The important business of idle loafing

In our godless, post-industrial, hyper-competitive world, rest is seen merely as recuperation: it’s when we man-machines ‘recharge our batteries’, as the cliché goes, before dashing back to the factory or work-station. It’s a negative concept. You rest for a reason, which is to avoid burnout.

But as this charming and subtle meditation on the subject from a grand French historian shows, rest used to be far more than just taking time off. It is a religious concept. Take the rest enjoyed by Adam and Eve in Milton’s Paradise Lost. In the Garden of Eden, work is a mere condiment to the important business of sweet loafing:

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…

And I don’t need to remind you that unrest in the form of hard toil and pain in childbirth were God’s punishments for Adam and Eve’s ‘disobedience’.