CONVALESCENCE: LITERATURE AT REST

Daniel Ménager

(Les Belles Lettres, 240 pages, 2019)

Convalescence as we know it is the hazy state between illness and health. While we now acknowledge the importance of recovery time for our physical well-being, this was not always the case. In this riveting literary tour de force, Convalescence: Literature at Rest, Daniel Ménager traces the philosophy of convalescence by analyzing literature from the medieval period up until modern day, to show the importance of the convalescent body.

For a long time, medicine concerned itself with illness, and considered health only as an absence of sickness. Religion, conversely, mainly spoke of miraculous, and instantaneous, healings. Medieval literature ignored the convalescent body—one was either sick or one was well. A single kiss could directly bring a wounded knight back to life—unless he prolonged his period of recovery to cover up his weariness of tournaments and warfare. Later on, moralists would worry that forced inactivity could induce dangerous states of temptation should it not lead to religious conversion. By allowing for a time of reflection, a period of convalescence could bring about inner transformation that made a return to normal life difficult.

Ménager cites Tolstoy’s War and Peace as one example through the character Pierre Bezukhov, who, in spite of his recovery, remains estranged from the world and from himself. But Ménager also shows how the rise of the novel gave writers free rein to delve into the treasure trove of furtive pleasures and new sensations brought on by the interruption of worldly pursuits. Women figure predominantly in these intimate scenes where the fusional bond between mother and child and transgressive love between amorous young women and their patient find terrain in which to flourish. Ménager ultimately explores the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, thinking about the ways in which health and illness took on yet another dimension as it concerned Western civilization as a whole. It was not only he who was sick, but the time in which he lived as well.

Who could have known that convalescence could be so engrossing? Written in fluid and elegant prose, Convalescence is a book for literature lovers that will inspire readers to revisit the classics. Iconic characters and pillars of literature take on new life, reinvented through Ménager’s keen insights. Virginia Woolf, eternally convalescent, like Marcel Proust, knew deep down that nothing compares to this state: one in which we emerge reborn into the precariousness of life.

Daniel Ménager is a professor emeritus at the University of Paris-Nanterre and a Renaissance specialist. He contributed to the “Bibliothèque de La Pléiade” edition of Pierre de Ronsard’s oeuvre. He is the author of numerous publications including L’Aventure pastorale (Les Belles Lettres, 2017), Le Roman de la bibliothèque (Les Belles Lettres, 2014), and L’Ange et l’ambassadeur: diplomatie et théologie à la Renaissance (Editions Classiques Garnier, 2013). He participated in the publication of many textbooks. His Introduction à la vie littéraire au XVIe siècle is a reference for literature students.