`SUCH EXCELLENT COMPANY'
Ignatieff's new book has him finding comfort in the wisdom of the ages
This book wasn't exactly consolation, but it was a delightful escape from the pressures of my day job. I've written a lot of books, but I think this is the one I most enjoyed doing. Michael Ignatieff
On Consolation: Finding Solace in Dark Times
Michael Ignatieff Random House
Michael Ignatieff was setting off on a journey, a journey unlike any he had taken during his many years as a writer. It would carry him back to the world of Marcus Aurelius, writing his timeless Meditations while battling a Barbarian foe, and to the Roman statesman Cicero mourning the loss of a much-loved child. He would enter the minds of philosopher Albert Camus, whose novel The Plague confronts the pestilence of Nazism, and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi striving to come to terms with the horror of Auschwitz. And he would feel compassion for the agonized selfdoubts of Abraham Lincoln.
Occupying a special category — and this was of particular significance to Ignatieff, who considers himself a non-believer — were the Psalms which, in his words “have enabled men and women in pain, throughout the ages, to grasp the commonality of their experience.”
It was an encounter with one of the most enduring books of the Old Testament that prompted the man who once led Canada's Liberal Party to write a new work called On Consolation.
It's about “finding solace in dark times,” and its 74-year-old author admits that it's an unexpected departure for him.
His 17 books display an eclectic range, from a biography of philosopher Isaiah Berlin to his Booker-nominated novel, Scar Tissue. But this latest took him in a fresh direction as he set out to examine how some of history's greatest minds have sought to find meaning in loss and sorrow.
Its unexpected origin was a visit that Ignatieff and his wife, Zsuzsanna, made to Utrecht in 2017 He was there to deliver a lecture on justice and politics in the Book of Psalms.
But it was hearing Europe's great choirs performing musical settings of these works that had a profound impact on Ignatieff, leaving him so moved that he has been trying to come to terms with it ever since.
“I came away pondering the problem of consolation,” Ignatieff says from his home in Vienna. “So, yes, the book among other things is about the enduring power of religious language to console even those who have doubts about the promise of salvation. People have been reading the Psalms for (thousands of ) years because clearly the Psalmists know what it's like to be lonely, to be in despair, to be fearful.”
In his new book, Ignatieff defines consolation as “what we do, or try to do, when we share each other's suffering or seek to bear our own.” For him the process can be mysterious. “It took me a while to get over the death of my parents, but I did, and I now think of them and the whole experience in a very different way from when it happened.”
In a book that manages to be both meditative and compulsively readable, Ignatieff can be tough-minded.
“Old texts are still there to help us in our hour of need, to perform their ancient task once again,” he says. Nevertheless, when he looks at great thinkers over the centuries — people like essayist Montaigne or Boethius, who wrote his muchloved Consolation of Philosophy in prison while awaiting execution — he wonders about the original intent of their words.
“Montaigne is not so sure that philosophy can console anybody,” Ignatieff says now. “Boethius thinks or hopes that he consoles. Marcus Aurelius again is not so sure. Cicero is very sure that consoling words can console until his daughter dies — and then he's completely in despair.”
With this book, Ignatieff 's storytelling skills came to the fore — appropriate to the moments of high drama encountered in his quest.
“I did want to do some storytelling, because often these great texts die if you don't understand the story that made them possible,” Ignatieff says. The Meditations of the great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius are a case in point because they were not the product of a man brooding away in the quiet of an ivory tower.
“He says very explicitly at one point that he's writing from Carnuntum, and the moment you know that, you know that he's not in Rome but on the Danube frontier fighting the Barbarians. And the moment you know that he's fighting them, the whole nature of the Meditations changes. They become the journal of a colonel fighting an insurgency, and he's been doing it for 10 or 15 years.”
Which is why, in the course of writing this book, Ignatieff found himself hiking through these ancient battlegrounds in an attempt to get some “feel” for this distant past.
Ignatieff himself has been through the flames in recent years, first with his troubled leadership of Canada's federal Liberals and more recently during his presidency of the Central European University of Budapest, an experience that saw him at loggerheads with Hungary's authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, over issues of academic freedom. So did the creation of this book provide solace from these travails?
Ignatieff 's answer, given without pause, suggests he is sustained by elements of the stoicism displayed by some inhabitants of this book
“Jean Chrétien used to say that being leader of the opposition was the worst job in Canada, and I don't think he's wrong. It is a tough job and I did it as well as I could. And, yes, it was an unforgettable experience.” Ignatieff is laughing gently now. “Despite the way it turned out, I'm glad I did it, because I learned so much about myself and the country. But I hated to let people down.”
In the case of the Central European University, it has now been moved to Vienna, away from Orbán's line of fire. Ignatieff stepped down as president in late spring, but continues to teach there.
“Battling with Viktor Orbán was kind of exciting,” Ignatieff says. But it was also stressful and he was painfully aware of the high stakes involved.
“This book wasn't exactly consolation, but it was a delightful escape from the pressures of my day job. I've written a lot of books, but I think this is the one I most enjoyed doing. I think it was simply that these people were such excellent company.”
Repeatedly, however, things of the spirit hover over these narratives. They're there in those early chapters dealing with the Psalms, the Book of Job and Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians. And they're back in modern times when hospice pioneer Cicely Saunders reads the 23rd Psalm to a dying patient. They're also there when Ignatieff attends a performance of Handel's Messiah and experiences a spine-tingling moment when he hears the words “comfort ye, my people.”
“I still have my religious difficulties,” Ignatieff says, “but I think my point now would be that my religious difficulties don't matter. Who cares about the theology? What matters are these incredible human traditions that are still there for us in our hours of need.”
When friends and colleagues heard that Ignatieff was writing a book about “consolation” they were bewildered. “What's happening with you?” and “What are you trying to do?” they kept asking.
“But when COVID happened, these questions stopped,” Ignatieff says. “I think the whole world was in search of consolation.”