Humans have long turned to gardens--both real and imaginary--for
sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those
gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh's
garden of the gods or as near as our own backyard, but in their
very conception and the marks they bear of human care and
cultivation, gardens stand as restorative, nourishing, necessary
havens.
With "Gardens," Robert Pogue Harrison graces readers with a
thoughtful, wide-ranging examination of the many ways gardens evoke
the human condition. Moving from from the gardens of ancient
philosophers to the gardens of homeless people in contemporary New
York, he shows how, again and again, the garden has served as a
check against the destruction and losses of history. The ancients,
explains Harrison, viewed gardens as both a model and a location
for the laborious self-cultivation and self-improvement that are
essential to serenity and enlightenment, an association that has
continued throughout the ages. The Bible and Qur'an; Plato's
Academy and Epicurus's Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet
gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino,
Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt--all come into play as
this work explores the ways in which the concept and reality of the
garden has informed human thinking about mortality, order, and
power.
Alive with the echoes and arguments of Western thought, "Gardens"
is a fitting continuation of the intellectual journeys of
Harrison's earlier classics, "Forests" and "The Dominion of the
Dead," Voltaire famously urged us to cultivate our gardens; with
this compelling volume, Robert Pogue Harrison reminds us of the
nature of thatresponsibility--and its enduring importance to
humanity. "I find myself completely besotted by a new book titled
"Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition," by Robert Pogue
Harrison. The author . . . is one of the very best cultural critics
at work today. He is a man of deep learning, immense generosity of
spirit, passionate curiosity and manifold rhetorical gifts."--Julia
Keller, "Chicago"" Tribune""" "This book is about gardens as a
metaphor for the human condition. . . . Harrison draws freely and
with brilliance from 5,000 years of Western literature and
criticism, including works on philosophy and garden history. . . .
He is a careful as well as an inspiring scholar."--Tom Turner,
"Times Higher Education""" "When I was a student, my Cambridge
supervisor said, in the Olympian tone characteristic of his kind,
that the only living literary critics for whom he would sell his
shirt were William Empson and G. Wilson Knight. Having spent the
subsequent 30 years in the febrile world of academic Lit. Crit. . .
. I'm not sure that I'd sell my shirt for any living critic. But if
there had to be one, it would unquestionably be Robert Pogue
Harrison, whose study "Forests: The Shadow of Civilization,"
published in 1992, has the true quality of literature, not of
criticism--it stays with you, like an amiable ghost, long after you
read it. "Though more modest in scope, this new book is similarly
destined to become a classic. It has two principal heroes: the
ancient philosopher Epicurus . . . and the wonderfully witty Czech
writer Karel Capek, apropos of whom it is remarked that, whereas
most people believe gardening to be a subset of life, 'gardeners,
including Capek, understand that life is asubset of
gardening.'"--Jonathan Bate, "The Spectator""" ""
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