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It’s important that Montaigne’s condition is not terminal, nor does it have any narrative of worsening and recovery; it just comes and goes, and he can go from intense pain to feeling like normal, and back again. Like his essays, they have a kind of cyclical character, without a discernible plot.

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Unreviewed Annotation 1 Contributor ?

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“…j'essaye souvent mes forces.” As above, Montaigne uses the same language to describe his trials of physical suffering as he does to describe his writing process.

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Montaigne frequently plays on the idea of trying (here, “je me taste”), or “essaying” (see a few sentences later), as if reminding his readers that his writing process results in nothing more than trials, tastes, experiments, or “essays,” rather than finished products.

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Hey, body: you do you.

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It’s a little strange in an essay so focused on the undeniability of the body that Montaigne insists on the superiority of thoughts to physical activity; though here the activity is a mere “gesture.”

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Here Montaigne shows his contempt for counterfeiters.

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Even if, as he titles another chapter, “to philosophize is to learn to die,” it’s easier to get motivated to confront death when intense pain is forcing you to.

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This would seem to contradict, or weaken, the claim that most faculties of the soul are harmful; here, it’s certain faculties of the soul – fearlessness and understanding – that make pain tolerable.

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Montaigne is being knowingly hyperbolic, as if to remind us that everyone thinks his personal worst pain and suffering, no matter how relatively minor, is the worst to ever befall humanity.

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The claim that ignorance is bliss rings a bit false, since the essays demand of their reader that she employ the faculties of the soul.

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