Jefferson's Demons: Portrait of a Restless MindSimon and Schuster, 2010/05/11 - 288 ページ "I have often wondered for what good end the sensations of Grief could be intended." -- Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson suffered during his life from periodic bouts of dejection and despair, shadowed intervals during which he was full of "gloomy forebodings" about what lay ahead. Not long before he composed the Declaration of Independence, the young Jefferson lay for six weeks in idleness and ill health at Monticello, paralyzed by a mysterious "malady." Similar lapses were to recur during anxious periods in his life, often accompanied by violent headaches. In Jefferson's Demons, Michael Knox Beran illuminates an optimistic man's darker side -- Jefferson as we have rarely seen him before. The worst of these moments came after his wife died in 1782. But two years later, after being dispatched to Europe, Jefferson recovered nerve and spirit in the salons of Paris, where he fell in love with a beautiful young artist, Maria Cosway. When their affair ended, Jefferson's health again broke down. He set out for the palms and temples of southern Europe, and though he did not know where the therapeutic journey would take him or where it would end, his encounter with the old civilizations of the Mediterranean was transformative. The Greeks and Romans taught him that a man could make productive use of his demons. Jefferson's immersion in the mystic truths of the Old World gave him insights into mysteries of life and art that Enlightenment philosophy had failed to supply. Beran skillfully shows how Jefferson drew on the esoteric lore he encountered to transform anxiety into action. On his return to America, Jefferson entered the most productive period of his life: He created a new political party, was elected president, and doubled the size of the country. His private labors were no less momentous...among them, the artistry of Monticello and the University of Virginia. Jefferson's Demons is an elegantly composed account of the strangeness and originality of one Founder's genius. Michael Knox Beran uncovers the maps Jefferson used to find his way out of dejection and to forge a new democratic culture for America. Here is a Jefferson who, with all his failings, remains one of his country's greatest teachers and prophets. |
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... Monticello to lay a wreath at Jefferson's tomb. Roosevelt's Jefferson, a New Deal tribune of the plebs, was succeeded by the Jefferson of the postwar imperial republic, the idol of the bright confident men who made the American Century ...
... Monticello to lay a wreath at Jefferson's tomb. Roosevelt's Jefferson, a New Deal tribune of the plebs, was succeeded by the Jefferson of the postwar imperial republic, the idol of the bright confident men who made the American Century ...
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... Monticello was never merely ornamental; it was here that the intellectual pirate hoarded his cultural treasures.) Jefferson tried to translate what was useful in the archaic forms into the American vernacular, and through this fruitful ...
... Monticello was never merely ornamental; it was here that the intellectual pirate hoarded his cultural treasures.) Jefferson tried to translate what was useful in the archaic forms into the American vernacular, and through this fruitful ...
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... Monticello, which he began to build in the summer of 1769. And there was Martha Wayles Skelton, whom he began to court in 1770 and whom he married on New Year's Day 1772. As for the house, it was not large, especially when compared with ...
... Monticello, which he began to build in the summer of 1769. And there was Martha Wayles Skelton, whom he began to court in 1770 and whom he married on New Year's Day 1772. As for the house, it was not large, especially when compared with ...
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... Monticello were a family of “bright” mulattoes, the Hemingses. He did not, at the beginning of the 1770s, seem especially marked for greatness; he was a rich gentleman farmer who appeared, at times, to be more interested in pursuing the ...
... Monticello were a family of “bright” mulattoes, the Hemingses. He did not, at the beginning of the 1770s, seem especially marked for greatness; he was a rich gentleman farmer who appeared, at times, to be more interested in pursuing the ...
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... Monticello, closely engaged in drafting a memo. A great and unprecedented congress was to convene, in September at Philadelphia, for the purpose of ascertaining the collective mind of a continent; Jefferson's paper was a petition to the ...
... Monticello, closely engaged in drafting a memo. A great and unprecedented congress was to convene, in September at Philadelphia, for the purpose of ascertaining the collective mind of a continent; Jefferson's paper was a petition to the ...
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