Author: Robert Pogue Harrison<\/p>\n
Publication Info: Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008<\/p>\n
“Humans have long turned to gardens\u2014both real and imaginary\u2014for sanctuary from the frenzy and tumult that surrounds them. Those gardens may be as far away from everyday reality as Gilgamesh\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019an; Plato\u2019s Academy and Epicurus\u2019s Garden School; Zen rock and Islamic carpet gardens; Boccaccio, Rihaku, Capek, Cao Xueqin, Italo Calvino, Ariosto, Michel Tournier, and Hannah Arendt\u2014all 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.”<\/p>\n
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