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A review by raoul_g
Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words by David Whyte
4.0
What a profound book this was. David Whyte's idea for it was taking 52 everyday words and broadening or, I would in many cases even say, shifting our perspective on them. He does this through short but dense meditations making up the 52 chapters of the book. And when I say dense, I mean really dense. Not in the bad sense of the word, maybe rich would be a better and more positive sounding word. I found that my experience of reading these meditations often resembled my experience of reading poetry: To really begin to understand what is being said I have to read the text at least two times and with full concentration. As I said, it's not that the ideas are very complicated, as much as them just being really densely interwoven and packed into the chapters. What also plays into this is Whyte's poetic and intentional language.
Well, let me just show you what I mean by providing you with an example of Whyte's mastery:
"Self-knowledge is not fully possible for human beings. We do not reside in a body, a mind or a world where it is achievable or from the point of being interesting, even desirable. Half of what lies in the heart and mind is potentiality; resides in the darkness of the unspoken and unarticulated and has not yet come into being: this hidden unspoken half of a person will supplant and subvert any present understandings we have about ourselves. Human beings are always, and always will be, a frontier between what is known and what is not known."
So this is an excerpt from the chapter about self-knowledge. Other chapters I liked a lot were about unrequited love, naming, memory, loneliness, help, heartbreak, friendship and ambition.
Something that Whyte does in many of these chapters is to show the possibilities and the potential for good hidden in the aspects of our live we mostly perceive as negative (e.g. loneliness, heartbreak, anger).
Summing up, I think this was an insightful read which offered me many interesting perspectives I will keep thinking about for some while.
Well, let me just show you what I mean by providing you with an example of Whyte's mastery:
"Self-knowledge is not fully possible for human beings. We do not reside in a body, a mind or a world where it is achievable or from the point of being interesting, even desirable. Half of what lies in the heart and mind is potentiality; resides in the darkness of the unspoken and unarticulated and has not yet come into being: this hidden unspoken half of a person will supplant and subvert any present understandings we have about ourselves. Human beings are always, and always will be, a frontier between what is known and what is not known."
So this is an excerpt from the chapter about self-knowledge. Other chapters I liked a lot were about unrequited love, naming, memory, loneliness, help, heartbreak, friendship and ambition.
Something that Whyte does in many of these chapters is to show the possibilities and the potential for good hidden in the aspects of our live we mostly perceive as negative (e.g. loneliness, heartbreak, anger).
Summing up, I think this was an insightful read which offered me many interesting perspectives I will keep thinking about for some while.