Respek is important. Da sad ting is, there is so little respek left in the world that if you look up the word in the dictionary, you’ll find it’s been taken out. You should learn to Respek everyone: animals, children, bitches, mingers, spazmos, lezzies, fatty boombas, and even gaylords. So to all you lot out there, but mainly to the normal people: Respek, westside.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
But that gets us off the subject, namely Montaigne’s vivid description of poetry, its audience, its critics and the chain of art:<\/p>\n
We have many more poets than judges and interpreters of poetry. It is easier to create it than to understand it. On a certain low level it can be judged by precepts and by art. But the good, supreme, divine poetry is above the rules and reason. Whoever discerns its beauty with a firm, sedate gaze does not see it, any more than he sees the splendor of a lightning flash. It does not persuade our judgment, it ravishes and overwhelms it.<\/p>\n
The frenzy that goads the man who can penetrate it also strikes a third person on hearing him discuss it and recite it, as a magnet not only attracts a needle but infuses into it its own faculty of attracting others. And it is seen more clearly in the theater that the sacred inspiration of the muses, after first stirring the poet to anger, sorrow and hatred and transporting him out of himself wherever they will, then through the poet strikes the actor, and through the actor consecutively a whole crowd. It is the chain of our needles, hanging one form the other.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Booyakasha.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yeah, yeah, I know: who cares about what Montaigne has to say about Cato the Younger? Well, as usual, M. uses the occasion of a brief (3+ pages) essay on Cato to digress into the nature and impact of poetry. The essay begins with a gorgeous little passage about M.’s unwillingness to judge other people … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Monday Morning Montaigne: Of Cato the Younger”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-monday-morning-montaigne"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-mY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1471,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-democritus-and-heraclitus","url_meta":{"origin":1424,"position":0},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of Democritus and Heraclitus","author":"Gil","date":"April 23, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Fortunately, you don't need to know anything about Democritus or Heraclitus to enjoy this brief essay. (Yeah, \"enjoy\". I know most of you dear readers don't care for this project, but I'm sticking with it, because I'm finding all sorts of grist for my mill in it. Nyeh!) It begins\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3226,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-on-okay-i-didnt-finish-this-one","url_meta":{"origin":1424,"position":1},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: On okay I didn’t finish this one","author":"Gil","date":"January 12, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"This week's Montaigne essay, On some verses of Virgil (pp. 774-831), turned out to be really good. However, I didn't have time to write about it, so I'm going to reread it this week and try to put something together for you by next Monday. Suffice to say, my worries\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2239,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-the-reloadening","url_meta":{"origin":1424,"position":2},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: The Reloadening!","author":"Gil","date":"August 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I gave up on my Monday Morning Montaigne project a year ago for two reasons. The first one was that I reached Apology for Raymond Sebond, the central essay of the second book. This essay -- the introduction to (and kindasorta defense of) Sebond\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Natural Theology, which Montaigne\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s dad asked\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3402,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-the-art-of-discussion","url_meta":{"origin":1424,"position":3},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of the art of discussion","author":"Gil","date":"February 9, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"With only six of the Essays remaining, I feel as though there should be some sort of growing imperative, a sense of completion in the final 200 pages. So I was a bit disappointed when I read (and re-read) Montaigne's Of the art of discussion (pp. 854-876), but I didn't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1557,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-of-honorary-awards","url_meta":{"origin":1424,"position":4},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: Of honorary awards","author":"Gil","date":"June 18, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"In honor of Father's Day, I thought Of the affection of fathers for their children would offer up some good material. As it turns out, M. uses most of the essay to argue that elderly men should know when it's time to withdraw from worldly affairs, then concludes that the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1516,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/monday-morning-montaigne-work-can-wait-till-tomorrow","url_meta":{"origin":1424,"position":5},"title":"Monday Morning Montaigne: “Work can wait till tomorrow”","author":"Gil","date":"May 21, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm swamped at work, dear reader, and the essay that I read this weekend -- Of practice -- is requiring an awful lot of thought. Fortunately, a few essays earlier was one entitled, \"Work can wait till tomorrow,\" so I feel justified in giving you Tuesday Morning Montaigne this week.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Monday Morning Montaigne"","block_context":{"text":"Monday Morning Montaigne","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/monday-morning-montaigne"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}