What is the best prose/essay of ALL TIME?

[Minami]

What is the best prose/essay of ALL TIME? -- A similar question to an earlier popular post 'What is the best short story of ALL TIME?',

[mayneverhave]

I'm keen on Camus's 'Le Mythe de Sisyphe', but there are undoubtedly better essays.

[stlukesguild]

My first thought would be to ask just how we define an "essay"... as opposed to any other form of non-fiction... "discourses"... "meditations"... journal entries? From works that are clearly "essays" I can think of several powerful pieces by Montaigne, Emerson, Walter Pater, J.L. Borges, Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, Octavio Paz, Francis Bacon. What about Robert Burton? Is the Anatomy of Melancholia an essay?

[TrooperW]

Wouldn't "personal favourite" be easier to discuss than one of those "all time best" debates? I am one of those that refused to accept an all-time best. Each work, IMHO, has its merits, relevance, genre, and historical context.

[JBI]

If this counts, On Old Age by Cicero. That is, I would argue, the highest point humanity has reached in terms of prose rhetoric, answering the oldest, and yet most important question known to us.

[stlukesguild]

JBI... I haven't read it... but on your recommendation I'll certainly check it out.

[JBI]

JBI... I haven't read it... but on your recommendation I'll certainly check it out.

It's short, and can be found online, though in what kind of a translation I can only guess.

[mortalterror]

JBI... I haven't read it... but on your recommendation I'll certainly check it out.

It's actually not bad as far as Cicero goes although my favorite Cicero would be his Dream of Scipio. By most learned accounts he was the greatest rhetorician of the ancient world and a model politician.

However, I find him incredibly boring. If you peruse his work it sounds like every conservative politician today. It took me a minute after I laid my copy aside to figure out that that was precisely the point. Cicero had brought political and ethical discourse to an unrivaled pitch, and one may argue has had a nearly ubiquitous influence down through time to the present day.

What I couldn't stand was what a colossal liar and hypocrite he was. Like Seneca, another Roman philosopher politician, Cicero's own life fails to live up to the lofty standards of conduct his rhetoric and ethics aspire to. These men were powerhouses in their own time who lived lives of machiavellian political expediency, who never met a power grab they didn't like, who filled their pockets while extolling the merits of honorable poverty. Cicero preached fraternity and justice, even after he had his political rivals assassinated; so he could return from exile.

This wise and generous man has gallons of blood on his hands, and reminds me of a quote I've heard leveled against Nietzsche about syphilitics offering ethical advice. Undoubtedly, he is worth reading, but not in an unguarded way. As with any modern politician, which he quite resembles, everything he says should be taken with a shaker of salt.

One is reminded of Sir. Francis Bacon who wrote some of the great English essays of the Renaissance, while diddling little boys. While you are at it, check out his essay On Revenge. The essays are like diamonds they are packed so tight with wit and wisdom. It is no wonder that none of them are very long. The strain of maintaining such a heightened level of discourse must have been a terrible impediment to any longer creation or sustained narrative.

[JBI]

Still, Cicero was still the model rhetorician, and I think students of rhetoric are still required to study him, though I am not one, so don't quote me on that.

Bacon truly was also a great writer, yet the influence of Cicero is clearly there, made obvious by not only the constant allusions to him, but also paralleled in subject, for instance Bacon's On Youth and Old Age (I think I got the name right) is perhaps a direct response to Cicero's On Old Age, etc.

Cicero seems to have been (and to some extent still is) the model for perfect rhetoric. That I guess, is why so many people sound like him, because he has become the standard prose stylist for non-fiction. Keep in mind everyone learned used to know Latin, and most likely, everyone who knew Latin knew Cicero; his influence is overpowering.

That being said, it makes no difference that he was a hypocrite, as all politicians seem to be. Cicero wasn't the perfect orator, the same way Castiglione wasn't the perfect courtier. That however, I don't think has any bearing on his prose, The text is always beyond the writer, as the reader/listener is far more important.

[mortalterror]

That being said, it makes no difference that he was a hypocrite, as all politicians seem to be. Cicero wasn't the perfect orator, the same way Castiglione wasn't the perfect courtier. That however, I don't think has any bearing on his prose, The text is always beyond the writer, as the reader/listener is far more important.

In the case of writers, that may or may not be true, but Cicero was no writer. He was a philosopher. He was a politician. He was a lawyer, and in each of his several roles we must hold him accountable to the degree that each function is accountable to the public. A writer is not first and foremost an instructor or a leader of men. His own personal misconduct cannot corrupt the lives of others. In fact, one expects a writer to be a deviant personality of some sort. But a philosopher and a politician are a different story. On their personal conduct hangs much.

