Montaigne as Argentine Essayist: an Editorial Experience by Martínez Estrada

Abstract

“Clásicos Jackson” published in 1948, in Buenos Aires, an anthology of Montaigne’s Essais selected, presented and translated by Ezequiel Martínez Estrada, with a ninety pages “Estudio Preliminar” that he would later republish, without any changes, in Heraldos de la verdad. Montaigne, Balzac, Nietzsche (1957), under the title “Montaigne, filósofo impremeditado y fortuito”. While mentioning contemporary authors such as Bergson, Dilthey and Driesch, Martínez Estrada converts the sceptical and melancholic Montaigne into a vitalist, intuitive, self-taught philosopher that mirrors the self-representation he himself had proposed fifteen years earlier in Radiografía de la pampa (1933). This paper examines the way in which this “operation Montaigne” legitimizes the work of the Argentine essayist, at a time when he is under the sharp scrutiny of his peers.