Category: What I’m Reading Now

What book(s) I’m reading now and what I think about the subject, the writing, the book design and the author. Most of these are books by the bedside: books I read in the final hour or so before sleep each night. There is usually a stack of 10-20 books on the go at any one time.

Translating Montaigne

Books & Reviews / Translations & translating / What I'm Reading Now5 Comments

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With two printed versions of Montaigne’s essays (translations by Donald Frame and M. A. Screech) and a couple of online editions available to me, I thought I might offer some examples of how individual translations have captured Montaigne’s writing and let you judge which you think is clearer and crisper for reading today. I chose, somewhat at random, some lines from Book 1, Essay 50: Of Democritus and Heraclitus. It’s a reasonably short piece. I will give it in its entirety once, then offer selected sentences as marked in bold, below, from other translations for comparison. (You can read some ……… click below for more ↓

Common Sense

Books & Reviews / Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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When men yield up the exclusive privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon. Thomas Paine, 18th century political activist and political philosopher, wrote that line. It struck me as particularly cogent in light of modern politics and the rise of fanatic, fundamentalist organizations: people who give themselves over to ideologies or to any monolithic cause lose their liberty because they stop thinking for themselves. They allow others to do the thinking for them, rather than question matters for themselves. This is true, of course, at all levels, local to international. We should never allow partisan politics to ……… click below for more ↓

Sonnet 103

Literary pretensions / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Alack! what poverty my Muse brings forth, So begins Shakespeare’s sonnet number 103 (I started rereading the sonnets recently because, well because it’s Shakespeare, damn it all, and what other reason would anyone need?). It’s a sentiment I well know. The impoverished Muse thing, I mean. There are three dozen pieces in draft mode I’ve started here, then hesitated, and left incomplete. Unable to pull the threads together into a coherent tableaux because my muse is busy somewhere else. I have numerous unfinished stories, novels and even two books in progress on my hard drive. And a basement full of ……… click below for more ↓

How to Run a Country

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I’ve posted a review of Philip Freeman’s book, How to Run a Country on the Municipal Machiavelli site, here: ianchadwick.com/machiavelli/how-to-run-a-country/ Freeman’s work is a short (132 pages in a small format) book with a mix of English and Latin content derived from the writing of Marcus Cicero, thematically chosen around the topics of governance, politics and war. It’s billed as a sequel to his “How to Win an Election”, but I didn’t feel it lived up to that title. However, I hope it can help introduce an audience of modern readers to the Roman writer Cicero and spark some interest ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne’s cat and Descartes’ reality

Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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“When I play with my cat,” wrote French philosopher and essayist, Michel de Montaigne, “Who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.*” That statement encompasses two very distinct paths of contemplation. First is one of animal sentience. The recognition that animals are conscious, that they are sentient creatures, with feelings and intelligence, not simply biological machines, is fairly new. Most of our modern awareness of animal intelligence and consciousness comes only in the last century (although the debate was opened in Darwin’s time). The 17th-century philosopher, Rene Descartes, believed animals were machines that ……… click below for more ↓

The Beginning of the End

Books & Reviews / History & Biography / Politics / War & Military / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Sixty years ago, the end began. It would take almost a full year for the Allies to batter the Third Reich into submission, but in the summer of 1944, the end was inevitable. All could see it. The combined might of the Allied armies was simply overpowering for whatever Germany had left to throw at it. But it was neither easy nor simple. So why didn’t Germany sue for peace, cut its losses and surrender, rather than face the prospect of ruin and devastation? Why did Germany continue its reckless, inhumane pursuit of terror and repression – even accelerating the ……… click below for more ↓

Great books: the academic view

Books & Reviews / Culture / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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In the mid-1990s, journalist David Denby took on a personal challenge to return to Columbia University for a year to take two courses, both focused on reading the “great books” of the Western canon. The results and his observations – along with an entertaining bit of biography about his journey – is told in Great Books (Simon & Schuster, 1996). I was interested in Denby’s narrative primarily because, in looking through the table of contents, I noticed he commented on Machiavelli and Montaigne – two of my favourite writers. That made me want to read what he says about them, ……… click below for more ↓

