Description

From the Preface:

The concept of a pictorial biography of Emanuel Swedenborg was originated in the mid-1960s when Virginia Branston acquired for the Swedenborg Foundation Dr. Marguerite Block’s collection of photographs and original art prints of Swedenborgiana. At that time, the late Tomas H. Spires was executive secretary of the foundation, and Virginia Branston was manager. While they were looking over the pictures, Mrs. Branston asked, ‘Now, what shall we do with this?’ To which Mr. Spires replied, ‘Why not publish a pictorial biography of Swedenborg?’

Soon after, Virginia Branston began to assemble other pictures from Europe and American sources and, in order to develop a text, conducted a series of interviews with Dr. Block, author of New Church in the New World…

Three centuries after his birth in 1688, the philosophical and religious ideas of Emanuel Swedenborg–ideas that resonate in the works of such widely read writers as Blake, Emerson, Goethe, Balzac, Dostoevsky, Baudelaire, and Yeats–remain as compelling as ever. One of the supreme intellects of all time, Swedenborg left an extraordinary, encyclopedic legacy: from groundbreaking achievements in science, mathematics, and technology to seminal metaphysical writings that affirm the importance of the concept of the soul and the mind-body connection.

Drawing on a rich visual archive, the biography provides a vivid, immediate, profusely illustrated portrait of Swedenborg’s life and times. Among the prominent contributors to the collection are Jorge Luis Borges, Czeslaw Milosz, Kathleen Raine, Michael Talbot, and Wilson Van Dusen.

With subjects ranging from Jungian psychology to medicine, from the Hudson River School of landscape art to the mystical insights of Dostoevsky and Yeats, from the visionary planning of the city of Chicago to the relevance of Swedenborg’s theological concepts for the New Age, these essays testify not only to Swedenborg’s genius but also to the vitality of his continuing vision.