of his time, the spirit of freely entertaining doubt which began to emerge at that time. He is most famously known for his sceptical remark, "Que sçay-je?" ("What do I know?", in Middle French; now rendered as Que sais-je? in modern French). Remarkably modern even to readers today, Montaigne's attempt to examine the world through the lens of the only thing he can depend on implicitly—his own judgment—makes him more accessible to modern readers than any other author of the Renaissance. Much of modern literary non-fiction has found inspiration in Montaigne and writers of all kinds continue to read him for his masterful balance of intellectual knowledge and personal storytelling.

Table of contents

С. Атанасов. Трета книга на Опити

ОПИТИ. Книга трета

Глава I. За полезното и честното

Глава II. За разкаянието

Глава III. За трите вида общуване

Глава IV. За отвличането на вниманието

Глава V. За някои стихове на Вергилий

Глава VI. За превозните средства

Глава VII. За неудобството от високото положение

Глава VIII. За изкуството на беседата

Глава IX. За суетността

Глава X. За владеенето на волята

Глава XI. За куците

Глава XII. За физиономията

Глава XIII. За опита

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