A beautiful garden

Volume 9 Number 1 January 14 - February 11 2013

Zoe Nikakis reviews a new book by Damon Young about the influence gardens have had on some of the world’s best writers. Dr Young is an honorary Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Philosopher Damon Young’s latest book, Philosophy in the Garden, explores the influence of the garden on the creation and expression of their art by some of literature’s most famous writers and thinkers, from Jane Austen and Marcel Proust to George Orwell and Jean-Paul Sartre. 

It may seem to be an unusual topic to choose for a book, when writing is so definitively considered to be an indoor pursuit, but, as Dr Young writes, the garden is a “demonstration of our physical and intellectual interdependence with nature”.

The two principles of humanity and nature, he writes, invite ongoing contemplation because no final, fixed definition can be given to either. The very roots of the relationship can be traced back as far as Aristotle, who argued and debated his philosophies among the gardens outside Athens’ city walls.

“This book is not a tour of ‘great estates’ but of great minds and the gardens they loved (and sometimes loathed),” Dr Young writes. 

“It is not a work of philosophy, but a portrait of philosophical lives.”

In this book, Dr Young has succeeded in creating detailed, involving and intimate portraits of some of literature’s giants through the lens of their relationships with their gardens.

In the chapter ‘Jane Austen: The Consolations of Chawton Cottage’, Young traces the positive impact Austen’s regular walks in the garden of Chawton Cottage had on her writing, and speculates on how the lack of a garden or other green space in the house the Austen family occupied during their time living in Bath may have caused her to cease writing: indeed, Young notes, Austen did not write anything more substantial than letters during the years they lived there.

The portraits of the writers and their relationships with nature also present an interesting picture of the times, places and societies in which the writers lived, such as in the chapter focusing on Marcel Proust and his Bonsai trees, which illustrates the fad for all things Japanese in Paris and England in the early 1900s. Japonisme took in more than just plants, including the kimono, futons and a fascination among artists with Japanese woodblock prints and colouring techniques. 

In the chapter ‘Jean-Paul Sartre: Chestnuts and Nothingness’, Young looks at another way in which nature influences writers, in Sartre’s case, becoming a character in one of his most celebrated works, Nausea. The chestnut tree becomes, for the book’s central protagonist, the symbol of the sickening nature of existence, the nausea of the book’s title.

Dr Young has managed the difficult task of creating academically rigorous work while maintaining a light and engaging tone throughout the book, which is actually a highly intellectual look at the complex relationship between humanity and nature.

The way in which Dr Young engages the reader in difficult and complex material by making it accessible through careful management of tone and text is evident from the book’s first sentences: “Aristotle had a reputation as a dandy. According to ancient biographer Diogenes Laërtius, the father of scientific philosophy lisped fashionably, and was known for his schmick wardrobe and bling.”

Illustrator Dan Keating furthers this method of engaging the reader, creating charming portraits of the featured writers and images of flowers to accompany each chapter which match the writing’s tone and the overall feel of the book: one gets the sense the illustrator and writer worked closely together to achieve such a cohesive whole. 

This book is beautiful in its look and feel as well as in its words, as it takes the reader through perhaps previously unconsidered territory in regard to some of literature’s titans, and the gardens that helped them become such figures, the writers of works which have changed the world.

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