Emanuel Swedenborg: A Continuing Vision

by Robin Larsen (Editor)

Overview

This commemorative volume on Swedish scientist-turned-seer Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) is the most comprehensive source of information about Swedenborg in print. In addition to an extensive pictoral biography of Swedenborg, the volume includes fifty essays on his influence on Western culture.

Highlights include essays about Swedenborg and William Blake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and William Butler Yeats; an examination of Swedenborg's descriptions of near-death experiences; Swedenborg's influence on the development of homeopathy; and essays delving into the world Swedenborg lived in and the details of his religious thought.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780877851363
Publisher:	Swedenborg Foundation Publishers
Publication date:	11/01/1988
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	9.25(w) x 11.00(h) x 2.00(d)
Age Range:	3 Months to 18 Years

About the Author

Robin Larsen is a graphic artist, maker of assemblages and masks, small bronze figures, and giant puppets, and an art historian specializing in comparative  iconography and ritual art. Her artwork is exhibited regularly in juried and invitational shows and is included in private and institutional collections and in books and journals.

 Robin and husband Stephen Larsen have been writing, teaching, and giving workshops together in the United States and  internationally since the 1970's. Their travels have taken them throughout the U.S. and Canada, Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan,  Egypt, and South Africa. The focus of their work is on personal and comparative mythology, shamanism, relationship, dream work, and the creative imagination, which they explore through the  medium of their own male-female dialogue.

 From 1982 to 1990 Robin was engaged in establishing and accessing the Swedenborg Image Archive for the Swedenborg Foundation in New York City. Stephen served on the board of directors of the Swedenborg Foundation; both  Larsens have served on the board of the Joseph Campbell Foundation.

Editorial Reviews

This lavishly illustrated anthology of essays and poems treats the life, times, and influence of the 18th-century naturalist and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg. The editors have collected 51 recent essays by a wide assortment of noted scholars and writers, including Kathleen Raine and Czeslaw Milosz. Originally a mining engineer, Swedenborg was a polymath who became a seer and mystic, producing a large and influential body of theological writings that left lasting impressions on figures from Blake to Emerson to Frank Lloyd Wright. While the collection of essays lacks the depth and coherence of a unified treatment of Swedenborg's thought, its range gives some idea of the extensiveness of his influence on art, music, literature, architecture, psychology, and even city planning.-- T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong State Coll., Savannah, Ga.

Library Journal