Inanity and vanity

Critical Thinking / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Michel de Montaigne wrote in his usual self-deprecating but sardonic way: If other men would consider themselves at the rate I do, they would, as I do, discover themselves to be full of inanity and foppery; to rid myself of it, I cannot, without making myself away. We are all steeped in it, as well one as another; but they who are not aware on’t, have somewhat the better bargain; and yet I know not whether they have or no. Book 3, IX: Of Vanity That chapter is one of his longer pieces in The Essays, and like most others in ……… click below for more ↓

The First Dark Age

History & Biography / Science & Technology / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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The causes of the first “Dark Age” have long been the topic of debate among historians and archeologists. Many ideas and theories have been put forward; none have found universal agreement. It’s commonly referred to in scholarly circles as “The Catastrophe.” Earthquakes, drought, migrations (or the more popular single-people migration theory), volcanoes, barbarian raiders, climate change and systemic collapse have all been blamed for the sudden collapse of civilizations in the eastern Mediterranean over a short period of time. While any one of these may account for particular cities, or even a small geographical region, it is difficult to apply those ……… click below for more ↓

Happiness & Fulfillment

Buddhism / Faith / History & Biography / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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There are ten methods for meditating on the world, begins one scroll in the 1,300-year-old collection of Tang-dynasty sutras from Xian, China, that can lead us to happiness and fulfillment. I realize that sounds like the opening of a New Age piffle book, but the sutras were actually discovered in a cave near a Buddhist monastery, in the far western region of China, in 1900. The scrolls were looted and sold to collectors and academia, and until 1998 were pretty much lost. Now the public can read a few selections from them in the book, The Lost Sutras of Jesus, ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne and Machiavelli

Philosophy / Politics / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Michel de Montaigne mentioned Machiavelli only twice in his Essays, both in Book Two. This tells us he was aware of the latter, but not whether he was intimately familiar with his works. Nor does it tell us which of Machiavelli’s writings he is referring to (by this date, all of Machiavelli’s major works were in print). Machiavelli himself had died in 1527, some 50 or more years before Montaigne penned this part of his essays (first published in 1580). The first mention is in Chapter XXXIV: OBSERVATION ON THE MEANS TO CARRY ON A WAR ACCORDING TO JULIUS CAESAR ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne’s words on anger

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“There is no passion that so shakes the clarity of our judgment as anger,” Montaigne wrote in Book II of his Essays (Chapter 31). “It is a passion that takes pleasure in itself and flatters itself.” That strikes me a very Buddhist statement, a comment lifted from the Dhammapada, although Montaigne was a solid Catholic. It certainly has a similar wisdom. I have seen that anger cloud the judgment of people in political debate, on many stages from national to local. It blinds people to the reality of the issues, and carries them on a wave of self-induced pleasure, as ……… click below for more ↓

Montaigne’s library

Books & Reviews / Personal Reminiscences / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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I read yesterday that Montaigne had a library of 1,000 books, of which he was very proud. It was his retreat – the room he went to where he wanted to get away from things and write. Machiavelli, too, had a study with a small collection of books he treasured, albeit a much smaller selection. Both, however, treasured the classic Greek and Roman authors, the wisdom of the ages. One thousand books is a remarkable collection, given that printing was barely a century old, and books were still quite expensive. He would have treasured every volume and known each title ……… click below for more ↓

Finding my muse in Montaigne

Blog & Blogging / Books & Reviews / Culture / Philosophy / What I'm Reading NowOne Comment

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Muse: a source of inspiration; especially a guiding genius; the imaginary force thought to provide inspiration to poets, writers, artists, etc. A muse, for modern writers, is that indefinable force that drives us to write. It’s part imagination, part inspiration. I suspect there’s a heady brew of psychology and biology at work, too. Why write instead of, say, paint? Or sculpt? Or compose? I don’t know. It just is, for me, the thing my muse – however you define that – compels me to pursue. It compels others, though in different ways, and many in much more creative and innovative ……… click below for more ↓

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