On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times

by Michael Ignatieff

Overview

Timely and profound philosophical 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 sixteenth 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 lapidary meditations on writers, artists, musicians, and their works—from the books of Job and Psalms to Albert Camus, Anna Akhmatova, and Primo Levi—esteemed 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 our precarious twenty-first century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805055221
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/01/2022
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	638,146
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Michael Ignatieff is the author of Isaiah Berlin and The Warrior’s Honor, and over fifteen other acclaimed books, including a memoir, The Russian Album, and the Booker finalist novel Scar Tissue. He writes regularly for the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. Former head of Canada’s Liberal Party, director of the Carr Center for Human Rights at Harvard’s Kennedy School, and president of Central European University, he is currently a professor at CEU in Vienna.

Table of Contents

Preface xiii

Introduction: After Paradise 1

1 The Voice in the Whirlwind: The Book of Job and the Book of Psalms 9

2 Waiting for the Messiah: Paul's Epistles 24

3 Cicero's Tears: Letters on the Death of His Daughter 40

4 Facing the Barbarians: Marcus Aurelius's Meditations 56

5 The Consolations of Philosophy: Boethius and Dante 70

6 The Painting of Time: El Greco's The Burial of the Count of Orgaz 87

7 The Body's Wisdom: Michel de Montaigne's Last Essays 94

8 The Unsent Letter: David Hume's My Own Life 108

9 The Consolations of History: Condorcet's A Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind 120

10 The Heart of a Heartless World: Karl Marx and The Communist Manifesto 136

11 War and Consolation: Abraham Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address 153

12 Songs on the Death of Children: Gustav Mahler's Kindertotenlieder 167

13 The Calling: Max Weber and The Protestant Ethic 183

14 The Consolations of Witness: Anna Akhmatova, Primo Levi, and Miklós Radnóti 198

15 To Live Outside Grace: Albert Camus's The Plague 212

16 Living in Truth: Vaclav Havel's Letters to Olga 230

17 The Good Death: Cicely Saunders and the Hospice 243

Epilogue 256

Notes and Further Reading 263

Index 277

Editorial Reviews

"On Consolation is an ambitious restoration project, a survey course of Eurocentric anguish from Job to the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz . . . Ignatieff believes that holy texts of all denominations can be mined for comfort and insight even by the faithless, [in] their depiction, over frequent revisions, of common human experience. Maybe, against Sartre, heaven is other people."
—The New York Times Book Review

"This erudite and heartfelt survey reminds us that the need for consolation is timeless, as are the inspiring words and examples of those who walked this path before us."
—Toronto Star

"On Consolation could not be more urgent . . . Ignatieff wants to re-acquaint us moderns with the old ways we’ve left behind, and to remind us that some problems are, by their nature, beyond the powers of technology and good government."
—Ash Carter, Air Mail

"Compelling."
—Maclean's

"A thoughtful book . . . Especially moving are the final chapters in which Ignatieff profiles poets of the Holocaust and Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice movement . . . This meaningful work will be compelling and comforting for readers looking for perspective and balance."
—Booklist

"Erudite and elegant . . . Ignatieff's vivid biographical sketches of his subjects holding themselves together through failures, terminal illness, or looming execution . . . inspire and, in their way, console."
—Publishers Weekly

"An inspiration for those in needs of words to carry on with life."
—Kirkus Reviews

"A poignant reminder that to seek consolation or comfort is, in many ways, one of the most universally human things one can do."
—Shelf Awareness

“In an age when we are so much in need of solace, Michael Ignatieff went looking for it in texts and times whose assumptions are profoundly different from our own. The result is a secular reinterpretation of a landscape that has often seemed visible only through a religious lens: it is elegant, humane and intensely rewarding.”
—Kwame Anthony Appiah, author of The Lies that Bind: Rethinking Identity

