![]() ![]() Beran skillfully shows how Jefferson drew on the esoteric lore he encountered to transform anxiety into action. 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. The Greeks and Romans taught him that a man could make productive use of his demons. 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. ![]() When their affair ended, Jefferson's health again broke down. 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. ![]() The worst of these moments came after his wife died in 1782. In Jefferson's Demons, Michael Knox Beran illuminates an optimistic man's darker side - Jefferson as we have rarely seen him before. 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. 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. "I have often wondered for what good end the sensations of Grief could be intended." ![]()
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