Aimee Sears Hey I found my book I bought written in French translated into English! BINGO!!!! I knew that Delacroix dude had something going on there.... and that our introduction to that painting at that Paris church of Saint-Sulpice was meaningful in a profound way. and here is a review of it!---- here is the best part... This must be the starting point, he says on the final page of the book. It was not a painters secret that I was trying to discover, but the secret of another man who one day found himself in the kingdom of darkness. Put as bluntly as this, the resolution sounds banal - but this is not an impression the book allows. The journey to a final truth has been too well managed for that, too full of shrewd thoughts, smart observations and skilful self-examinings. It is a conclusion which has been hard-earned. ===================================== One day in the kingdom of darkness Jean-Paul Kauffmann raises questions of truth and identity in his study of Delacroixs Wrestling With the Angel Andrew Motion The Guardian, Friday 28 February 2003 Wrestling With the Angel: The Mystery of Delacroixs Mural by Jean-Paul Kauffmann, translated by Patricia Clancy 202pp, Harvill, £14.99 In May 1983 Jean-Paul Kauffmann was kidnapped in the Lebanon, where he was working as a journalist, and held captive for five years. Since then he has written a good deal about his imprisonment, but always with a subtle kind of self-effacement. He is absorbed by the bitter facts of his incarceration, but also concerned to find ways of making them connect with other forms of human deprivation and longing. In particular, he is conscious that, as time passes, his sense of himself alters while his reputation remains the same. Try as he might to put the past behind him - or at least to contain and resolve his memories - he is always a hostage in the worlds eyes. Even those who wish him well keep dragging him back to a place he is desperate to escape. No wonder he approaches the subject obliquely: his new book is, on the face of it, primarily concerned with the Paris church of Saint-Sulpice, rather than his Lebanese legacy. He tells us a great deal about the architect Servandoni (he was a set designer at the Opéra, [a] king of scene-shifters, [and a] genius at special effects), relishing the buildings theatrical grandness, its haunting incompleteness, and its bizarre combination of freedom and restraint. He takes us on a suggestively confusing tour of its nooks and crannies. He climbs its mighty towers and stands overlooking the city like a captain on his windswept bridge. He gives us information about everything from the organ (a masterpiece) to the bells (well-known for the redoubtable fire-power of their sound). In particular he tells us about the celebrated mural by Delacroix which decorates one wall of the churchs Chapel of the Angels. This thrilling work was commissioned in 1849 but not finished until July 1861, a couple of years before Delacroixs death. It takes as its starting point the story told in Genesis, chapter 32, where Jacob sends his entourage across the ford Jabbok but stays behind alone to wrestle with a man... until the breaking of the day. In fact this is no ordinary man but an angel (he wont give his name), who wounds Jacob in the thigh, tells him that henceforth he will be known as Israel, and eventually convinces him that I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Its not so much the narrative or its theological significance which interests Kauffmann; its the symbolic value - for himself and for Delacroix. Although he admits to being obsessive about the painting, and spends an extraordinary amount of time ghosting through the church, trying to understand what the image means in relation to other decorations that lie around (especially to François-Joseph Heims Prayer for the Dead in the nearby Chapel of the Souls in Purgatory), he also takes every available opportunity to spin off into asides and excursions, augmenting what he can see with what he suspects.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Jul 2014 17:42:48 +0000
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