"It is at once illuminating, moving and itself consoling, to follow Michael Ignatieff as he searches for moments of consolation across the centuries. More often than not, he finds these moments not where one would most expect them but in surprising places—in the failure of Cicero’s stoicism; in Marcus Aurelius’ sleepless nights, in Boethius’ odd flash of bleak comedy, in the illusory dreams of Karl and Jenny Marx. And with resolute honesty Ignatieff follows the search into his own inner life, grappling, as we all must do, with failure, loss, and death."
—Stephen Greenblatt, author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

"A wonderful balance of literary survey and personal reflection, this book is wide-ranging, moving, and stylishly written. It makes the perfect introduction to a genre that never goes out of fashion."
—Sarah Bakewell, author of How to Live and At the Existentialist Café

"An extraordinary meditation on loss and mortality, drawing on all of Michael Ignatieff’s powers as a philosopher, a historian, a politician, and a man. His portraits of figures such as Hume and Montaigne are sharp and dignified, troubling and consoling, thoughtful and deeply humane."
—Rory Stewart, author of The Places in Between

“This is an extraordinarily moving book. The idea of solidarity in time is itself consoling, amidst so much loss: in Ignatieff’s words, ‘we are not alone, and we never have been.’”
—Emma Rothschild, author of The Inner Life of Empires

“Michael Ignatieff's eloquent search for consolation is itself consoling. His confidence in old wisdoms suits our new circumstances. This is a book splendidly immune to the panics of our age, written in an affecting spirit of humility by a man of uncommon intelligence who has a rare gift for keeping his head. For many of its readers On Consolation will be—is there any higher praise for a study of this subject?—useful.”
—Leon Wieseltier, author of Kaddish

“Illuminating and moving, these wide-ranging portraits of men and women seeking answers in dark times—from the Book of Job to Montaigne, from Cicero to Akhmatova, and on to today's palliative care—appeal to us all, as a universal quest and an intimate personal testament.”
—Jenny Uglow, author of Mr. Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense

“A passionate, thought-provoking, unpredictable book.”
—Carlo Ginzburg, author of Threads and Traces

"With this book, On Consolation, we are gifted with deeply perceptive insights on eternal truths with a contemporary lens, toward a desperately-needed restoration of communal hope from Canada’s great intellectual powerhouse, Michael Ignatieff."
—Lieutenant-General (ret) The Honourable Roméo Dallaire

"Human problems are like crystals: they have so many faces that they must be turned over and around many times in order to see every side. Michael Ignatieff’s ruminative On Consolation does that artfully. Reading his memorable portraits of historical figures who needed, sought, lost, or found consolation leaves the reader with a deeper appreciation of the profound challenges and possibilities that life lays before every one of us.”
—Mark Lilla, author of The Reckless Mind

From the Publisher

09/27/2021

Great minds find meaning in great sorrow in this searching meditation from historian Ignatieff (Fire and Ashes). Old texts, Ignatieff writes, are “still there to help us in our hour of need, to perform their ancient task once again,” and he surveys a variety of thinkers’ responses to death, bereavement, sickness, political disappointment, and civilizational collapse. These include Job’s questioning of a seemingly callous God, Paul’s promise that suffering leads to eternal life with Christ, and the stoic acceptance of misfortune by Roman statesmen Cicero and Marcus Aurelius. He also covers the humanist tradition of essayist Michel de Montaigne, philosopher David Hume, and sociologist Max Weber, who eased mortality’s sting with a focus on life’s daily pleasures, self-actualization, and devotion to one’s calling; Holocaust survivor Primo Levi’s project of bearing witness to the horror of Auschwitz; and hospice movement founder Cicely Saunders’s vision of dying as a valedictory summation of life. Ignatieff’s explorations of mainly post-religious discourses of consolation are erudite and elegant, though more impactful are his vivid biographical sketches of his subjects holding themselves together through failures, terminal illness, or looming execution, sometimes with the help of others’ kindness. These stories of perseverance inspire and, in their way, console. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

