'The Marquis de Sade - the complete Justine, Philosophy in the Bedroom, and other writings.' Compiled and translated by Richard Seaver & Austryn Wainhouse with essays by Jean Paulhan of l'Academie Francaise & Maurice Blanchot. New York: Grove Press, 1990 (1965). 753 pp.

Donatien-Alphonse-Francois, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814), was born in Paris into one of the most noble and ancient families of Provence. He was educated at first by his uncle, the tolerant, scholarly, and sophisticated Abbé de Sade, then by the Jesuits, and at the age of twenty-three married Renee-Pelagie de Montreuil, an intelligent and loving woman who bore him three children.

The marriage, as was usual at the time, was arranged, and Sade would have much preferred to marry Renee's beautiful and vivacious younger sister, Anne-Prospere, a girl he later seduced. This led to the undying enmity of his mother-in-law, the powerful Madame de Montreuil, who through her influence at court was able to obtain a 'lettre de cachet' or Royal Warrant of arrest from the king, which led to Sade's first imprisonment.

A variety of sexual escapades, and Madame de Montreuil's continuing enmity, were to lead to an incredibly harsh total of twenty-seven years of imprisonment, and he was eventually to die in the Charenton lunatic asylum where he had been sent, not because he was insane, since he was one of the most lucid thinkers of his age, but after incurring the wrath of Napoleon who had been led to believe that he was the anonymous author of the anti-Bonaparte satire, 'Zoloe,' a mediocre work which current opinion feels was probably not written by Sade.

What were Sade's real crimes? Well, so far as I can gather, there weren't any. He was guilty of a number of ... indiscretions and frankly admitted to being a libertine - a man who felt that sex was something to celebrate and enjoy, and not the dirty and disgusting thing we have been taught. He also wrote a number of very profound, very obscene, very learned, and also very funny books, for what is regularly overlooked is that he was, in addition to his other talents, a great comic artist.

The French critic Philippe Sollers, in fact, seems to feel that everything Sade wrote was intended as comic. And if we consider that the essence of great comedy lies in the truth of its portrayal of human nature, I think we arrive at the real reason for Sade having been demonized, imprisoned, and misrepresented as a monster - there is just too much truth in him, and society has a vested interest in suppressing the truth.

An impressive array of outstanding personalities have written about Sade's work: Apollinaire, Maurice Heine, Gilbert Lely, Octavio Paz, Simone de Beauvoir, Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski, Roland Barthes, Maurice Blanchot, Yukio Mishima, Annie LeBrun, etc., and there are some who feel that if it were not for his reputation, his novel of 1795, 'Aline and Valcour,' would probably be rated every bit as highly as we rate such works as 'Don Quixote' or 'Gulliver's Travels.'

Unfortunately, because in many of his works he dealt with taboo subjects in an often extreme way, and because his vision of man was less than flattering, his reputation as a libertine has been seized upon as an excuse to rigorously exclude him from him the Western literary canon, and one will search in vain for any mention of Sade in the Histories of Western Literature and Philosophy where he ought to figure prominently.

This campaign of vilification and suppression has been so effective that it is possible to have a keen interest in literature and philosophy, and to read extensively for decades, without ever even suspecting that Sade is the one writer who is most worth reading since he so unique.

Because of the extreme obscenity that we find in his writings they have always been a favorite target of censors, and it wasn't until the mid-sixties that unexpurgated editions of Sade's works became available in English translation in the United States.

For those who would like to read the authentic texts, I can strongly recommend the present authoritative and critical English edition. It has a full introduction, critical essays, bibliographies, etc., and is beautifully translated:

There are a lot of other 'Sade' books on the market, or books that pretend to be giving you Sade, but the present ediition contains the only authoritative and uncut English translations of his major works. As for earlier translations, some of them tend to be rather expensive, possibly because they have usually been issued in limited editions and book dealers have a nasty habit of classifying them as Erotica....

In fact, Sade is not not really erotically stimulating at all. My own feeling is that his descriptions of sexual high jinks are intended more to provoke laughter than to excite, and anyone who goes to him for titillation is going to come away disappointed.

