Since I have to travel and will be sitting at a sick relative's bedside, without talking to allow him to rest, I took off to the library and got Jean-Jacques Rousseau's complete works and Montesquieu's complete works. At the bottom of my sixteen page reading list was to read the complete works of anyone whom the Pleiade thought worthy of publishing. (Pleiade is a collection that publishes the works of luminaries from all cultures, but in French. It's a famous collection in the francophone word, and, indeed, Pleiade is the French name of a great constellation. Love it! ) Because of personal circumstances, I jumped right to it for the time being.
I was reading the second volume of Montesquieu, since I had already read Esprit des lois and expected to whiz through the other books in the same volume. I was right: I read his essays on taste, and his files in preparation for writing Esprit, and then I also read his replies to his critics after publication.
That alone was worth the price of admission! Montesquieu has done what I have often wanted to do, that is, reply to my critics with nary a concern for their feelings of being thought arrogant. On p. 1161 of my edition, he says "Quand on critique un ouvrage, et un grand ouvrage, il faut tacher de se procurer une connaissance particuliere de la science qui y est traitee, et bien lire les auteurs approuves qui ont deja ecrit sur cette science, afin de voir si l'auteur s'est ecarte de la maniere recue et ordinarie de la traiter." In other words, if one is going to criticize a great work, one should make sure that one understands the work thoroughly and to have also a thorough background, to see if the author has left the rails or not. Bull's eye! So many critics fail to take the time to understand what another person writes, or to be thorough even. There are exceptions, but no many.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment