Ten Masters of the modern essay [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION most literary forms developed slowly. Often their origin, like that of Greek tragedy, is lost in the shadows of prehistory. But we know exactly when the essay began and who began it. In an understandable burst of enthusiasm, Virginia Woolf declared that "talking of oneself, following one's own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour and circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its imperfection—this art belongs to one man only: to Montaigne." She was not exaggerating so far as the personal or "familiar" essay is concerned, though in a broad sense the spirit of the essay did exist in earlier periods. We find it nearly a century before Montaigne in the Adagia and Colloquia of the brilliant humanist Erasmus. And some of Montaigne's essays, following earlier modes, were little more than collections of belles pensées ("fine thoughts") dealing rather loosely with some single theme. An example in this volume is "Of Death" by Francis Bacon, an English contemporary and imitator of Montaigne. But among the ninety-three short essays which Montaigne published in 1580 were many that struck an entirely new note in hterature, with their frank self-portraiture, their grounding in immediate experience, their humor, their skepticism and lightness of touch. Montaigne, an unusual combination of savant, recluse, and high government official, not only invented the form, he gave it its name, spelled in French essai. The name helps to define what he was doing. To essay (in French, essayer) is to put to a test, to try out. "Essay" and "assay" come, through French, from the Latin exagium, a weighing. Ore from a new mine is assayed to