Montaigne
Montaigne
By Stefan Zweig
Translated by Will Stone
Cover illustration by David Pearson
"Zweig’s accumulated historical and cultural studies remain a body of achievement almost too impressive to take in"—Clive James
"[Zweig’s] life and work tell of the perilous flimsiness of our world of security-a message that many insistently deny, but somehow need to hear"—John Gray, New Statesman
"He who thinks freely for himself, honours all freedom on earth."
Stefan Zweig was already an émigré-driven from a Europe torn apart by brutality and totalitarianism-when he found, in a damp cellar, a copy of Michel de Montaigne's Essais. Montaigne would become Zweig's last great occupation, helping him make sense of his own life and his obsessions-with personal freedom, with the sanctity of the individual. Through his writings on suicide, he would also, finally, lead Zweig to his death.
With the intense psychological acuity and elegant prose so characteristic of Zweig's fiction, this account of Montaigne's life asks how we ought to think, and how to live. It is an intense and wonderful insight into both subject and biographer.
Paperback
153 pages
Pushkin Press, 2015
Originally Published in 1985
4.8 x 0.6 x 6.5 inches
ISBN 9781782271031
Biography, Philosophy