Roald Dahl, the famous writer of children's books, pointed out somewhere that children love the grotesque, the exaggerated, the monstrous, the ugly, the dirty; they find such things hilarious. I think there's more than a bit of this in Sade, and perhaps buried deep down in all of us too. Sade was able to see into the depths of the subconscious mind, and for anyone who is interested in understanding who and what we really are he is unsurpassed.

Those who discover Montaigne should count themselves very lucky. There are so many authors competing for our attention today, so many brilliant and less than brillliant men and women both contemporary and of the past, so many poets, novelists, philosophers, thinkers of every stripe, that Montaigne's voice can easily get lost in the general racket, like the voice of a single cricket on a noisy summer's night.

But Montaigne's voice is well worth singling out for special attention, like that one cricket whose song is especially musical, because there has never been anyone quite like him, nor anyone who has produced such a wealth of sensible observations on life and everything that goes to make it up.

We love Montaigne for his humanity, his wisdom, his clear insight into human nature, his tolerance of our weaknesses and failings, his love and compassion for all creatures whether man, animal, or plant, his calm, gentle and amiable voice, his stately and dignified progress as he conducts us through the vast repository of his mind. But above all we love him for his plain good sense.

Despite his distance in time, we can open these essays almost anywhere and immediately become engrossed. Some of what he says, particularly about our weaknesses and failings, may not be particularly welcome to some, though the open-minded will acknowledge its self-evident truth. Montaigne was not afraid to speak his mind, and as a man who was interested in almost everything, his observations range from the curious through to the truly profound.

At one time we find him, for example, discussing the best sexual position for conception, at others such deep notions as that in fact we are nothing; there is a disease in man, the opinion that he knows something; thought as the chief source of our woes; in man curiosity is an innate evil; only a fool is bound to his body by fear of death; nature needs little to be satisfied; there is only change; our absolute need for converse with others; how man should lay aside his imagined superiority; how reason is not a special unique gift of human beings, separating us off from the rest of Nature; of how we owe justice to men, and gentleness and kindness to animals, which like us have life and feelings, and even to trees and plants.

And so on through manifold topics, both weighty and light, his observations illustrated by stories contemporary and ancient, drawn not only from his incredibly wide learning, but also from his experience as man of the world.

The examples I've cited seem to me pitifully inadequate as describing or even suggesting the breadth of his thought - just a few examples selected at random that happen to appeal to me. Montaigne is too big to capture in a few words. His mind was as capacious as his enormous book, and he had something to say about almost everything. His is not so much a book as a companion for life.

Montaigne as that single special cricket singing away in the forest of learning along with thousands of others, is not only worth singling out because of his vast repertoire of songs, but even more because of the special way he sang them. What makes him so important and so valuable, especially to us today, is that he was characterized above all, not merely by reason, which is common enough, but by a REASONABLE, AND NOT EXCESSIVE, USE OF REASON. In other words, he knew that reason had its limits, that it was a tool limited in its applicability and useful only for certain purposes, and he had the good sense to know when we should stop.

There is in Montaigne a sanity, a balance, an affability, and a modesty and tolerance that is found in no other European thinker, and that reminds one more of the Taoist sage. But instead of fastening on the truly civilized pattern exemplified by Montaigne, Europe instead chose Descartes, Apostle of the Excessive Use of Reason, and with what results we know.

The Cartesian ideology of Reason fueled and continues to fuel the relentless Juggernaut of Reason now underway that threatens to end up crushing everything beneath its wheels. Montaigne would have been appalled. He stood for something more human.

MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE - THE COMPLETE ESSAYS. Translated and Edited with an Introduction and Notes by M. A. Screech. lviv + 1284 pp. (Penguin Classics). London : Penguin Books, 1993 and Reissued. ISBN 0-14-044604-4 (pbk.)

Those who discover Montaigne should count themselves very lucky. There are so many authors competing for our attention today, so many brilliant and less than brillliant men and women both contemporary and of the past, so many poets, novelists, philosophers, thinkers of every stripe, that Montaigne's voice can easily get lost in the general racket, like the voice of a single cricket on a noisy summer's night.

But Montaigne's voice is well worth singling out for special attention, like that one cricket whose song is especially musical, because there has never been anyone quite like him, nor anyone who has produced such a wealth of sensible observations on life and everything that goes to make it up.

