On Consolation
Finding Solace in Dark Times
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On Consolation
Narrated by:
Michael Ignatieff
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Narrated by:
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Michael Ignatieff
About this listen
Timely and profound meditations on how great figures in history, literature, music and art searched for solace while facing tragedies and crises, from the internationally renowned historian of ideas and Booker Prize finalist Michael Ignatieff.
When we lose someone we love, when we suffer loss or defeat, when catastrophe strikes - war, famine, pandemic - we go in search of consolation. Once the province of priests and philosophers, the language of consolation has largely vanished from our modern vocabulary and the places where it was offered, houses of religion, are often empty. Rejecting the solace of ancient religious texts, humanity since the 16th century has increasingly placed its faith in science, ideology and the therapeutic.
How do we console each other and ourselves in an age of unbelief? In a series of portraits of writers, artists and musicians searching for consolation - from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova and Primo Levi - writer and historian Michael Ignatieff shows how men and women in extremity have looked to each other across time to recover hope and resilience. Recreating the moments when great figures found the courage to confront their fate and the determination to continue unafraid, On Consolation takes those stories into the present, movingly contending that we can revive these traditions of consolation to meet the anguish and uncertainties of the 21st century.
©2021 Penguin Random House Canada Limited (P)2021 Macmillan Publishers International LtdListeners also enjoyed...
- “What do we learn that we can use in these times of darkness? Something very simple. We are not alone, and we never have been.”
- The book, then move onto Saul, who became Saint Paul. Here, with a man who believed that God was coming, and Jesus would return, and converted from a Roman citizen to a disciple of Christ. However, more than faith, he realised that it was love that would save us. This is repeated again and again in his words, even when he himself, began to doubt that Christ would return.
- The book that looks at the works of Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, who is one of my all-time favourite stoic philosophers. He wrote most of his work at night, when he could not sleep, to consoled himself for all the horror that surrounded him in the word from his Roman world.
- The book then looked at Michael Montaigne and his philosophies. He felt that watching people died of the plague that people were much more likely to understand the purpose of death, and all the philosophers they built themselves, their own grave to die and fall asleep in. He felt that the purpose of life was to live the best life, you possibly could, prepare yourself for death, which, with the last journey. It comes to us all, but it’s not where we live, we live because we need to appreciate as much of life as we can. Sometimes suffering, pain and illness can help us to understand that when we come out the other side just how good life is.
- In one of the writers cited in the book said that because of the illusions of religion that it gave man false hope because if they believed in paradise after death which was an illusion, we would not need to create a paradise on Earth which could be possible if people put away such superstitious torch
- As man created religion through its ideas of seeking salvation and cancellation that if Man; could realise that it was just superstition and attach to the better way to need your life will be seen as could possibly occur on this planet. “A human being was not changed forever by habits, compulsion, addictions, and needs. A person could be reborn in new, redeemed and granted a better life.” The classical stoics and epicureans held out no such hope called out you could discipline your nature, control your impulses, but you could not become a new person. Paul made it his life's work to persuade everyone he met that God could change their lives in the here and now, to prepare them for eternity.”
- It’s interesting to know how so many people have used the power of religious ideology, as well as the ideas of philosophy, such as a stoic, and then the book, then move onto the work of Mahler and how he used music to help people seek confirmation in the things that they needed to find peace with, So many families lost so many children before the time before penicillin and vaccines. Most people lived on average to 30 years or so and many family members would die early deaths.
- Karl Marx believed that the oppressed were blind to their own misery. He borrowed a metaphor from Rousseau, that men could not see the chains on their feet, because the chains were enfolded in a flowery garland. Marx felt that his job was to “pluck the imaginary flowers on the chain, not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation but said that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flowers.” Marx felt the flowers that concealed mince chains were “fantasy“ and “consolation“ and the religion was the chief source of both. He wanted to lay bare the illusions of religion to help understand why man failed to see the manacles on their feet and in their minds. he was nearly repeating clichés that others had said before him. He felt religion was not simply a veil of illusion, cast over human oppression, but that it created an unjust world. Religion was the “opium of the people“ and that the drug people took to endure wage labour, childbirth, suffering, and death . Marks was contemptuous of religious resolutions but not of the longing they expressed. However, it’s also important to note that most workers that Marx actually met had little religious feeling, so religion did not necessarily explain their submission. But he used religion as the metaphor to understand why man submitted to the regime of wage labour. And just as man events god’s to console himself for the mysteries of death and suffering, and then think these Gods have created him. It’s a fascinating account of Karl Mark.
- I loved the story of the poet Anna Akhmatova, who wrote the poem ‘Requiem’ about her experiences of Anna who spent many a long time outside the prison waiting for her son to be released.
- The last story tells the story of Cecily Saunders, who as a nurse came across a Polish man who had an incurable cancer, and he asked her if he was going to die. She replied that he was, so the Polish man asked if she would come and visit him in hospital as he was dying, as he had lost all his family during the second world war. And she did until he died. From this, she decided to devote her life to caring for the dying and helping them with their consolation and grief, and she developed palliative care. The Polish man, who had lost all his family gave her the money so that she could set up caring for the dying and doing so with dignity. A doctor also told her to become a physician as doctors often gave up on those who were dying and knew that she would not. It’s a remarkable story of how she took all this knowledge and set up palliative care for those who were dying in England. She recognised “every necessary component of a good death: relief from pain, a quiet contemplated setting, the presence of loved ones, time to reflect on the shape of the life and the prospect of an end to suffering.”
- The epilogue finishes with the author, reflecting on the loss of his own parents, who died within three years of each other. it will make you think of those that you’ve lost, the wonder of life and that by leading the best life you possibly can, maybe you’ll have the best you’ll have a good death. It will also give you words and ideas which to comfort, others may be a few words to comfort yourself. I really like this book.
- This beautiful book looks at how, through the ages, people have endured suffering, and sought consolation through their suffering in dark times.
Soulful
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