A philosopher's life must be his art in a way that a writer's can never be. When Cicero writes endless scrolls enjoining his friends to hard eyed stoicism, he can hardly weep like a woman from his banishment. "Your pleas have prevented me from committing suicide. But what is there to live for? Don't blame me for complaining. My afflictions surpass any you ever heard of earlier." That man for all his eloquence can never hope to be as convincing as Bothius is in his Consolation of Philosophy, or Socrates in the Phaedo. "Would that he had been able to endure prosperity with greater self-control and adversity with more fortitude(C. Asinius Pollio)!"

If Cicero had been a scribbler of popular ditties I would take no note of him. Let him live how he pleased. But as he professed to be a philosopher and a leader of men I take issue with him. There are jobs which admit no stain of dishonor. The crooked cop and the lecherous priest incite the gravest indignation imaginable. The disdain we feel toward these men is doubled, for they are the keepers of public virtue, and when they fall they harm more than themselves. It is the whole of society they injure.

The writer of airy fictions is an entertainer primarily. His fancies delight an audience and fill their leisure hours. Pleasures are often base, and we can hardly fault a producer of frivolous things for being base himself. But a philosopher must not admit even a hint of impropriety to cling to him. Do as I say and not as I do cannot be his dictum or he is finished. The philosopher must be a model for his words to have meaning; or as much as he instructs he misleads.

[TrooperW]

What I couldn't stand was what a colossal liar and hypocrite he was. Like Seneca, another Roman philosopher politician, Cicero's own life fails to live up to the lofty standards of conduct his rhetoric and ethics aspire to. These men were powerhouses in their own time who lived lives of machiavellian political expediency, who never met a power grab they didn't like, who filled their pockets while extolling the merits of honorable poverty. Cicero preached fraternity and justice, even after he had his political rivals assassinated; so he could return from exile.

Cicero is interesting in that regards. He is a novus homo, but a firm supporter of the optimates which has led to some conflicting ideas and actions on his part.

I am curious, which rivals are you speaking of that Cicero assassinated to return to Rome? Cicero went into exile after opposing Sulla and when political rivals attacked him for the Catiline executions. From my understanding, he was able to return without assassinating anyone.

[stlukesguild]

If Cicero had been a scribbler of popular ditties I would take no note of him. Let him live how he pleased. But as he professed to be a philosopher and a leader of men I take issue with him. There are jobs which admit no stain of dishonor. The crooked cop and the lecherous priest incite the gravest indignation imaginable. The disdain we feel toward these men is doubled, for they are the keepers of public virtue, and when they fall they harm more than themselves. It is the whole of society they injure.

Mortal! You're a closet Romantic! I never would have guessed. So politicians... as "leaders of men" should be held to some high standard that admits no stain of honor. How many has actually applied to?

[JBI]

Mortal, this isn't Plato's Republic. Politicians are the most crooked of people, everyone knows that. What I am getting at is, you must separate the text from the author, as it is beyond him. What we read in it is what is important, not whether or not Cicero meant what he said, or was a nice/honorable person.

He clearly was self righteous. He clearly made some 'illegal moves' and he clearly cheated and made some hypocritical moves. Who cares though?

It reminds me of preface to Lolita where a laughing Nabokov mocks the reader, telling them that though Humbert is the embodiment of 'moral leprosy' that does not have any bearing on the book, and despite this, the book will go on to be a bestseller.

[Kafka's Crow]

Can't say anything about the 'best' essay as I haven't read them all! Personal favorites would be Charles Lamb's Dream Children: A Reverie and Francis Bacon's On Truth. Charles Lamb is a lovely figure in the history of English Literature and anybody who reads Essays of Elia is sure to fall in love with him. Anne Fadiman's At Large and Small: Confessions of a Literary Hedonist has an essay titled The Unfuzzy Lamb, one of the best introduction to Lamb's work and his tragic life:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/At-Large-Sma...2630446&sr=1-3

Dream Children can be found here:

http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia1/dream.htm

It is a tiny but a very, very poignant and sad piece. Bacon's On Truth can be read here:

http://www.authorama.com/essays-of-francis-bacon-2.html

[Kafka's Crow]

You can buy the original manuscript of Dream Children for $85000! So very ironic: poor Elia spent his life in poverty, sorrow and drudgery and now a page written in his hand is worth more money than he could ever imagine in his life-time:

http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/List...xid=a_47280790