On Consolation

September 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.

October 1, 2021
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.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

October 15, 2021
Surrounded by COVID-19, wildfires, floods, and political unrest, we might forget that we haven't been singled out for suffering. Instead, suffering has always been integral to human life--men and women throughout existence have faced natural disasters, plagues, wars of all kinds, and, always, death. In this thoughtful book, respected historian Ignatieff moves chronologically through history, examining the lives and writings of philosophers, artists, politicians, and musicians who have found consolation in religion, society, history, music, and art. Ignatieff portrays Saint Paul, Marcus Aurelius, Karl Marx, Abraham Lincoln, and Albert Camus, among many others. He provides the historical setting, describes the methods used by each individual to find meaning in their lives and solace for their miseries, and traces their influence on others. Especially moving are the final chapters in which Ignatieff profiles poets of the Holocaust and Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice movement. Along the way, the author shares his own struggles with grief and search for consolation. While not an easy read, this moving and meaningful work will be compelling and comforting for readers looking for perspective and balance.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

November 1, 2021

Human beings have always sought solace through religion, but, argues Booker Prize finalist Ignatieff, since the 1500s many began turning toward science, ideology, and the therapeutic. Here, to show where the less religiously persuaded might find light that illuminates the darkness, he considers writers, thinkers, artists, and musicians primarily from the Western canon, bringing in the Bible's Psalms, for instance, but also turning to the likes of Anna Akhmatova, Albert Camus, and Primo Levi With a 60,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.