Michel de Montaigne

Whether you like his writings or not, Montaigne is undoubtedly the father of bloggers. Yep, it's a fact, the guy was writing whatever thoughts came to his head as early as the 16th century, long before the web and hence the weblog were invented.

The reason I love and admire Montaigne so much is easy to explain and I'll use his own words to do it. This is the guy who wrote:

If I come across difficult passages in my reading I never bite my nails over them: after making a charge or two I let them be. [...] What I fail to see during my original charge I see even less when I stubborn it out.

In other words, he readily admits that if something is not simple enough to be understood at first reading, then he is too dumb to understand it... And in the same way, you'll find, when reading Montaigne, that you'll never need to read a passage twice. Everything is told in a straightforward, simple way... even if not everything he says is straightforward or simple... This is what makes Montaigne an absolute genius. Because it takes genius to untangle oneself from difficult arguments and find simple ones to replace them, to untwisted what others have twisted and present it straight and clear. There are passages in his writings that make me delight in their brilliance and speak "Exactly!!" aloud, others are pure epiphany "How came I didn't think this one before?", others still are as beautiful as poetry, others laugh-out-loud funny (ever heard of the woman who jumped too wide and had testicles pop-out of her crotch? Well, Michel is not quite sure if he believes the story, but, just in case, recommends us ladies never to jump at all).

The above quote illustrates one more of Montaigne's most endearing qualities, his self-deprecating sense of humour and the low-brow nature of his writing. He writes just about anything, without fearing ridicule, quite often lacking self-consciousness and giving the impression that he has completely forgotten that whatever nonsense he has written will be read by others (which of course is never true, because he carefully edited his essays before publication). Like any good blogger, he has a light sense of humour and is as fond of trivia as of the hefty concepts of standard philosophy or other more dignifying subjects such as science or politics. Intelligence and humour are the main ingredients of pleasurable reading, 'nough said.