Montaigne, Proust and mindfulness
This morning, on In Our Time , Melvyn Bragg was being peremptory and testy with one of my former professors and mentors, Terence Cave. The subject was Montaigne, death, friendship, the essai , stoicism and living in the moment. I do need to digress to poke a stick at some Braggadocio. Thank goodness the man exists so that this programme itself can — but, oh, the misogyny, the pomposity and the insecurity! He speaks over any woman he has on the show and is rude to anyone more intellectually prestigious than himself. Quite often he behaves like a second-year student, who got drunk the night before and only has half an essay, and so is compensating by being bloody-minded. Hearing him order Professor Cave to "go on, tell us what Montaigne was on about, then," was excruciating. Professor Cave and his excellent Renaissance companions teased out how Montaigne harnessed and channelled his classical education and his experience of public life into his writing. Unlike anyone writi...