11/01/2021

How does one find meaning in life and have hope for the future if they have no religious belief? This is a central question of Ignatieff's (The Ordinary Virtues) new book. The book's immediate context, with the challenges and crises associated with the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, makes this question particularly relevant. Ignatieff focuses on the concept of consolation, or finding solace in the face of such realities as tragedy, anxiety, and failure. He views consolation as the opposite of resignation, in that one struggles against these challenges and finds individual and shared meaning in the face of them; consolation also involves hope, with the opportunity to begin again after disaster or defeat. Ignatieff addresses consolation here by examining historical figures and their writings to demonstrate how they drew upon their religious traditions in difficult situations; among them are Biblical figures (Job; Paul), philosophers (Boethius; David Hume), politicians (Cicero; Marcus Aurelius; Abraham Lincoln), literary figures (Dante; Albert Camus), artists (El Greco), and musicians (Gustav Mahler). VERDICT Readers interested in history or philosophy (whether or not they are religious), will find Ignatieff's blend of spirituality and self-help to be particularly significant.—John Jaeger, Johnson Univ., Knoxville, TN

Library Journal

Narrating in a warm and soothing voice, historian and former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff offers a series of essays ruminating on the age-old search for consolation. Beginning his quest with Job, a man whose comfortable, faithful life is upended in a wager between God and Satan, Ignatieff spends some time with biblical subjects, referring to the Hebrew prophets as the “originators of consolation” and examining the psalms and Saint Paul’s letters. Ignatieff moves on to classical figures such as Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, coming at last to more modern times of political upheaval, chaos, and war. Where the text is particularly dense, his melodious tones and unhurried pace can become a bit soporific, but overall his narration makes a difficult topic pleasantly approachable. S.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2022 - AudioFile

Narrating in a warm and soothing voice, historian and former Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff offers a series of essays ruminating on the age-old search for consolation. Beginning his quest with Job, a man whose comfortable, faithful life is upended in a wager between God and Satan, Ignatieff spends some time with biblical subjects, referring to the Hebrew prophets as the “originators of consolation” and examining the psalms and Saint Paul’s letters. Ignatieff moves on to classical figures such as Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, coming at last to more modern times of political upheaval, chaos, and war. Where the text is particularly dense, his melodious tones and unhurried pace can become a bit soporific, but overall his narration makes a difficult topic pleasantly approachable. S.G. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2022 - AudioFile

2021-09-15
The noted academic and former politician examines the nature of consolation as a means of helping us accept the tragic reality of our lives.

“Consolation is what we do, or try to do, when we share each other’s suffering or seek to bear our own,” writes Ignatieff. “What we are searching for is how to go on, how to keep going, how to recover the belief that life is worth living.” The author is generous in providing cases in point. Foremost is Job, the biblical figure whom God tested with exquisitely awful punishments. The great lesson of Job, Ignatieff suggests, is not that he eventually bows to his tormentors, but that he teaches us to “refuse the false consolations of those who deny what we have endured.” The author then turns to the Psalms, which “have enabled men and women in pain, throughout the ages, to grasp the commonality of their experience.” Both Job and the Psalms, he adds, give us the language to express our hurt. Cicero may not have been the greatest model of probity, but the Roman philosopher adds to that literature, as does Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic emperor, whom Ignatieff credits with setting a noble example: “For it is consoling to know that not even an emperor can get through the night, alone with his thoughts. That is something we can share with him.” Montaigne turned to his thoughts, alone in his tower, in the face of a terrible religious civil war that had lasted for 30 years. Having witnessed the peasants in the countryside around him prepare for their plague-borne deaths by digging their own graves and awaiting the end, he found consolation for his impending demise. Marx and Lincoln also figure in these pages, as does Cicely Saunders, the founder of the hospice movement. Ignatieff concludes that consolation is a species of grace, which makes the consoler an angel in disguise.

An inspiration for those in need of words to carry on with life.

Kirkus Reviews