Indolent (pronounced in-dl-uhnt)
(1) Having or showing a disposition to avoid exertion; slothful; disliking work or effort; lazy; idle.
(2) In pathology, causing little or no pain; inactive or relatively benign.
(3) In medicine (applied especially to painless ulcers), slow to heal.
1663: From either the French indolent or directly from the Medieval Latin indolentem, from the Latin indolent- (stem of indolēns), the construct being in- (not) + dolent- (stem of dolēns (pain)), present participle of dolēre (to be painful, be in pain) from dolēre (to grieve, to cause distress). The sense of "living easily, slothful”, dates from 1710, a sense said (certainly by English etymologists) perhaps developed in French. The synonyms for both meanings are many, typically words like slow, inactive, sluggish & torpid. The meanings related to medical matters are now entirely technical and restricted to the profession, both generalized as “a slowly progressive medical condition associated with little or no pain” and specifically in conditions such as lowest of three grades of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL), refractory corneal ulcers and a slow-growing carditis, a form of infective endocarditis that may also indicate rheumatic fever. In general use, the word is now used exclusively to indicate degrees of idleness. Indolent is an adjective (the occasional use as a noun remains non-standard), indolency & indolence are nouns and indolently is an adverb; the noun plural is indolences.
Living to almost 100, the mathematician & philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) lived a productive life and his output was prodigious. However, although he admitted taking seriously being told in his youth “the devil makes work for idle hands” and spending his industriously, in 1932 he felt moved to publish an essay he called In Praise of Idleness, written at a time when many anxious to work were suffering from an imposed indolence: “I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached.” Some five years earlier he’d delivered one of his more famous addresses, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927), so it’s unlikely his thought owed much to scripture such as Matthew 6:28 (“And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin” (King James Version (KJV, 1611)) which was about Christ telling His disciples to abandon anxiety and trust in God to provide. Instead, he suggested, in what seems a very modern view, that “…a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by the belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work..” He went on to review the evolution of the post-feudal economic models (in a kind of neo-Marxist analysis) and offered an alternative vision and, were he alive today to survey the scene, he would have been disappointed to realize had never been achieved:
“Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid. At least one per cent will probably devote the time not spent in professional work to pursuits of some public importance, and, since they will not depend upon these pursuits for their livelihood, their originality will be unhampered, and there will be no need to conform to the standards set by elderly pundits. But it is not only in these exceptional cases that the advantages of leisure will appear. Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”
An indolent Lindsay Lohan, Los Angeles, 2012.
Nor is it likely the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821) gave much thought to Matthew 6:28 while writing Ode on Indolence (1819). There is some scriptural imagery in the poetry of Keats but the debt is more to the Bible as a literary work than anything overtly religious, Keats more influenced by classical mythology, nature, and the Romantic ideals of beauty and truth.
Ode on Indolence by John Keats
They toil
not, neither do they spin.’
One morn
before me were three figures seen,
With bowèd necks, and joinèd hands,
side-faced;
And one
behind the other stepp’d serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes
graced;
They pass’d, like figures on a marble
urn,
When shifted round to see the other side;
They came
again; as when the urn once more
Is shifted round, the first seen shades
return;
And they were strange to me, as may betide
With vases,
to one deep in Phidian lore.
How is it,
Shadows! that I knew ye not?
How came ye muffled in so hush a mask?
Was it a
silent deep-disguisèd plot
To steal away, and leave without a task
My idle days? Ripe was the drowsy hour;
The blissful cloud of summer-indolence
Benumb’d my
eyes; my pulse grew less and less;
Pain had no sting, and pleasure’s
wreath no flower:
O, why did ye not melt, and leave my sense
Unhaunted
quite of all but—nothingness?
A third
time pass’d they by, and, passing, turn’d
Each one the face a moment whiles to me;
Then faded,
and to follow them I burn’d
And ached for wings, because I knew the
three;
The first was a fair Maid, and Love her
name;
The second was Ambition, pale of cheek,
And ever
watchful with fatiguèd eye;
The last, whom I love more, the more of
blame
Is heap’d upon her, maiden most unmeek,—
I knew to
be my demon Poesy.
They faded,
and, forsooth! I wanted wings:
O
folly! What is Love? and where is it?
And for
that poor Ambition! it springs
From a man’s little heart’s short
fever-fit;
For Poesy!—no,—she has not a joy,—
At least for me,—so sweet as drowsy noons,
And
evenings steep’d in honey’d indolence;
O, for an age so shelter’d from annoy,
That I may never know how change the moons,
Or hear the
voice of busy common-sense!
And once
more came they by:—alas! wherefore?
My sleep had been embroider’d with dim
dreams;
My soul had
been a lawn besprinkled o’er
With flowers, and stirring shades, and
baffled beams:
The morn was clouded, but no shower
fell,
Tho’ in her lids hung the sweet tears of
May;
The open
casement press’d a new-leaved vine,
Let in the budding warmth and throstle’s
lay;
O Shadows! ’twas a time to bid
farewell!
Upon your
skirts had fallen no tears of mine.
So, ye
three Ghosts, adieu! Ye cannot raise
My head cool-bedded in the flowery grass;
For I would
not be dieted with praise,
A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce!
Fade softly from my eyes, and be once
more
In masque-like figures on the dreamy urn;
Farewell! I
yet have visions for the night,
And for the day faint visions there is
store;
Vanish, ye
Phantoms! from my idle spright,
Into the clouds, and never more return!