We love Montaigne for his humanity, his wisdom, his clear insight into human nature, his tolerance of our weaknesses and failings, his love and compassion for all creatures whether man, animal, or plant, his calm, gentle and amiable voice, his stately and dignified progress as he conducts us through the vast repository of his mind. But above all we love him for his plain good sense.

Despite his distance in time, we can open these essays almost anywhere and immediately become engrossed. Some of what he says, particularly about our weaknesses and failings, may not be particularly welcome to some, though the open-minded will acknowledge its self-evident truth. Montaigne was not afraid to speak his mind, and as a man who was interested in almost everything, his observations range from the curious through to the truly profound.

At one time we find him, for example, discussing the best sexual position for conception, at others such deep notions as that "in truth we are but nothing" (p.555); "there is a plague on man, the opinion that he knows something" (p.543); thought as the chief source of our woes (p.514); "in man curiosity is an innate evil" (p.555); "only a fool is bound to his body by fear of death" (p.553); nature needs little to be satisfied" (p.526); there is only change (p.xvii); our absolute need for converse with others (p.421); how "if a ray of God's light touched us even slightly, it would be everywhere apparent : not only our words but our deeds would bear its lustre and its brightness. Everything emanating from us would be seen shining with that noble light" (p.493); how man should "lay aside that imaginary kingship over other creatures which is attributed to us" (p.487); how reason is not a special unique gift of human beings, marking us off from the rest of Nature" (p489); of how "we owe justice to men," and "gentleness and kindness" to "beasts, which have life and feelings [and] even to trees and plants" (p.488).

And so on through manifold topics, both weighty and light, his observations illustrated by stories contemporary and ancient, drawn not only from his incredibly wide learning, but also from his experience as man of the world.

The examples I've cited seem to me pitifully inadequate as describing or even suggesting the breadth of his thought - just a few examples selected at random that happen to appeal to me. Montaigne is too big to capture in a few words. His mind was as capacious as his enormous book, and he had something to say about almost everything. His is not so much a book as a companion for life.

Montaigne as that single special cricket singing away in the forest of learning along with thousands of others, is not only worth singling out because of his vast repertoire of songs, but even more because of the special way he sang them. What makes him so important and so valuable, especially to us today, is that he was characterized above all, not merely by reason, which is common enough, but by a REASONABLE, AND NOT EXCESSIVE, USE OF REASON. In other words, he knew that reason had its limits, that it was a tool limited in its applicability and useful only for certain purposes, and he had the good sense to know when we should stop.

There is in Montaigne a sanity, a balance, an affability, and a modesty and tolerance that is found in no other European thinker, and that reminds one more of the Chinese sage. But instead of fastening on the truly civilized pattern established by Montaigne, Europe instead chose Descartes, Apostle of the Excessive Use of Reason, and with what results we know.

The Cartesian ideology of Reason fueled and continues to fuel the relentless Juggernaut of Reason now underway that threatens to end up crushing everything beneath its wheels. Montaigne would have been appalled. He stood for something more human.

PIMSLEUR : CHINESE MANDARIN - I. 2nd Edition. (30 Lessons on Audio Cassettes). Simon & Schuster Audio, 2000. ISBN 0671045849

Every country in the world is agreed that a knowledge of foreign languages is important. Every year the world devotes an enormous amount of time, energy, and money to trying to teach its young people to understand and speak some foreign language or other.

In the West, millions of high school and college students are busy desperately trying to learn French, German, and Spanish; in China and Japan they are undergoing the torture of English courses. But despite the intense effort and enormous resources that are devoted to these studies, the results, as everyone knows, are pitiful.

After years of study, students might be able to read simple passages in a foreign language, but usually won't be able to say much beyond such things as - "Good morning. How are you?" - and they will be completely baffled when hearing foreigners speak.

I've often wondered why no-one ever seems to ask why the teaching of foreign languages is such a catastrophic failure. Why does it produce so few who become fluent? I've wondered because the answer is painfully obvious, and can be stated very simply :

WE LEARN LANGUAGE THROUGH THE EAR, NOT THE EYE; LANGUAGE CANNOT BE LEARNED THROUGH THE EYE.

