Simply Rest
A Review of
A History of Rest
Alain Corbin
Paperback: Polity, 2024
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Reviewed by Ryan Johnson
Anyone who has ever gone on vacation with young children knows that it is anything but restful. In fact, just having young children seems to preclude many from that thing we call rest. From the negotiations on what to wear to start the day to the tenth bedtime request, parents are tired and fatigued. Layer into that, there are work responsibilities, maintaining a healthy relationship with your partner, and trying to keep up with your dwindling hobbies and you soon find that keeping your eyes open past 9pm is a challenge. It makes you wonder, have we always been fatigued and in need of rest? According to Alain Corbin, in his book A History of Rest, not only have we not always been fatigued, rest hasn’t always been what we often think of it as today.
Alain Corbin writes a brief survey of the evolution of rest over the centuries. His aim is simply to chart the ebb and flow of rest and the methods that individuals use to achieve it. He begins by anchoring the notion of rest in the holy sabbath laid out in the Old Testament and the idea of keeping the sabbath as a day set apart for God. Through the centuries he maps how that initial concept mingled with the notion of eternal rest and that it was in a sense the first fruits of that rest. From there he takes a quick journey to show how that concept gave way to quietude, then on to retreat from society and retirement.
It is at this point that he points out notable shifts in the understanding of rest. Where previously it was about connecting with God, it begins to become more about convalescence and healing. He points out the use of coastal towns for the healing of individuals and the use of sanatoriums to provide rest for ailments. With the advent of the industrial age and the rise of the leisure class a new form of rest becomes apparent, namely that of leisure and idleness. It is this version of rest that Alain contends has carried on to the present time where paid holidays and vacations are used for doing activities and enjoyment rather than cessation of activity and connecting with God.
In some ways, the title is overly ambitious. It would be more truthful to say that it is a survey of a western Christian view of rest with a very narrow view of modern forms of rest. Thomas Laqueur points out in his notes on the book that it is, “in some measure … a history of the secularization of rest.” I think this is an astute observation and explains what Corbin was trying to achieve. The brief nature of the book doesn’t allow for Corbin to spend a great deal of time on any part of history so the reader is often left feeling that each time period has only one view of rest. In actuality Corbin is trying to highlight key aspects for that time period and what he feels was the prevailing sentiments of rest at the time, not that the other forms of rest did not exist. Another critique I have is that he spends his time examining rest from a western perspective without taking into account any other forms of rest found in other parts of the world.
I think this is why I struggled to really connect with Corbin’s view of modern rest. While vacations are pleasant for getting away from work and in some cases recharging from fatigue, it is not how I would define rest, even less so now that I go on vacation with small children. From my years of involvement in the church and my education in the spiritual disciplines, my understanding of rest is similar to the forms of quietude and holy sabbath that he describes from earlier centuries. While I understand that my view of rest might not be the majority, I think it illustrates that the modern concept of rest is a broad and nuanced idea that deserves a more thorough investigation. Certainly, there are large swaths of society where vacations and having new experiences are the very definition of rest, but there are also large groups of people where these things represent something apart from rest entirely. In many Christian circles, the idea of rest still conjures up thoughts of devotion to God and cessation of activity. I find it difficult to accept that this understanding is simply experiencing a resurgence, but rather has existed in parallel to other forms of rest.
Overall, I found the book too brief to do justice to a topic as complex as the history of rest. Corbin overly simplifies views of rest present in each time period and I think he exaggerates the current definition of rest. While his book provides some interesting details and talking points, I think in the end it falls short of its goal of providing a comprehensive look at rest.
Ryan Johnson
Ryan Johnson lives and works in Nottingham, Maryland with his wife, son and new daughter. He is a former pastor who spends much of his free time reading and writing and of course playing with his son Judah and daughter Eliza. He can be reached on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/rjohn8hf/.
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