Topic

Leisure

Leisure in this collection is most interesting when it is distinguished from idleness — which most of the collection refuses to do. Austen on sitting-in-the-shade-and-looking-upon-verdure as the most perfect refreshment gives leisure its highest credential: the recovery of perception. Ovid on taking away leisure and breaking Cupid's bow gives it an erotic function: desire requires unscheduled time to develop. Wordsworth on golf as strenuous idleness is the satirical entry: leisure that requires effort and equipment is not quite what philosophers have in mind. Sterne on men-tiring-themselves-in-pursuit-of-rest is the paradox that the leisure industry was built on: the pursuit of relaxation becomes its own variety of stress. Bennett on a-man-of-sixty-having-spent-twenty-years-in-bed is the actuarial version: leisure is not a supplement to life but a substantial portion of it, and what you do with it is a serious biographical question. What the collection argues is that leisure is not the absence of activity but the presence of freedom — and that the rarest and most valuable leisure is the kind that restores the capacity for attention.