Wrestling with the angel

Language:Chinese.Paperback. Pub Date: 2004 Pages: 198 in Publisher: Vintage Near the end of his life. the great Romantic artist the Eug-ne Delacroix (1798 - 1863) painted one of the most enigmatic episodes from the Bible: Jacob wrestling with the angel. This painting. which decorates the wall of the Chapel of the Holy Angels in the Paris church of Saint-Sulpice. is Delacroix's 'spiritual testament'. But Sain-Sulpice is a mysterious church where everything happens behind the scenes. A fan of Inspector Maigret. Jean-Paul Kauffmann investigates the painting and the church. paying particular attention to its hidden history. He searches for clues in a bar in Dieppe. a castle in Quercy. a village in the Argonne. an oak tree in the forest at Senart. even a golf course in the Loiret. The trail leads him to an art critic. a lecturer at the Louvre. and a sculptor who has a studio in t...

Wrestling With the Angel

KAUFFMANN, Jean-Paul

Arts & Photography

Vintage

In this mesmerizing examination of Delacroix’s crowning masterwork, Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, and of Saint-Sulpice, the grand church that houses it, Jean-Paul Kauffmann reveals the city of Paris in an entirely new way. With the same insight and understanding he brought to his National Book Critics Circle Award–nominated The Black Room at Longwood, in The Angel of the Left Bank Jean-Paul Kauffmann confronts humanity’s struggle with God. His muse is Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, Eugène Delacroix’s “spiritual testimony” and certainly one of his masterpieces, a painting that portrays one of the most enigmatic episodes in Genesis. Throughout his careful, impassioned examination of the work, which Delacroix labored over for eight years and finished in 1861, Kauffmann touches on architecture and art history, philosophy and religion, and the luminous city of Paris itself. Like a detective, he looks for lingering clues in the places Delacroix frequented and the objects he touched some 150 years ago, seeking to connect with the artist’s philosophical and artistic process—and, in turn, to discover what truths we might ultimately glean from it. His journey makes for enthralling reading.

The Angel of the Left Bank: The Secrets of Delacroix's Parisian Masterpiece

History & Criticism

Random House Trade Paperbacks

Like his subject, Napoleon, author Jean-Paul Kauffmann has experienced captivity, as a three-year hostage in Beirut. He brings his insider's knowledge to this moving account of the most famous French soldier's last years in seclusion on a tropical island. After his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon was exiled and imprisoned by the British on the island of St. Helena. He became increasingly withdrawn, surviving on a diet of memories that he recounted to the few people around him. But the book -- part history, part travelogue -- portrays the leader as a prisoner also of his mind, poisoned by nostalgia for his triumphs and grief over his defeats. "A haunting, unforgettable book....Kauffmann captures the desolate atmosphere of Napoleon's last home with evocative precision." -- Boston Globe

The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon's Exile on Saint Helena

Biographies & Memoirs

Historical

Da Capo Press

Four Walls, Eight Windows

In The Struggle with the Angel, Jean-Paul Kauffmann -- a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award for his The Black Room at Longwood -- wrestles with good and evil. His muse is The Struggle of Jacob with the Angel, a Delacroix painting in Paris’s Saint-Sulpice. In this painting, Delacroix, a narrative artist of the mid 19th century, portrayed one of the most enigmatic episodes in Genesis. It was said to be his “spiritual testimony,” and it took him eight years to complete. In the manner of an intuitive detective, Kauffmann investigates the painting and the church that houses it. Stroke by meticulous stroke, he uncovers the painting’s deeper meaning — the struggle with God — for the artist and for himself, as he attempts to put his own troubled past into perspective. Color photos and illustrations accompany this meditation on humanity's struggles with God.

The Struggle with the Angel: Delacroix, Jacob, and the God of Good and Evil

Courland is an entity that no longer exists. With the Gulf of Riga to the north, the Baltic to the west and Lithuania at its southern border, and now part of modern Latvia, the region was occupied by Nazi Germany and returned to Soviet Russia after the war, remaining largely inaccessible until 1991. It is now a nowhere land of wide skies and forests, deserted beaches, ruined castles and ex-KGB prisons. For years Jean-Paul Kauffmann has been irresistibly drawn to this buffer between the Germanic and Slav worlds. His digressive travels at the wheel of a Skoda become an investigation into the whereabouts of a former lover, a search for an excavator of tombs, and a journey in the footsteps of Louis XVIII, for whom Courland was once a place of exile.

A Journey to Nowhere: Among the Lands and History of Courland

History

Europe

Quercus Publishing

The Harvill Press

An account of the author's visit to the house on the island of St Helena where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled for the last six years of his life, this text tells of the author's feelings and contemplation of his motives for visiting the island at all.

Dark Room at Longwood: A Voyage to st Helena

Harvill Pr

The Dark Room At Longwood: A Voyage To St. Helena

Jean-Paul Kauffmann, the author and literary explorer, follows in the footsteps of the eighteenth century sailor Yves-Joseph Kerguelen, who gave his name to the archipelago he discovered in the souther Indian Ocean...when he made his discovery he was convinced he had found Hell and could not bring himself to go ashore...

Voyage To Desolation Land

Africa

Harvill Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by KAUFFMANN, Jean-Paul. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by KAUFFMANN, Jean-Paul

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by KAUFFMANN, Jean-Paul. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Wrestling With the Angel

The Angel of the Left Bank: The Secrets of Delacroix's Parisian Masterpiece

The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon's Exile on Saint Helena

The Black Room at Longwood: Napoleon's Exile on Saint Helena

The Struggle with the Angel: Delacroix, Jacob, and the God of Good and Evil

A Journey to Nowhere: Among the Lands and History of Courland

Wrestling with the angel

Dark Room at Longwood: A Voyage to st Helena

The Dark Room At Longwood: A Voyage To St. Helena

Voyage To Desolation Land