OGLEDATI SE PISANJEM (NARCISTIČKE BILJEŠKE UZ ČITANJE MONTAIGNEA)
To mirror oneself through writing (Narcissistic notes while reading Montaigne)

Summary/Abstract: This paper is based on the multi-semantic potential of the word “essay”, with special emphasis on two meanings: examine and effort. Consequently, from it we can derive two mutually conditioned terms: examination and creating, both representing incompleteness and imperfection, certain perpetual delay. Furthermore, by inspecting Montaigne’s erudition as well as writing style and thought (by immersion in different texts), relationship between reading and humanistic (self)education is observed as unintentional act. In regard to the notion that (self)education implies (self)formation with text as the mediator (in broadest sense), the paper is following Montagine’s several times expressed doubt in subject’s selfsufficiency, emphasizing the question of depersonalization under the burden of quotation. It is concluded, in analogy with Foucault’s reading of Don Quixote, that Cervantes’ character is searching confirmation of the literature by the very act of living, while Montaigne’s performance of reading is the very act of living. In the last segment, the paper is contrasting Montaigne’s optimistic belief in knowledge with the apocalyptic one that Samuel Beckett emphasized in his novel Molloy – the (post)modern vision of the subject’s dispersion. Prevalent metaphor that is signifying key problems throughout the text is the image of Narcissus gazing at it own image in the water.

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