内容（「MARC」データベースより）
ゴヤ47歳。己の聴力を捧げ、彼は再び命を取り戻した…。金と名声、宮廷世界、戦争の惨禍、そして愛。人間の心の闇と欲望を直視し続けた天才画家の、波瀾に満ちた生涯と創造の秘密に迫る異色の半生紀。
Amazon.co.uk
Julia Blackburn
has already established herself as one of the finest writers of non-fiction, but with Old Man Goya she takes her ability to re-create the past to a new level in her haunting evocation of the final years of the great Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya. Partly inspired by the painful loss her own mother (who was also a painter), Blackburn's desire to write about Goya developed when she learnt that in 1792, at the age of 47, the painter went permanently deaf; "I wanted to know what sort of world this deaf man had inhabited and how he had managed to live with the isolation of deafness and how it had changed the way he used his remaining senses". The result is a remarkably perceptive voyage into Goya's mind, which hovers between history and fiction, as Blackburn moves between the death of her own mother, visits to Goya's old haunts in Spain and France, and the painter's own remarkable lust for life in the midst of domestic upheavals and the horrors of warfare in early 19th-century Spain.
has already established herself as one of the finest writers of non-fiction, but with Old Man Goya she takes her ability to re-create the past to a new level in her haunting evocation of the final years of the great Spanish painter, Francisco de Goya. Partly inspired by the painful loss her own mother (who was also a painter), Blackburn's desire to write about Goya developed when she learnt that in 1792, at the age of 47, the painter went permanently deaf; "I wanted to know what sort of world this deaf man had inhabited and how he had managed to live with the isolation of deafness and how it had changed the way he used his remaining senses". The result is a remarkably perceptive voyage into Goya's mind, which hovers between history and fiction, as Blackburn moves between the death of her own mother, visits to Goya's old haunts in Spain and France, and the painter's own remarkable lust for life in the midst of domestic upheavals and the horrors of warfare in early 19th-century Spain.
Old Man Goya moves from Goya's early days as a rich court painter, creating "dozens of designs of light-hearted subjects", to the trauma of deafness, the devastation of the bloody Peninsula War that swept Iberia between 1807 and 1812, the death of his first wife and old age with a mistress half his age. Interspersed amongst the text are 23 beautiful Goya copperplates through which Blackburn "can see Goya, a silent witness who makes no comment, but gives a shape to everything he sees", whose relish for the absurd, the cruel and the carnivalesque remained with him throughout his long life. Blackburn's elegant prose and unerring eye for domestic and artistic detail creates a wonderfully compassionate portrait of Goya, and she happily concedes to being "caught up in the spinning energy of the man as he hurtled relentlessly through the years", a journey that her readers will find well worth pursuing. --Jerry Brotton --このテキストは、絶版本またはこのタイトルには設定されていない版型に関連付けられています。
From Publishers Weekly
A portraitist for the Spanish aristocracy before being struck deaf after an illness in 1792, Goya (1746-1828) subsequently developed a bolder, rougher style of religious fresco, sided with the French after they invaded, was pardoned by the Spanish king in 1814, and lived a more and more reclusive life, finally going into exile in Bordeaux in his final four years. In a conceit familiar from her previous titles (including The Emperor's Last Island, where British writer Blackburn juxtaposed a chronicle of Napoleon on St. Helena with her own life and travels), this book is as much about Blackburn's life as it is the second half of Goya's. Blackburn free associates, for example, from memories of her mother's paint studio to episodes from the life of Goya, finding parallel grotesques in each world. She interlards her narrative of Goya's life with her own tourist trips tracking his movements through Spain and France to the point where it can be difficult to tell the sets of experiences apart. The faux naIve tone that dominates the book seems to be an attempt to imitate the art writer John Berger's famed "peasant" style, with vastly inferior results: "Goya the deaf man makes me think of a toad.... But before he was deaf he was able to hear and before he was old he was young." For those serious about Goya's life and work, this book obscures more than it reveals.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、 ハードカバー 版に関連付けられています。
