I’ll begin my examination of the Anima/Animus concept and Montaigne with the closest example he has to an anima figure, his late career collaborator Marie de Gournay. The more I dig into the history of de Gournay’s work, the sadder her story becomes to me. This is a woman who was treated terribly by her…

I am about to attempt something ambitious and it could easily exceed my grasp. At numerous times across several projects, I have attempted to give a detailed analysis of Carl Jung’s concept of the anima and animus. I’d like to pull that analysis into the Montaigne Project, connecting it in a couple ways that I…

This is a book about a book, essays about essays, and reflections on the act of self reflection. It a book about a man who started off in search of himself and eventually concluded that there is no self to find. And it’s also about my vain attempt to find my own voice through another’s…

I was re-reading Virginia Woolf’s lovely essay about Montaigne today and it occurred to me—this essay is in the public domain. So why not re-publish it here? So here is the full text of Woolf’s incredible distillation of Montaigne, perhaps the best I’ve read, but more important than that, it’s heartfelt thanks for the hope…

Although I enjoyed Stefan Zweig’s book on Michel de Montaigne, I have to admit that it’s the first Montaigne book I’ve read that taught me nothing, other than the ways Zweig thought he was similar to the essayist. Well, I was also reminded that Montaigne died on September 13, so solemn remembrances are in order…

I’ve just begun reading Stefan Zweig’s short book on Montaigne. For those unfamiliar with Zweig, he was an extraordinarily popular writer worldwide in the early 20th century for his novels, plays, biographies and literary criticism. He was born in Austria, but fled as Hitler’s power stretched across Europe, first to Great Britain, shortly to the…