No child ever learned its own language by studying a book and working out exercises. We learn our own language through the ear, first by listening to others and then by participating. That's why we learn it so effortlessly and so well. Reading is a secondary skill that comes much later. It has never been the case that the ability to speak a language required that one be able to read it, and traditionally the Chinese writing system was mastered by very few.

If PIMSLEUR is an anagram for SIMPLER U it makes sense, because not only is the PIMSLEUR method SIMPLER for YOU, its also the ONLY method that has any hope of real success. Language is primarly an AURAL-ORAL phenomenon, a matter of listening and speaking. Using these tapes gives you lots of practise in both. Repeated use will bring a basic fluency that will give you the confidence to start interacting with native speakers of Chinese or French or whatever language you are studying. And if you have enough opportunities for that you'll soon be on your way to real fluency.

These tapes require application but they do work, and it's not only work but fun. But what a wonderful idea the PIMSLEUR method is! I wonder why no one ever seems to have thought of it before? After all, if you do think about it, it's the only method that makes sense.

PIMSLEUR : Quick & Simple CHINESE MANDARIN. (Eight Audio Lessons on 4 Cassettes). Simon & Schuster Audio, 2001. ISBN 07435-0771-1.

Every country in the world is agreed that a knowledge of foreign languages is important. Every year the world devotes an enormous amount of time, energy, and money to trying to teach its young people to understand and speak some foreign language or other.

In the West, millions of high school and college students are busy desperately trying to learn French, German, and Spanish; in China and Japan they are undergoing the torture of English courses. But despite the intense effort and enormous resources that are devoted to these studies, the results, as everyone knows, are pitiful.

After years of study, students might be able to read simple passages in a foreign language, but usually won't be able to say much beyond such things as - "Good morning. How are you?" - and they will be completely baffled when hearing foreigners speak.

I've often wondered why no-one ever seems to ask why the teaching of foreign languages is such a catastrophic failure. Why does it produce so few who become fluent? I've wondered because the answer is painfully obvious, and can be stated very simply :

WE LEARN LANGUAGE THROUGH THE EAR, NOT THE EYE; LANGUAGE CANNOT BE LEARNED THROUGH THE EYE.

No child ever learned its own language by studying a book and working out exercises. We learn our own language through the ear, first by listening to others and then by participating. That's why we learn it so effortlessly and so well. Reading is a secondary skill that comes much later.

If PIMSLEUR is an anagram for SIMPLER U it makes sense, because not only is the PIMSLEUR method SIMPLER for YOU, its also the ONLY method that has any hope of real success. Language is primarly an AURAL-ORAL phenomenon, a matter of listening and speaking. Using these tapes gives you lots of practise in both. Repeated use will bring a basic fluency that will give you the confidence to start interacting with native speakers of Chinese or French or whatever language you are studying. And if you have enough opportunities for that you'll soon be on your way to real fluency.

These tapes require application but they do work, and after finishing them you'll almost certainly want to get the Comprehensive Program, because it's not only work but fun. But what a wonderful idea the PIMSLEUR method is! I wonder why no one ever seems to have thought of it before? After all, if you do think about it, it's the only method that makes sense.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has observed, are in fact about everything. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader, and even to children.

The present book, which has been edited by Brenda Hillman, gives us accurate texts of the poems in a 150-page selection taken from the authoritative variorum edition of Thomas H. Johnson, the well-known Dickinson scholar who worked many years to establish the correct texts.

The book is beautifully printed in two-colors on excellent paper, and in a tiny format which is perfect for the pocket. It would in fact make a very nice gift. You'd be making a gift of poetry which is one of the wonders of the world.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which captures the white light of reality, a reality which as it flows through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has observed, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader (or certainly to open-minded ones) and even to children.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world.

I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, a badly-tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?

When it comes to choosing an edition of Emily Dickinson's poems, we need to be very careful. Selections of her poems have appeared in many editions, and the earlier ones - which are still being reprinted - often contain extensively edited and revised versions of her poems which do not give us what she actually wrote.

Her poems are so unusual, in terms of their diction, meters, grammar, and punctuation, that earlier editors felt obliged to replace her characteristic dashes with more conventional punctuation, and to regularize and smooth out her texts to make them more acceptable to readers of the time.

In fact, it was only when Thomas H. Johnson's editions appeared that readers were finally given an accurate version of the original texts, with Emily Dickinson's diction and punctuation restored.

