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/lit/ - Literature

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File: 442 KB, 1169x1594, Portrait_of_Michel_de_Montaigne,_circa_unknown.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17669214 No.17669214 [Reply] [Original]

“We are entirely made up of bits and pieces, woven together so diversey and so shapelessly that each one of them pulls its own way at every moment. And there is much difference between us and ourselves as there is between us and other people.”

Was he a genius or an idiot? Is this quote relevant or rubbish? What exactly did he mean by this? Is there a deeper meaning or is it really as surface as it appears to be?

>> No.17669219

>>17669214
A Deleuzian avant la lettre

>> No.17669224

>>17669214
He was based

>> No.17669237

>>17669214
http://lchc.ucsd.edu/mca/Paper/against_narrativity.pdf

>> No.17669316
File: 45 KB, 500x323, a5b8d09c8bb59ad66dc697e25099d659.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17669316

>>17669214
He's saying there's no there there in YOU, don't you get it man! It's like Hamlet, who is Hamlet, what is Hamlet; who what is Quixote or Sancho,if not bits & pieces of all of us; and we, in turn, bits and pieces of others ad infinitum? The undiscovered country, man, is Man? What is man: is he will to power or play thing of the gods or just a dumb monkey that's always in the process of inventing himself? Yet, to wit, is on the other hand forever destined to remain a dumb monkey, with no appreciable ability to escape the endless vastness of his ignorance, bc he's not even really conscious to begin with? In other words, his ability as an actor in his own transcendence is out of the question and appearances to the contrary are pure movemental illusion: the equivalent of declaring a mis en abyme--a reflection, regardless of however profuse or multiplicative--a genuine autonomous life. So is man ontologically autonomous or just the confused mirror of his inscrutable, because in itself infinitely mirroristic (constructed like a mirror), unconscious?

>> No.17669340

>>17669214
a fucken genius, my boy

>> No.17669363

>>17669316
Reading this made me want to hang myself

>> No.17669823
File: 2.79 MB, 512x640, 1588774686283.webm [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
17669823

>>17669214
Hereclitean opposites held in tension like a taut bow. We are contradictory to ourselves as much as we are to other people who are also contradictory towards themselves. It's genius.

>> No.17669833

>>17669823
Is this a common occurrence in america?

>> No.17669846

>>17669833
Only on days with the letter Y in them.

>> No.17670137

>>17669214
It's fine. It means what it says, and has been said by many other people (e.g. Whitman: 'I am vast; I contain multitudes').

It's been suggested that the main difference between normal people and what are called geniuses is that the former's energy pulls in a dozen different directions at once, whereas the latter's is focused and coherent and works towards a certain end. If you want this idea in poetry try Ted Hughes' "Thrushes".

>> No.17670233

>>17670137
>what he said has been said by many others
this is true but in the case of montaigne it's usually
>what he said has been said by many others after him

>> No.17670260

this makes me want to read him

>> No.17670301

>>17670260
Do it. I'm one quarter into his essays and its kino so far

>> No.17670327

>>17669846
But that's every day???