Jean-Paul Kauffmann
The Struggle with the Angel
Delacroix, Jacob, and the God of Good and Evil
Translated by Patricia Clancy

How do we rationalize the horrors and indignities of life with a belief in a righteous God? Dostoevsky's Ivan Karamazov teeters on the brink of madness when he cannot reconcile the existence of God alongside brutalities such as torture and murder. So then how do we go about justifying God's existence despite atrocities such as genocide, war, and nuclear holocausts? Jean-Paul Kauffmann's latest book courageously explores this paradox, this conflict between a compassionate God and a callous God, searching for enlightenment in the mind of an artist and his culminating masterpiece.

His muse, Delacroix's striking "spiritual testimony," Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, is housed in Paris's Saint-Sulpice Church. Completed late in the artist's life over an intense eight-year period, it depicts one of the most enigmatic episodes in Genesis — the struggle between a mortal human and a divinity. Kauffman immerses himself in a careful and impassioned examination of the work, trying to connect with Delacroix's philosophical and artistic process — and, in turn, to discover what Truths we might ultimately glean from it.

Much like a detective, Kauffman follows a trail of clues, investigating the painting and the church that houses it. His search for answers takes him from the towers of Saint-Sulpice to the rural woods of Argonne and Senart where Delacroix sketched. Armed with the book of Genesis, Delacroix's journals, and the insatiable curiosity of a determined journalist, Kauffmann takes on the daunting task of contemplating God — for both the artist and himself. Far more profound and revealing than an art history text, The Struggle with the Angel is a critical, philosophical, historical and spiritual journey into humanity's struggle with God.

Jean-Paul Kauffmann, award-winning author of The Black Room at Longwood (National Book Critics Circle finalist, Los Angeles Times Best Book of 1999, and New York Times Notable Book of 1999), was a foreign correspondent when he was imprisoned in Beirut (May 1985 to May 1988). He lives in Paris.