People would be lying on the beach or, sipping an aperitif, getting ready for lunch, and they would hear Montaigne being discussed on the radio. When Philippe Val asked me to talk about the Essays on France Inter during the summer, for a few minutes ...
People would be lying on the beach or, sipping an aperitif, getting ready for lunch, and they would hear Montaigne being discussed on the radio. When Philippe Val asked me to talk about the Essays on France Inter during the summer, for a few minutes each weekday, the idea seemed very bizarre to me, and the challenge so risky that I didn't dare back out. First of all, reducing Montaigne to excerpts was absolutely contrary to everything I had learned, to the prevailing ideas of the time when I was a student. At the time, people denounced the traditional morality taken from the Essays in the form of sentences and advocated a return to the text in all its complexity and contradictions. Anyone who dared to cut Montaigne up and serve him up in pieces would have been immediately ridiculed, treated as a minus habens, consigned to the dustbin of history like an avatar of Pierre Charron, the author of a Treatise on Wisdom made up of maxims borrowed from the Essays. To revisit such a prohibition, or to find a way around it, the provocation was tempting. Then, to choose some forty passages of a few lines in order to briefly gloss them, to show both their historical depth and their current scope, the challenge seemed untenable. Should I choose the pages at random, like Saint Augustine opening the Bible? Ask an innocent hand to point them out? Or should I gallop through the major themes of the work? Give an overview of its richness and diversity? Or should I simply retain some of my favorite fragments, without concern for unity or exhaustiveness? I did all of this at once, without order or premeditation. Finally, being on the air at the time of Lucien Jeunesse, to whom I owe the best part of my adolescent culture, was an offer that could not be refused. " In 40 chapters, Antoine Compagnon interprets Montaigne in a clear, limpid, and funny way. From commitment to the throne of the world, through conversation or education. Professor at the Collège de France, this great specialist in autobiography presents us with a summer Montaigne that allows us to tan our soul. Summer with Montaigne will benefit from strong promotion on France Inter (Messages and broadcasts).
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