The Poetics of Landscape
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7146/nja.v34i69.160655Keywords:
Environment, Landscape, Relationship, Wallace StevensAbstract
Landscape is not a location or an area waiting to be discovered and identified. It is rather discerned and formed by selecting and favoring an area of the earth’s surface, by recognizing it and considering it notable. A landscape is an area of the natural world in relation to an observer.
References
1 Reviewing the recent literature on landscape, it seems that most commentators assume the conventional meaning of landscape as a scenic area of the environment. Few make this assumption explicit, although it is sometimes elaborated into a complex theoretical concept. Most generally, landscape is understood as an area of “inland natural scenery,” The Oxford English Dictionary (Clarendon Press, 1933) vol. VI, 53-54. The OED devotes two columns to its varied uses.
2 “Landscape,” Oxford English Dictionary, Volume VI (1933), 53-54.
3 Dirk Michael Heinrich, “Landscape as a Forthcoming Paradigm,” in Philosophy of Landscape: Think, Walk, Act, eds. Adriana Verissimo Serrão and Moirika Reker (Ediçoes Húmus, 2022), 64.
4 Isis Brook, “Aesthetic Appreciation of Landscape,” in The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies, 2nd edition, eds. Peter Howard et al. (Routledge, 2019), 39-50.
5 Mateusz Salwa, “Landscapes as Gardens. Aesthetics and Ethics of the Environment” and Moirika Reker, “Bridging City and Landscape” in Philosophy of Landscape: Think, Walk, Act, eds. Adriana Verissimo Serrão and Moirika Reker (Ediçoes Húmus 2022), 289-304.
6 Heinrich, “Landscape as a Forthcoming Paradigm,” 60-65 and Augustin Berque, “Landscape and the Unsustainable Urban Realm,” in Philosophy of Landscape: Think, Walk, Act, eds. Adriana Verissimo Serrão and Moirika Reker (Ediçoes Húmus 2022), 102 ff.
7 Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens (Alfred A. Knopf, 1990), 76. Originally published in Stevens’ first book of poem, Harmonium (1923). I acknowledge and thank Riva Berleant for suggesting this poem.
8 Despite recognizing that this contradicts the principal thesis of his study of French painting in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the art historian Michael Fried recognizes the importance of Denis Diderot’s serious use of the fiction of physically entering a painting. That this fictional entrance is peculiar to an enthusiastic and enraptured appreciator can be contradicted by the intense participation of an experienced and openminded appreciator of landscape paintings of, for example, the Dutch Golden Age and other work. Cf. Michael Fried, Absorption and Theatricality. Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot (University of California Press, 1980), 92-105, 108-109 118-132, 147-150, 216, 224-225, 226-227.
9 I thank Michael Alpert for this reference. 10 “What I know is stories of the Tang dynasty painter WU Daozi (吴道子; also Wu Tao-tsz’, Wu Tao-Tsu, or Go Doshi), who had the divine power of merging painting and reality by entering his own painted landscape. There are also tales of Daoist entering the caves in miniature landscapes like penjing. I unfortunately don’t know the exact story you are looking for. The closest seems to be from the writing of Walter Benjamin.” Here, Benjamin writes in German: “Sie stammt aus China und erzählt von einem alten
Maler, der den Freunden sein neuestes Bild zu sehen gab. Ein Park war darauf dargestellt, ein schmaler Weg am Wasser und durch einen Baumschlag hin, der lief vor einer kleinen Türe aus, die hinten in ein Häuschen Einlaß bot. Wie sich die Freunde aber nach dem Maler umsahen, war der fort und in dem Bild. Da wandelte er auf dem schmalen Weg zur Tür, stand vor ihr still, kehrte sich um, lächelte und verschwand in ihrem Spalt. Walter Benjamin’s”. Berliner Kindheit um Neunzehnhundert (1938) in Gesammelte Schriften volume 4, 262–263. [Trans. It comes from China and tells the story of an old painter who gave his latest painting to his friends to see. It depicted a park, a narrow path by the water, through the trees, extending in front of a small door, leading to a small house in the back. But by the time the friends looked around for the painter, he was already gone, and in the picture. Then he walked down the narrow path to the door, stood motionless before it, turned around, smiled, and disappeared into its opening.] Personal communication from the art historian Prof. Xin Conan-Wu, 5/15/24.
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