A History of Rest
Description
Not viewed simply as an antidote for fatigue, for a long time rest was seen as the prelude to eternal life, until everything changed in the nineteenth century and society entered the great 'age of rest'. At this point, the renowned French historian Alain Corbin explains, rest took on new therapeutic and leisurely qualities, embodied by the new types of human that emerged. The modern epicurean frolicked on beaches and soaked up the rays, while melancholics were rejuvenated in pristine sanatoria, the new temples of rest. Paid holidays and a widespread acceptance of the need to build up the strength sapped during work followed, while the 1950s became the decade of 'sea, sex and sun'.
This new book, as original as Corbin's other histories of neglected aspects of human life, pans the long evolution of rest in a highly readable and engaging style.
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Content
Introduction
1. Sabbath and heavenly rest
2. Eternal rest, the foundation stone of this history
3. Rest and quietude
4. Retreat and retirement in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, or the art of being able 'to forge' a tranquil rest for yourself
Interlude: Charles V
5. Disgrace, an opportunity for rest
6. Rest in the midst of confinement
7. The quest for comfort; new approaches to rest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
8. Prelude: rest in the midst of nature
9. A rest for the land
10. Sunday rest and 'the demon rest'
11. Fatigue and rest
12. Therapeutic rest from the end of the nineteenth to the middle of the twentieth century
Conclusion
1
Sabbath and Heavenly Rest
For many ordinary people, the belief that, after the Creation, recounted in Genesis, God 'rested', was long seen as the foundation and the justification for resting on the seventh day. This belief refers to the sabbath rest of the Jews, as exhorted by various commands set down in Exodus, Leviticus and the Book of Numbers, though not in Genesis. This supposed rest taken by God, a belief shared by many ill-informed Christians, is not, according to the Church, that of a weary creator. Any such suggestion would be erroneous, since it would be at odds with the idea of God's perfection and his eternal nature and would reduce his status to the level of that of some of his creatures. In the eyes of Christian theologians, 'God's rest', celebrated on the first day of the week rather than on the seventh, is a 'creative pause' which initiates a 'fresh infusion of energy into creation', the beginning of a cycle. In short, rest, in this context, does not correspond to an absence of activity.1
Nevertheless, the instruction urging the faithful to rest on the seventh day is reiterated in the Bible. In Exodus, Yahweh tells Moses: 'Speak to the sons of Israel and say, "You must keep my sabbaths carefully, because the sabbath is a sign between myself and you from generation to generation to show that it is I, Yahweh, who sanctify you. You must keep the sabbath, then; it is to be held sacred by you."'2 This holy word which orders the observation of the sabbath makes it both a sign of the Alliance between God and his people and a sacred time which enables the faithful to be made holy. Yahweh's words to Moses do not stop there: 'The man who profanes it must be put to death; whoever does any work on that day shall be outlawed from his people.'3 The severity of the sanctions is proof of the importance God attaches to the sabbath as a day of rest, particularly as he reiterates the call for the death penalty. 'For six days you shall labour and do all your work, but the seventh day is a sabbath for Yahweh your God.'4 These verses define the meaning conferred on the seventh day in Jewish history and which Christians would take as their inspiration - albeit, it should be emphasized, in a modified form. This is not a day of rest purely in terms of relaxation but, above all, a day devoted to God, one which seals 'a lasting Covenant' and represents 'a Covenant in perpetuity'. Without exception, all Christian authorities emphasize that Sunday rest makes this a holy day.
In several of the following books, Yahweh repeats the command. So, for example, in Exodus, he specifies that on the seventh day you shall rest, 'even at ploughing time and harvest'.5 Above all, he emphasizes once again that it will be 'a day of complete rest, consecrated to Yahweh'.6 What is important is not complete rest but the holy nature of that rest. 'You must not light a fire on the sabbath day in any of your homes.'7
God returns to the subject in Leviticus. He reiterates his commands and makes the sabbath the day 'for the sacred assembly',8 thereby extending the significance of this seventh day.
The commentators of the Jerusalem School demonstrate what, in their opinion, constitutes the significance of the Christian Sunday: for the faithful, this coincides with the first day of the week (see chapter 10), when thanks are given to 'he who creates and re-creates the world ., he from whom came eternity'.9 It is important to recognize the way in which Jewish and Christian biblical interpretations are intertwined.
Let us return to the Bible and, more precisely, to Leviticus. In this book we read about the creation in every seventh year of 'a sabbath for Yahweh', 'a year of rest for the land'. The creation of this period of time associates nature with the notion of rest.
