Occasional Tales

Of the Force of Imagination. I find myself bored; whether it is with Montaigne’s handling of the subject or with Cotton’s translation, I don’t know; or it might be because of the apparently inability of the age to subdivide its monographs into sections, and employ paragraphs so that the work might be more coherent as a result. Perhaps I’m just tired and my interest in him will be rekindled in due course. Nonetheless, I can’t help but feel that Cotton’s translation bears much of the blame sometimes because, as I noted in the previous post, his rendering is overliteral and fails to satisfy the demands of English grammar (even allowing for differences between late 17th century English and that of the early 21st); other times because (although this is less obvious without examining the French) of his interpolations. For example, Montaigne says Resverie germaine à celle de quoy nous parlons. Jacques Peletier m’avoit faict ce present singulier. ( A daydream related to this thing we’re...

That's not a sentence, but an outrage. This evening I thought I'd resume reading Cotton's translation of Montaigne after a bit of a break from it over the past few days. I hadn't got far into Essay XX Of the Force of Imagination when I encountered this monstrosity of a sentence. (The prefatory statement is in brackets.) ( Simon Thomas was a great Physician of his Time:) I remember that hapning one Day at Tholouze , to meet him at a rich old Fellow’s House, who was troubled with naughty Lungs, and discoursing with his Patient about the Method of his Cure, he told him, that one Thing which would be very conducing to it, was, to give me such Occasion, to be pleased with his Company, that I might come often to see him, by which Means, and by fixing his Eyes upon the Freshness of my Complexion, and his Imagination upon the Sprightliness of Vigour that glowed in my Youth, and possessing all his Senses with the flourishing Age wherein I then was, his Habit of Body might, per...

And I'm a bit bored. I've been a little busy of late to update Green Bamboo (the main one), and since I have nothing better to do with the blogspot version, I feel little compunction about boring the world with some trivia. I've mostly been occupied with reading Charles Cotton's translation of Montaigne's Essays. Actually, I'm reading the 1711 and 1759 versions with occasional forays into Florio's translation of 1603 and Hazlitt's 19th century edition of Cotton. I find that what is unclear in one is often clear in the other so that if I start my reading with the 1711 version, I'll eventually switch to the 1759 edition and then go back to 1711 again. I'm not sure exactly what the relationship between 1711 and 1759 is. Because the latter appears to be a revised version, it doesn't, strictly speaking, appear to be Cotton's translation any longer. I found one footnote discussing how Cotton misunderstood what Montaigne had written, and from ...