Yiyun Li: Some people do yoga. There's Montaigne.

When I became an avid reader of the 16th century French author Montaigne in 2005, I was new to writing, relatively new to motherhood, with a three-year-old and a newborn, and my first book. was about to be published. I had previously purchased Montaigne’s essays at a used bookstore, but this 900-page book made me want to dive right in. Montaigne’s complete essays, translated by Donald M. Frame. For the next ten years, I read Montaigne every day. Sometimes I would read for just 10 minutes, and then when my kids were older, I would read for 30 minutes to an hour in the afternoon before I picked them up from school. At the time, I didn’t understand the importance of this routine, other than that Montaigne’s work offered me a brief respite from my life’s responsibilities as a mother, wife, writer, and university professor. maybe.volume of Complete collection of essays It didn’t have to be completed all at once or within a certain time frame. What could be better for a writer than to have his or her life’s work become the life’s work of a reader?

I thought Montaigne, whose encyclopedic works touched on every aspect of the world: philosophy, history, literature, medicine, friendship, love, etc., was one of the best conversation partners one could dream of having. The fact that he was so knowledgeable meant that I learned something new every time I opened his book. Even though his thinking was meandering, it maintained an innate logic, and I was required to read with an active mind rather than a passive receiver.And best of all, he didn’t write for Not for me (or any particular audience), but for myself. About yourself. “Dear reader, I myself am the subject of my book,” Montaigne said in the preface to his work. “There is no need to waste your leisure time on such boring and unprofitable topics.”

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That’s exactly right!Still, there’s no reason to do so. do not have To step away from the pressing (and sometimes profitable) tasks of daily life and focus on a more pressing (but arguably less profitable) subject: ourselves. There are many ways to elaborate on Montaigne’s work. For me, his writings function as reminders, prompts, and even commands. Like daily yoga, regularly meditating on who you are is a healthy habit.

But what is the self? And what if there was a way to measure how much attention we should pay to it without falling into the quagmire of narcissism?

I have been pondering these questions while reading Montaigne’s sophisticated new book, translated by David Coward and published under the title: What do I know? Essential essay. “What do I know?”Ke Susaijeor Que Saige In modern French—this was an important question for Montaigne, but these days people are likely to ask it jokingly and colloquially. This difficult question required investigation and consideration on Montaigne’s part. I often wish for two things. That’s what I want people to ask themselves. What do I know? And people will give thoughtful answers instead of using it as a witty remark.

What do I know about Montaigne? A little as a general reader of his works. Philosopher Michel de Montaigne, often referred to as the “first modern man,” is credited with inventing the essay as a literary form. In 1571, on his 38th birthday, he holed up in a tower on his family’s estate in Bordeaux and spent the better part of the next 21 years reading, thinking, and writing.Few writers can match their work, but the essays Montaigne wrote was the man.

i picked up What do I know? It’s been almost three years since the coronavirus pandemic began and several years since I last spent time with Montaigne. But he’s always among the writers I keep coming back to. His words provide one of his best anchors for an ever-changing mind. My immediate reaction was happiness, even bliss, as I immersed myself in the familiar language newly expressed through Coward’s translation. If this sounds silly, it is, and I am open to misunderstanding and ridicule.

What a wonderful moment when, a few pages in, I came across this sentence: “The places I look at again and the books I read again smile at me because they seem fresh and new.” In fact, Montaigne’s words made me smile this time. Not only did it feel new and fresh after leaving his job, but it also reminded me that I now know a little better where and how to find my authentic self. . Would I dare to say that I started reading his work more as a result?

Read: Michel de Montaigne, the father of jazz

The longer you live, the more places you will never visit again. For example, I spent a year in an army camp in central China when I was 18 or 19 years old. There, during a night exercise, I hid in an abandoned ditch and fired blanks at my comrades who played the enemy as thousands of fireflies twinkled around me. Or, as another example, a hospital hallway leading to a morgue in Beijing. It was the winter of 2018, and the world had not yet been affected by the impending catastrophe. The crowd parted, murmuring with curiosity and sympathy, and I followed my father on a stretcher elaborately decorated for the afterlife.and these places I want to go do not have Re-emphasize my thoughts as well as the words provided by rereadable writers.

“A mind without a solid anchor point, as the saying goes, is everywhere but nowhere, and loses its way,” Montaigne wrote in On Idling. With this in mind, it seems to me that the euphoria I feel while rereading his work has less to do with worldly matters and more to do with the feeling of finally knowing where I am. I want to be in that magical place called Everywhere.

I don’t think I’m the only one who sometimes gets caught up in the feeling of being in the middle of nowhere – not being in a specific place. The world seems to have experienced a collective version of that during the pandemic. This is different from losing it. The latter signifies the opposite state of being: a state of being liberated from a state of being lost and found again. But being in the middle of nowhere feels darker. Past and future merge into an eternal present, where time and space take on an eternal stillness.

Sometimes the feeling of being nowhere requires the ambition of being everywhere. By the way, let me meander in the style of Montaigne, but ambition has a lot to do with its etymology and its ubiquity.by oxford english dictionarythis word comes from “Latin”. ambition-, ambitious Soliciting votes, solicitation, efforts to pursue popularity, desire for advancement, ostentation, arrogance.”ambition-the past branch of Ambire, to go around or around. (The following two words for her share the etymology of the latter: ambient and atmosphere.) In our modern world, the desire to be everywhere is fueled and exacerbated by technology that becomes faster, more connected, and more ubiquitous. People who use social media travel to many countries, eat at many different restaurants, and read 300 books a year. Still, “He who lives everywhere lives nowhere,” Montaigne repeats in On Idling, quoting Marchal. epigram. Perhaps as a collective, we live in today’s world, so driven by the need to be everywhere that we can easily fall into nowhere.

There is somewhere between these two spaces. Rereading Montaigne this time, my intense happiness comes from knowing where I am in life. It’s not an ideal or perfect place, but it’s a place I accept as mine. Since I first encountered these essays, I have become a more experienced writer. I know grief in many forms. This includes the loss of a child. I have a few authors that I reread regularly, just as the roses in my garden start to bloom each year. I’m somewhere.

I compared this new translation with other editions on my bookshelf. The 1947 edition, translated by Charles Cotton and selected and illustrated by Salvador Dali, showcases Montaigne’s wisdom as well as Dali’s imagination. A bunch of grapes, each a happy skull. Naked bodies (or naked souls?) have deep conversations. Headless warriors hugging each other.edition of Complete collection of essays The text of this book, translated by Donald M. Frame, has superscripts to indicate that the work was done at different times. Montaigne returned to the same subject at several stages of his life. Reading that collection, you always get a tangible sense of how Montaigne’s mind changed over time, still remaining Montaigne’s mind, or becoming more of Montaigne’s mind.

Then I noticed that the 1958 Penguin Classics edition had been underlined in blue ballpoint pen. This book was brought to me by a friend who visited a psychiatric ward near New York City, where I spent three weeks trapped in a dark atmosphere that seemed out of nowhere. (The pens given to patients were ballpoint pens wrapped in paper, which was cheap and the least dangerous.) However, when I look at the annotations made in the hospital now, I realize that even then, I know he was somewhere. I knew my heart, but I trusted Montaigne’s words and preserved some of my memories between his lines. This sense of authenticity is probably the closest thing I can define to selfhood.