When you enter the land that I am giving you, the land is to keep a sabbath's rest for Yahweh. For six years you shall sow your field, for six years you shall prune your vine and gather its produce. But in the seventh year the land is to have its rest, a sabbath for Yahweh. You must not sow your field or prune your vine, or harvest your ungathered corn or gather grapes from your untrimmed vine. It will be a year of rest for the land.10
Furthermore, this 'sabbath of the land' will be accompanied every forty-nine years by a year of jubilee, preceding the fiftieth year, in the course of which the land will once again lie fallow. This period of rest for the earth deserves emphasis even though, according to the biblical commentators, it only applies specifically to the Holy Land and, consequently, Christians would not follow this command.
It was important to point out here the much reiterated biblical origin of the founding of the sabbath as commanded to Moses, a day Christians would transform into a Sunday and which would be a day of rest because it is one consecrated to God the creator.
Let us return to a reading of Genesis in order to turn our attention to another form of rest: that enjoyed by man, newly settled at the centre of the earthly paradise, the Garden of Eden. Indeed, it was the original sin, followed by the Fall and then the punishment of Adam and Eve, which resulted in man's mortality, the revolt amongst animals leading them to tear each other apart, and the obligation to rely on painful toil in order to survive. To make my point all the more clearly, let us turn to the most famous epic poem of the seventeenth century, Milton's Paradise Lost. The author gives a powerful account of the significance and the nature of heavenly rest and describes how man found himself deprived of it immediately after the Fall. His work represents an important contribution to the shaping of the imagery of rest and therefore deserves to be included in this study.
Milton depicts a specific form of heavenly fatigue and, at the same time, describes a type of rest unknown to man. During the day, Adam and Eve spend their time tending the garden: 'Under a tuft of shade that on a green / Stood whispering soft, by a fresh fountain.' Milton describes how:
They sat them down; and, after no more toil
Of their sweet gardening labour than sufficed
To recommend cool Zephyr, and make ease
More easy, wholesome thirst and appetite
More grateful .11
A subtle economy which defined a rest enhanced by a gentle fatigue - radically different from that which would, after the Fall, force them to seek rest. At the heart of the earthly paradise, rest was simply something to be desired, something which represented, in a sense, a 'gentle need', and which would be echoed in the rest taken by Adam and Eve in their 'bower' of leaves, inaccessible to all other creatures.
While the animals were playing: 'as they sat recline / On the soft downy bank damasked with flowers';12 and
Handed they went, and, eased the putting-off
These troublesome disguises which we wear,
Straight side by side were laid; nor turned, I ween,
Adam from his fair spouse, nor Eve the rites
Mysterious of connubial love refused.
During all of that time they were alone- a fact which colours this rest with a particular emotion. Adam and Eve knew nothing at that time of other beings.
Night falls and, addressing himself to Eve, Adam draws links between their exquisite rest and that of nature: 'Fair consort, the hour / Of night, and all things now retired to rest / Mind us of like repose.'13 For God had ensured that, for the man and the woman, work and rest, just like day and night, would alternate with each other. That said, the other creatures, with no tasks to accomplish, have less need for rest than man because, at the heart of the earthly paradise, the latter has a task assigned to him.
Milton continues with a hymn exalting conjugal love, associated with the nocturnal rest of the whole earth and experienced in a place safe from intrusion, except by the serpent. On the day following their punishment, when they were forced out of their earthly paradise, the first thing the unhappy couple did, according to Milton, was to 'choose their place of rest'.14
Notes
- 1. See the entry on 'Rest' in Jean Chevalier and Alain Gheerbrant, A Dictionary of Symbols. London: Penguin, 1996, pp. 797-8.
- 2. The Jerusalem Bible. London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1966, Exodus 31, verses 12-14, p. 118.
- 3. Ibid., Exodus 31, verse 14, p. 118.
- 4. Ibid., Exodus 20, verses 8-10, p. 102.
- 5. Ibid., Exodus 34, verse 21, p. 122.
- 6. Ibid., Exodus 31, verse 15, p. 118.
- 7. Ibid., Exodus 35, verse 3, p. 123.
- 8. Ibid., Leviticus 23, verse 3, p. 159.
- 9. This citation is from the commentary to the French version of the Jerusalem Bible, cited by the author: Bible de Jérusalem. Paris: Editions du Cerf, 2001, p. 233.
- 10. The Jerusalem Bible, Leviticus 25, verses 3-6, p. 162.
- 11. John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV,...
