The Essays of Michel de Montaigne – Cannibals – The Essays of Montaigne is one of Top 100 Greatest Books in History http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-classic-chef-doeuvre-les-essais-de.html the list is at The Guardian site - 10 out of 10

 

The Essays of Michel de Montaigne – Cannibals – The Essays of Montaigne is one of Top 100 Greatest Books in History http://realini.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-classic-chef-doeuvre-les-essais-de.html the list is at The Guardian site

10 out of 10

 

 

This is one of the greatest works you could read – The Norwegian Book Club has asked the most prominent, respected authors of the age, Umberto Eco, Salman Rushdie, Nadine Gordimer, John Irving and scores of others to list their preferred masterpieces, and the result has Don Quixote at the top and The Essays, Tolstoy, Hemingway, Marcel Proust, Jane Austen, James Joyce, Scott F Fitzgerald on the list

 

One of the themes that astounding Michel de Montaigne takes on is that of cannibalism, and this is big right now, as Netflix has had the premiere of The Society of The Snow, nominated for The Golden Globe and other prizes, about the real life airplane crash that took place in The Andes, already adapted for the screen as Alive http://realini.blogspot.com/2018/05/alive-based-on-book-by-piers-paul-read.html

Spoiler alert for these films (and incidentally, for the rest of the lines, which are not worth the trouble) they are faced with the rules of three – you survive for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food, and since there is nothing to eat in that eternal snow, what can they do, but eat the bodies of the dead humans, those who died just as the plane hit the earth, and the rest

 

On death, Michel de Montaigne has mesmerizing thoughts (just like on everything else), encouraging readers to take the example of Jesus – here this reader would have some qualms, because, unlike the glorious philosopher, he does not believe in God, he is actually closer to Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/06/take-girl-like-you-by-kingsley-amis-one.html who said something like ‘it is not that I do not believe in Him, I hate Him’, and hence what model to take from such characters?

The point with Jesus Christ is similar to the one connecting him with Alexander, grandiose figures that have died at such an early age, when I am sixty, it looks preposterous to moan if Death strikes soon…something Montaigne appears to insist on –if we joke here, it could be said it might be a bit morbid, he has an interest in death that may surpass the normal – and the ancients had the wisdom to look at the terminal period

 

When a winning general paraded through Rome, at the zenith of his career, the best moment of life, he would be tempted to bask in the glory and forget everything else, to avoid this, he had a slave riding in the same chariot, whose job was to repeat in the ear of the winner ‘memento mori’ aka remember you are mortal

 

Audiences are invited to think of every day as being the last and thus every hour will be a boon, this is a quote (more or less, if phenomenal Montaigne is accurate, well, I do not remember the line, which you could search for, if keen to know the exact words) and we also have Socrates and his attitude in the face of the death sentence – when asked about burial, he does not care – he says when told ‘the judges have condemned you to die…and Nature them’ Socrates was puzzled by the Oracle of Delphi

This Oracle had declared him the wisest man of ancient times, and when considering why, Socrates came to the conclusion that he does not say he knows what he does not know (Michel de Montaigne has lines on the subject, with amateurs talking about what they do not know) and this refers to death as well, for Socrates explains that he cannot (and the rest of us) fear death, because nobody knows about it, to be afraid of it would be the old mistake of pretending to know what we do not know, nobody came back from the other side

 

We should think of death as liberating, Montaigne muses on pain as well, for if it is intense, then the end is near and quick, with the reverse, if less excruciating, then there would be more time…we must judge the life after death, and there are references (always the case) to different sages, and how this story developed, one saying I lived one day more than I should, the end comes unexpectedly- his own brother is hit by a ball and dies

Fyodor Dostoyevsky is in the same elite, crème de la crème society of the best writers, with The Idiot http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-idiot-by-fyodor-dostoyevsky.html The Brothers Karamazov, Crime and Punishment, Notes From the Underground acclaimed as classics, and he has had a real life experience of death and life, which we can read about in his magnum opera, where we have the hero facing the other side

 

Dostoyevsky was condemned to death, and he was in front of the firing squad, when he had three minutes left, which he divided into…three, one minute to say goodbye to friends, another to pass his life in front of him, and the last to admire a ray of sunshine that was falling on the top of a church nearby, when he is pardoned, or else the czar had had a sort of trick in mind from the beginning, to scare the revolutionary

We thus read in the chefs d’oeuvre how one feels when one knows there are only days, hours, minutes left to live, how we would trade that short timespan for a life in the middle of the ocean, on a bare rock, anything is preferable, life is so precious, unique, we have this chance and must use it…paradoxically, I had thought for quite some time, even reading Fyodor Dostoevsky, that he was an atheist, when in fact he was so deeply religious, when he said ‘I would rather be a sausage maker, who believes in God without fail, goes to church daily and prays…’, alas, when looking on the net for the lines, I did not get them, so it might be that the words are not close enough, or maybe I just made this up…however, for some time, I thought this is the atheist, wishing to be a faithful person, without doubts, but the truth was that, in reality, the writer was deeply immersed in the dogmas of the church…

 

Now for my standard closing with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world  – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

Some favorite quotes from To The Heritage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

‚parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”