Pascal: The Man and His Two LovesEver since the edifying life written by his sister in the months after his death, canonical representations of Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) have revered him for the scientific genius of his youth, the religious conversions of his mid-life, and the great books and greater saintliness of his last years. All this monumentalizes the hero, but it also reduces the man to a mind and spirit and it divides his life and work into unrelated halves. The preeminent specialist, Jean Mesnard, still picks up the subject where Gilberte Pascal left it in 1662. No historian in our language has even attempted to put the halves together again. |
Contents
PART ONE Attachments | 13 |
The Widowed Father | 27 |
The Precocious Son | 38 |
PART TWO Separations and Losses | 51 |
The Crisis of 164648 | 62 |
The Crisis of 165153 | 77 |
THREE The Heart of the Matter | 91 |
Remembering and Forgetting | 104 |
The Provinciales I | 158 |
The Provinciales II | 172 |
PART FIVE Misery | 189 |
The Misery of This | 211 |
Other Depressive Traits in Pascals Last Years | 231 |
APPENDIXES | 261 |
Notes | 277 |
Bibliography of Primary Sources | 335 |
What Does It Mean? | 125 |
Circumstances That Favored Preoccupation with Loss | 136 |
PART FOUR Exaltation | 143 |
341 | |
Index of Passages Cited | 347 |