In general, essays expose fragments of the human condition. Eloquent succinct language that spills off the page and into the heart is what makes an essay, that brief piece of writing, so timeless and memorable. Between reading lengthy, time-consuming books, a person can pick up an essay and relatively quickly be exposed to a new idea or be reminded of an important one. The enticing quality of the essay is that it’s short, some written in a mere few pages while others may extend much longer. Of solitariness Montaigne writes, ‘The greatest thing of the world is for a man to know how to be his owne.’ And of drunkenness: ‘I finde it to be a fond, a stupid, and a base kinde of vice, but lesse malicious and hurtfull than others.’ Reading Montaigne essays, more than 400 years later, we see how times have changed yet we also get insight into the consistencies of humanity, nature, and culture. Renaissance author Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) is regarded as the originator of the modern essay and in three books of essays he covers a variety of topics, some including friendship, fear, vanity, solitariness, even drunkenness. The Oxford Dictionary defines it as a short piece of writing on a given subject. The word ‘essay’ stems from the French verb ‘essayer’ – to try, to attempt.
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