Discovery

Will Hamlin spent 22 days this fall visiting 21 libraries looking at the same book over and over. Not just any book, mind you, but Montaigne’s Essais. And he wasn’t reading the actual text over and over. He’d already done that. He was reading the books’ owners’ comments written in the margins.

Hamlin is on leave from Washington State University this year, supported by a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship. At WSU, he teaches Shakespeare and 17th century English literature. One of his scholarly interests has been the influence of philosophical skepticism on theater of the time, which resulted in his second book, Tragedy and Skepticism in Shakespeare’s England.

Much of his time has been spent in libraries around the country and world in an attempt to measure the culture of the late 16th and early 17th centuries through the reactions of Montaigne’s readers to his Essais.

I met Hamlin (full disclosure–he is a long-time friend) downtown for a glass of wine shortly before his latest venture, to Paris, where he planned to examine copies at the Biblioteque Nationale. He confessed to a little nervousness. Before being allowed to examine the books, he would be interviewed, in French, regarding the seriousness of his quest.

Although he is particularly interested in the first English translation of Essais, by John Florio in 1603, Hamlin is also examining the notations in French versions.

Montaigne is widely regarded as originator of the modern essay, emphasis on “modern.” For Montaigne, says Hamlin, had clearly read older “essayists” such as Plutarch and Seneca.

Though he may owe the Roman writers for the general idea, Montaigne is still modern in his approach. His essays are very personal and range widely in subject: “Of sadness or sorrowe,” “Of Idlenesse,” “Of friendship,” “Of Sleeping,” “Of Smels and Odors.”

Montaigne, one might argue, was the most popular blogger of his time.

Dinosaur that I am, it’s only recently that I started thinking of Web logs, or blogs, as more than merely a quickly dashed off thought, the quickness of it a handy excuse for its sloppiness or ill-logic. In an interesting essay in a recent Atlantic Monthly, Andrew Sullivan offers an intriguing argument in favor of blogging.

Most telling, though, is his comment that in contrast to an opinion or essay in print, a blog is “a conversation rather than a production.”

Indeed, Sullivan also points to Montaigne, noting that he published three editions of his essays, each one progressively longer. “A passionate skeptic,” writes Sullivan, “Montaigne amended, added to, and amplified the essays for each edition, making them three-dimensional through time. In the best modern translations, each essay is annotated, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, by small letters (A, B, and C) for each major edition, helping the reader see how each rewrite added to or subverted, emphasized or ironized, the version before.”

But even more essential to the conversation is the commentary over time from Montaigne’s readers.

“Essai,” you might know, means, among other thing, a trial, an attempt

Because of the nature of Montaigne’s attempts, the response of readers was huge. Whereas 20 percent of books in general from that period were annotated by their readers, 50 percent of Montaigne’s Essais were annotated. Those annotations tell much of what people were thinking at the time and how Montaigne fit, or did not fit, within that thinking. Hamlin says that the amount of commentary shows clear readers’ favorites of Montaigne’s essays, perennial topics, on marriage and sex, religion, education. But amongst the voluminous commentary, Hamlin’s favorite comment is, from an anonymous reader: “Montaigne hath the Art above all Men to keep his Reader from Sleeping.”

Discovery will not be quite as personal or wide-ranging, perhaps, as either Montaigne or modern bloggers. It will be limited to the process of discovery at Washington State University. Which, I’ll say, is pretty wide-ranging. There will be, however, no personal politics. Regardless, I hope, in true timeless blogging fashion, Discovery stimulates conversation, ventures ideas, and, at least, keeps the Reader from Sleeping.

External Links

http://libarts.wsu.edu/english/Will%20Hamlin.html

http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/philosophers/montaigne.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montaigne

http://www.science.uva.nl/~seop/entries/montaigne/