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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... knew or heard of one who was not healthy and long lived.” A brisk walk, according to Jefferson, “shakes off sleep, and produces other good effects in the animal œconomy.” The “object of walking,” he said, “is to relax the mind.” “You ...
... knew or heard of one who was not healthy and long lived.” A brisk walk, according to Jefferson, “shakes off sleep, and produces other good effects in the animal œconomy.” The “object of walking,” he said, “is to relax the mind.” “You ...
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... knew that he was not—a new man. His mother, Jane, was Captain Isham Randolph's daughter, a descendant of William Randolph of Turkey Island, as the Randolphs' lands below Richmond were called. William Randolph was one of the founders of ...
... knew that he was not—a new man. His mother, Jane, was Captain Isham Randolph's daughter, a descendant of William Randolph of Turkey Island, as the Randolphs' lands below Richmond were called. William Randolph was one of the founders of ...
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... knew, or at any rate than he cared to confess. The Virginia into which he was born was unhealthy in another way. Its wealth rested on an illusion. The prosperity of the province was founded on tobacco, but by the 1760s tobacco could no ...
... knew, or at any rate than he cared to confess. The Virginia into which he was born was unhealthy in another way. Its wealth rested on an illusion. The prosperity of the province was founded on tobacco, but by the 1760s tobacco could no ...
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... knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably creditable manner.” But “good God! When I had an opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder, and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length ...
... knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably creditable manner.” But “good God! When I had an opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder, and interrupted with pauses of uncommon length ...
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... knew that his countrymen sometimes faltered in their virtuous audacity; they too readily stopped at the “halfway house” of unsatisfactory compromise; they had frequently to be aroused from their juiceless torpor by leaders who could ...
... knew that his countrymen sometimes faltered in their virtuous audacity; they too readily stopped at the “halfway house” of unsatisfactory compromise; they had frequently to be aroused from their juiceless torpor by leaders who could ...
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