When I Am Playing with My Cat, How Do I Know She Is Not Playing with Me?: Montaigne and Being in Touch with Life - Softcover

Saul Frampton

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571234585 ISBN 13: 9780571234585

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2012

Synopsis

"When I dance, I dance; when I sleep, I sleep. And when I
am walking alone in a beautiful orchard, if my thoughts
are sometimes preoccupied elsewhere, the rest of the time I
bring them back to the walk, to the orchard, to the sweetness
of this solitude, and to me."
--"Montaigne"
In the year 1570, ""at the age of thirty-seven, Michel de Montaigne gave up his job as a magistrate and retired to his chateau to brood on his own private grief--the deaths of his best friend, his father, his brother, and his firstborn child. On the ceiling of his library he inscribed a phrase from the Roman poet and philosopher Lucretius: "There is no new pleasure to be gained by living longer."
But finding his mind agitated rather than settled by this idleness, Montaigne began to write, giving birth to the "Essays"--short prose explorations of an amazingly wide range of subjects. And gradually, over the course of his writing, Montaigne rejected his stoical pessimism and turned from a philosophy of death to a philosophy of life. He erased Lucretius's melancholy fatalism and began to embrace the exuberant vitality of living, finding an antidote to death in the most unlikely places--the touch of a hand, the smell of his doublet, the playfulness of his cat, and the flavor of his wine.
Saul Frampton offers a celebration of perhaps the most enjoyable and yet profound of all Renaissance writers, whose essays went on to have a huge impact on figures as diverse as Shakespeare, Emerson, and Orson Welles, and whose thoughts, even today, offer a guide and unprecedented insight into the simple matter of being alive.

"From the Hardcover edition."

About this title

About the Author

Saul Frampton studied English and Philosophy at the University of East Anglia, wrote a doctorate on Renaissance literature at Oxford and was a Research Fellow at Cambridge. He lives in Hove, on the Sussex coast.

Review

"Excellent . . . Montaigne celebrates life in all its glorious messiness, while reminding us that nothing matters more than human connectedness and kindness to people and animals. An endlessly digressive writer, Montaigne is as much raconteur as moralist, and his book offers some of the best after-dinner conversation in the world . . . You can never be sure what this French humanist will say next . . . Frampton approaches Montaigne from unexpected tangents . . . Where [he] excels is in his sharply intelligent and sharply phrased insights . . . [An] elegant work."--Michael Dirda, "The Washington Post " "Winning . . . Perceptive . . . Frampton tells the story of how history, culture, and personal genius conspired to create a new literary genre--and a literary master for the ages . . . Although they were first published more than four centuries ago, Montaigne's essays can seem as topical as the morning newspaper. As more than one admirer has discovered, Montaigne's essentia

Edition details

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0571234585
• ISBN 13: 9780571234585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 300