That's Montaigne. In 1580, he wrote Essais, giving the essay genre its name.
"Essay" derives from the French essayer and means, literally, "trial, attempt, or experiment." In the 1800s, miners brought the shiny rocks they found to Assay Offices, where experts tested the metal to see if it was true gold or fool's gold. As we've discussed in class, essayists engage in a similar process: they takes ordinary objects and issues and weigh and test ideas about them -- are the ideas true or foolish? A good essay welcomes its readers into complexity, into the center of a question or experience. It attempts to make sense of something, certainly, but it also acknowledges ambiguity. Essayists speak intimately to their readers as they try to untangle the snarly knots of human existence.
This blog is an opportunity to experiment on your own shiny objects and to read about others' experiments. What glitters under the surface of the streams you've seen and splashed around in? What winks at you from the walls of the cliff you're scaling?
Interesting what thoughts on such simple things can unlock. After pondering the thought of "essay as attempt" - I freed my mind of all constraints and everything after that moment became a story - from the bug trapped on the burning log in the fireplace to the sound of the kitten in the desk drawer behind me. Nice...
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