) subsequently developed a bolder, rougher style of religious fresco, sided with the French after they invaded, was pardoned by the Spanish king in 1814, and lived a more and more reclusive life, finally going into exile in Bordeaux in his final four years. In a conceit familiar from her previous titles (including The Emperor's Last Island, where British writer Blackburn juxtaposed a chronicle of Napoleon on St. Helena with her own life and travels), this book is as much about Blackburn's life as it is the second half of Goya's. Blackburn free associates, for example, from memories of her mother's paint studio to episodes from the life of Goya, finding parallel grotesques in each world. She interlards her narrative of Goya's life with her own tourist trips tracking his movements through Spain and France to the point where it can be difficult to tell the sets of experiences apart. The faux naIve tone that dominates the book seems to be an attempt to imitate the art writer John Berger's famed "peasant" style, with vastly inferior results: "Goya the deaf man makes me think of a toad.... But before he was deaf he was able to hear and before he was old he was young." For those serious about Goya's life and work, this book obscures more than it reveals. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --このテキストは、 ハードカバー 版に関連付けられています。
Book Description
In 1792, when he was forty-seven, the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya contracted an illness that left him stone deaf. Yet he continued to interact with the world and to create, spending the next thirty-five years in a world emptied of sound but bursting with images of pageantry, cruelty, and pathos.
In this brilliant, idiosyncratic book ? a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation ? Julia Blackburn vividly imagines the artist’s world during this time. She recreates the artist’s friendships and love affairs and breathes life into the subjects of his paintings: an ethereally lovely duchess; the spoiled grotesques of the Bourbon court; the atrocities of the Napoleonic wars. Old Man Goya is a rare work of empathy and imagination, a stunning portrait of the mind and life of a great artist.
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。
In this brilliant, idiosyncratic book ? a kaleidoscope of biography, memoir, history, and meditation ? Julia Blackburn
vividly imagines the artist’s world during this time. She recreates the artist’s friendships and love affairs and breathes life into the subjects of his paintings: an ethereally lovely duchess; the spoiled grotesques of the Bourbon court; the atrocities of the Napoleonic wars. Old Man Goya is a rare work of empathy and imagination, a stunning portrait of the mind and life of a great artist.--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。
From the Back Cover
“Extraordinary . . . Throughout, the writer’s evocations of Goya’s work are not just intensely visual but virtually audible . . . Blackburn writes to startling effect.” ?The New York Times
“[Blackburn’s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work.” ?The Economist
“[Blackburn’s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized.” ?The Boston Globe
“[A] singular, empathetic homage….Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes…is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives.” ?The Observer (London)
“Blackburn’s prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter.” ?Literary Review
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。
“[Blackburn’s] real talent is in conjuring up lives . . . You have the uncanny sensation that you have met Goya, felt his honest horny hands, watched him work.” ?The Economist
“[Blackburn’s] rare imagination and profound intelligence . . . carry her into the mind and the work of Francisco de Goya . . . Each image, exquisite in its plainness, draws us first into the landscape, then into the past, a process Blackburn repeats until we are mesmerized.” ?The Boston Globe
“[A] singular, empathetic homage….Blackburn's attempt to see with Goya's eyes…is most successful and moving. . . .She writes like a painter of still lives.” ?The Observer (London)
“Blackburn’s prose is elegant and precise, illuminated by intelligence, curiosity, and a refined visual sense . . . [She] beautifully conveys the changed reality of the newly deaf painter.” ?Literary Review
--このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。
著者について
Julia Blackburn is the author of three books of nonfiction, Charles Waterton, The Emperor’s Last Island, and Daisy Bates in the Desert, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in England. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。
is the author of three books of nonfiction, Charles Waterton, The Emperor’s Last Island, and Daisy Bates in the Desert, and of two novels, The Book of Color and The Leper’s Companions, both of which were shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She lives in England. --このテキストは、 ペーパーバック 版に関連付けられています。