Patrick Murtha
Reader
This was a tweet of mine a couple of years ago:
Time for a little Montaigne this morning, what’s the next essay in order?
“That we should not be deemed happy till after our death”
Damn
On another occasion:
I laughed out loud when he speaks of “the mad curiosity of our nature which wastes time trying to seize hold of the future as though it were not enough to have to deal with the present.”
Montaigne anticipating contemporary politics:
“The normal restraints in a healthy State do not provide for...abnormal occurrences; they presuppose...a common consent to acknowledge and obey [those restraints]. The way of the law is...no good for resisting ways which are lawless and wild.”
This is fun:
Reading a Montaigne essay (“On the power of the imagination”) which contains extended discussion of nocturnal emissions, erectile dysfunction, and farting-on-command, well this certainly adds spice to my day
Montaigne imagines putting his penis on trial for “[thrusting] itself forward so inopportunely when we do not want it to, and...so inopportunely [letting] us down when we most need it”
Who said literary classics are boring?
Towards the end of the essay, Montaigne brings in enema methods and the ingestion of cat poop
It’s a winner
Time for a little Montaigne this morning, what’s the next essay in order?
“That we should not be deemed happy till after our death”
Damn
On another occasion:
I laughed out loud when he speaks of “the mad curiosity of our nature which wastes time trying to seize hold of the future as though it were not enough to have to deal with the present.”
Montaigne anticipating contemporary politics:
“The normal restraints in a healthy State do not provide for...abnormal occurrences; they presuppose...a common consent to acknowledge and obey [those restraints]. The way of the law is...no good for resisting ways which are lawless and wild.”
This is fun:
Reading a Montaigne essay (“On the power of the imagination”) which contains extended discussion of nocturnal emissions, erectile dysfunction, and farting-on-command, well this certainly adds spice to my day
Montaigne imagines putting his penis on trial for “[thrusting] itself forward so inopportunely when we do not want it to, and...so inopportunely [letting] us down when we most need it”
Who said literary classics are boring?
Towards the end of the essay, Montaigne brings in enema methods and the ingestion of cat poop
It’s a winner