History of Rest. Small book for travel. A bit messy (lack of definition, lack of sources). The author is a proper historian (historian of sensitivities) and I suspect I got the general public version of a more important work, so I read it as a coffee table book and picked the interesting bits out. Notably, the pretty new idea that the remedy of tiredness is rest.

Rest is for most of history the final/eternal rest and every idea of rest comes from the primordial one - thus the importance of the art of dying (ars moriendi).

For Pascal, full rest is the place to experience the void of existence and creates ennui. Humans need to “beg for trouble” to be spared the trouble of thinking of themselves. “The man who loves only himself hates nothing so much as being alone with himself.” “All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.”

Another type of rest is retirement: this one needs to be built. It’s expected in old age (one has to make room for one’s children), but not easy. For Montaigne, one has to relinquish ambition and to become one's own source of rest. Yet, here again, some small activity is expected to keep ‘cowardly idleness’ away.

La Rochefoucauld : “When you cannot find peace within yourself, it is useless to look for it elsewhere.”

The actually old idea of confinement (or lock down) as a form of rest from society, with Xavier de Maistre and his parodic travel diary, Travels around my room.

In the 18th century, Romantism sets up Nature as the main background for rest. Then comes the Industrial Revolution: it creates the association between tiredness and rest, and eventually kills the Sunday rest. Rest is now therapeutic, limited and confined (8 hour a day); rest does not include anymore the unprompted chat with colleagues or the slowdown that could happen in the midst of your work day.

Briefly mentioned: the evolution of chairs following the evolution of rest. I'm guessing from the prie-Dieu chair, the straight back chair (rest is a temptation), the rocking-chair (Nature lulls), all the way to the deck chair (closest to the hospital bed).

Histoire du repos

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