A classic 20 1

Very fashionable in the literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the principle of making speak a "foreign" describing the customs of the indigenous of a European country he visited seemed to be so fairly common. Orientalism, then very fashionable, is therefore called to be compared, by implication, to the "advanced" West, of course idealized. We find the seeds of a more political overview, consisting of "educating" the primitive East - and in parallel to plunder the wealth. The French Algeria will become the highlight of this primer civilizational vision that orientalist, mainly French, having been sincerely admiring, will crystallize in a burst-like advantage to a crusade that any "duty" faculty of education. Colonialism born.

To return to the subject we Interestingly, Persian Letters are a mix of seriousness and banter which seemed to dote society of the Regency. Naturally, through the alternately candid and critical vision of this stranger a little distraught arriving in town, it is interesting to note that the disguised satire on the society of the time is also very present in Montesquieu. Rabelais and Defresny were the main precursors of the genre, but it is Montesquieu who seemed to have learned a structural balance away from caricature to gender. Therefore, it is always interesting to study the style of the author through some examples:

"[...] Paris is as big Isfahan (Tehran Today): the houses are so high that we would find that they are inhabited only by astrologers. You judge well as a city built in the air, which has six or seven houses on top of each other, is extremely populous; and that when everyone is down the street, it makes it a fine embarrassment. [...]
It is said that man is a social animal. On that footing, it seems that the French are more man than another, it is the man par excellence; because it seems to be made only for the company. [...] One of them died the other day weariness, and put this epitaph on his tomb: "Here rests the one who never rested. He walked in five hundred and thirty funerals. He welcomed the birth of two thousand six hundred and eighty children. [...] The way he did on the pavement, to nine thousand six hundred stadia; that he did in the campaign, thirty six. [...] I am silent, traveler; because how could I finish telling you what he did and what he saw? ". "

Fashionable, very present in the French society of the eighteenth century was also singled out by the fineness of mind - and humor - the author:

"I find the whims of fashion, in French, amazing. They have forgotten how they were dressed this summer; they still ignore how they will be more this winter; [...] A woman who leaves Paris to spend six months in the country that also comes in antique if she had forgotten thirty years. The son disregards the portrait of his mother, as the garment with which it is painted seems foreign to him; he thinks it's some American who represented, or that the painter wanted to express some of his fantasies.
Sometimes hairstyles rise gradually, and the revolution brought down suddenly. It was a time that their immense height put the face of a woman in the middle of herself; in another, it was the feet that occupied that place, the heels were a pedestal that held them in the air. "

In 1722, Montesquieu published the Persian Letters. Only after that will travel well and will shape his mind, opening a more rigorous way for other classics that will draw in a completely different style, "Considerations" in 1734 and "The Spirit of Laws "in 1748.
But here is a warning Montesquieu, funny, lively, incisive and devilishly end that seems to reveal to the reader, attentive above all the subtlety of words and their treatment.
Because the classics are made to be read, reread, studied, appreciated and not to be given as food to the mites or other animal parsemants our interiors and still not reaching, poor thing, to tell the difference between a genius and as Montesquieu useless coward as Houelbecq or Dantec, it would be even more heartbreaking to go without this masterpiece of French literature, having assumed, over the centuries, a few wrinkles out expediently by its charm more delicate.