Hand to Hand
Listening to the Work of Art
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A leading philosopher and theologian, Jean-Louis Chrétien uses poetry and painting to explore a theme that runs through all of his work: how human life is shaped by the experience of call and response. For Chrétien, we live by responding to the call of experience with words, gestures, expressions, and silence.
In luminous meditations on Rembrandt, Delacroix, Manet, Verlaine, Keats, and other artists, Chrétien shows how “talking hands of painters” and the “secretly lucid” voices of poets confront the finitude of the human body. Hand to Hand is a deeply cultured renewal of art in all its provocative, transforming, spiritual presence.
[Chretien] has written a luminous meditation on various works of art—among them paintings by Rembrandt, Delacroix and Manet-in which he advocates for a 'solitary act of listening' on the part of the viewer.