Of essays and essayists
 The essay is a literary form revived during the Renaissance. It was
hardly practised by the Greeks and Romans. The form began apparently
with the simple purpose of putting philosophical ideas and moral dicta
into prose to hold the reader’s attention.
Latin author Cicero wrote lengthy essays packed with rhetoric. Seneca
too wrote moral essays. His Moral Epistles comes very close to modern
essays. Plutarch’s essays in Greek appeared during the Renaissance. He
also wrote Moralia, a collection of moral essays.
The modern essays, however, begin with the French writer Montaigne
towards the end of the 16th century. Living in an ancestral estate, he
started writing essays of deep concentration and contemplation.
Montaigne gave form and substance to the personal essay which is very
much popular today. He laid the foundation for the modern essayists to
enter into a course of meditation in which aesthetic pleasure is
manifested in a form that is pleasing as the content itself.
No uniformity
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Sir Francis Bacon: Reading maketh a full man; conference a
ready man; and writing an exact man.
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No doubt, Montaigne was heavily influenced by Seneca and Plutarch.
However, he developed a better method of writing essays through the
“association of ideas”. On the other hand, the length of Montaigne’s
essays had no uniformity. At the beginning, he wrote short essays. His
manner of expression had all the naturalness, flexibility and vivacity
of a skilled writer. He had a large vocabulary and a wealth of
metaphors.
By 1600, Montaigne’s essays had been translated into English. Even
English writers began to imitate the personal essay as a literary tool.
It was Sir Francis Bacon who published a book titled Essays. Bacon’s
essays were full of proverbial wisdom. Very often modern authors quote
some of his epigrams, given below, to support their views.
* “Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.”
* “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few
to be chewed and digested.”
* “Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an
exact man.”
New genre
Bacon was followed by a string of essayists who developed the new
genre as a literary form. Ben Jonson, Thomas Dekker, Abraham Cowley,
Dryden and Sir William Temple can be regarded as the forerunners of the
modern essay which found its proper place during the reign of Queen
Anne. The essays written during this period reflected the moral tale
which was much in vogue.
The 18th century essays took a different turn delighting in the
mysteries of identification. Sometimes, they amounted to personal
gossip. The evolution of the essay began with rambling essays of
Montaigne, serious dicta of Francis Bacon, comedy of manners, character
sketches and correspondence. People read such essays avidly. Although
the bulk of such essays consisted of social satire, there were
occasional philosophical discussions and criticism of music.
During the mid-18th century, the essays of Samuel Johnson and Oliver
Goldsmith appealed to the man in the street and the lady in the drawing
room. Dr Johnson’s essays were vigorous and entertaining. His friend
Goldsmith brought to his essays the sentiment, humour and the
imagination of a poet.
Romanticists
The Romantic Revival at the beginning of the 19th century affected
the personal essay to a great extent. The favourite subjects of
romanticists found their way into the personal essay. While Charles Lamb
gave medievalism a new outlook, William Hazlitt insisted on the superior
delights of the great out-of-doors: “Give me the clear blue sky over my
head, and the green turf beneath my feet, a winding road before me, and
a three hours’ march to dinner - and then to thinking!”
Charles Lamb emerged as a successful essayist finding his way to the
hearts of the people. Today he is considered the Prince among the
essayists. Apart from Lamb and Hazlitt, Charles Dickens and Thackeray
too wrote delightful essays which can be read with interest even today.
The difficulty of the modern essay lies in its very formality and
rambling construction. Essays should be impressions of ideas that
sparkle with originality. Sometimes, an essay comes as a result of the
author’s analysis of his train of thoughts. Most of the time, the essay
becomes an intellectual exercise.
Essential elements
The modern essay employs three essential elements: the portrayal of
the initial impulse, imaginative details and the presentation. For
instance, Goldsmith’s essays colour external situations with bouts of
emotions. The emotional impact can be found even in Lamb’s essays. Some
essayists used the essay to satirise social customs.
Today, very few people write essays. Instead, they write short
stories, poems and novels. Writing an effective essay is a difficult
task because the writer has to find a subject of interest and a starting
point. What is more, every essay should have a unifying idea to hold the
reader’s attention. It is a matter for regret that books of essays are
not considered for literary awards. Does it mean that organisers of
award ceremonies are unaware of such a literary genre or do they think
that the essay is dead as the proverbial dodo? |