Johnson has produced three different editions of the poems. The first, a 3-volume Variorum Edition (1955), includes all of her many variants, since Emily Dickinson often added alternate words to her drafts and in many cases seems never to have decided on a final reading. These variants, though extremely interesting to scholars, enthusiasts, and advanced students of ED, are not really necessary in an edition for the general reader.

What the general reader needs is an edition in which the editor, after closely examining the manuscripts and taking into account all relevant factors, gives what he feels is a sensible and acceptable reading, and this is what Johnson has given us in the two other editions he prepared, a Reader's edition of the Complete Poems (details of which are given below), and an abridgement of this which included only what he felt were her best poems.

In other words, readers can feel confident that in the present edition they have been given (insofar as it's possible to get her idiosyncratic manuscript drafts over into typography) at least one accurate reading of ED's original draft.

Those who would like to look at the variants can always consult Johnson's Variorum (1955), or the more recent Variorum of R. W. Franklin (1998). Better still, if they can, they might take a look at R. W. Franklin's sumptuous 2-volume 'The Manuscript Books of Emily Dickinson' (1981), which gives photographic facsimiles of many of her manuscripts.

Emily Dickinson is a very great poet. Personally I think that in some ways she is the greatest poet of all. In the present edition we have been given accurate texts of a selection of her poems, arranged so far as was possible in chronological order of composition. Johnson's is an edition which should serve the general reader well enough for most ordinary purposes.

Another excellent Reader's edition that can be recommended has been prepared by ED's most recent editor, R. W. Franklin (1999). Either of the Johnsons or the Franklin (which contains 14 additional poems) will give you access to a body of poems that are so far above the ordinary run of poems that we really ought to have another word for them.

Just as a prism breaks up light into a band of colors - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet - and their infinite gradations, so do Emily Dickinson's poems become, as it were, a prism which conducts the white light of reality, a reality which as it passes through the prism of her poem explodes into a multiplicity of meanings.

It is the rich suggestiveness of her poems, a suggestiveness which generates an incredible range of meanings, that prevents us from ever being able to say (to continue the metaphor) that a given poem is 'about red' or 'about blue,' because her poems, as US critic Robert Weisbuch has pointed out, are in fact about _everything_. This is what makes her so unique, and this is why she appeals to every kind of reader.

Emily Dickinson's poetry is one of the wonders of the world. Whether you select one of the Johnsons or the Franklin edition, it will become a book that you will cherish, a golden book and endless source of pleasure and inspiration that you will find yourself returning to again and again.

For those who may be interested, details of Johnson's reader's edition of the Complete Poems are as follows :

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

I don't doubt that it's possible to enjoy Emily Dickinson's poems in editions like this. But you should be aware that you are not really reading what she wrote. You are reading what earlier editors _wish_ she had written - a sort of 'tidied-up' and regularized version, the badly tampered-with-text of a genius by those who weren't.

In a way, the situation is a bit like the one that prevails with regard to food. Would you rather eat natural food or genetically modified food? Maybe the modified food doesn't taste any different, but it might be doing harmful things to us that the author of real food never intended. So why take a risk when we can have the real thing ?

There are two major editors who can be relied on for accurate texts of ED's poems. These are Dickinson scholars R. W. Franklin and Thomas H. Johnson. Both produced large Variorum editions for scholars, along with reader's editions of the Complete Poems for the ordinary reader. Details of their respective reader's editions are as follows.

THE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON : Reading Edition. Edited by R. W. Franklin. 692 pp. Cambridge, Massachusetts : The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-674-67624-6 (hbk.)

THE COMPLETE POEMS OF EMILY DICKINSON. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 784 pp. Boston : Little, Brown, 1960 and Reissued. ISBN: 0316184136 (pbk.)

For those who don't feel up to tackling the Complete Poems, there is Johnson's abridgement of his Reader's edition, an excellent selection of what he feels were her best poems:

FINAL HARVEST : Emily Dickinson's Poems. Edited by Thomas H. Johnson. 352 pages. New York : Little Brown & Co, 1997. ISBN: 0316184152 (paperbound).

Friends, do yourself a favor and get Johnson's edition. Why accept a watered-down version when you can have the real thing?