Back in the spring, as I was working through Stendhal’s very strange book “On Love,” I came to a chapter where Stendhal described the “conclusive answer of Del Rosso and Lisio on January 1820.” I searched the internet for an answer to this riddle and never came across one. But today, I noticed that Italo…

To close out my examination of the anima/animus concept within Montaigne’s framework, I need to point out that I’m even more out of my depth discussing Sabina Spielrein’s psychoanalytic theories than I am Carl Jung’s. At least in the case of Jung I have read the original material. Spielrein’s writings have mostly been translated by…

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…

Recently I retired to my estates, determined to devote myself as far as I could to spending what little life I have left quietly and privately; it seemed to me then that the greatest favour I could do for my mind was to leave it in total idleness, caring for itself, concerned only with itself,…

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…