- Read this excerpt from Men and Gardens (1959) by Nan Fairbrother on the gardens of Versailles (late 1600s) with quotes from a Victorian art critic, Walter Pater (1839-1894):
- "Most of us nowadays have an unquestioned idea of a garden as a place
for growing flowers. But it is a humble conception, and we must get rid
of it before we go to Versailles or we shall certainly be disappointed.
Versailles is not a garden in this sense, but rather a work of art which
uses plants as its medium, as a painter uses the appearance of objects,
and a poet the words of human speech. Like most other mediums of art,
it is impure: gardens can be used for growing flowers in, as words are
used to state facts and painting to illustrate views. But none of these
functions is art. Of all the mediums of artistic expression, only music
is pure in this sense that it has no other meaning, and all art, says [Walter]
Pater, “constantly aspires towards the condition of music. For while in
all other kinds of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the
form, and the understanding can always make this distinction, yet it is
the constant effort of art to obliterate it.” So that it is as perverse
to go to Versailles to look at the plants as to use Cezanne’s
landscapes as guide-book illustrations to Provence, or Shelley’s “Ode”
as a scientific statement of the habits of the skylark. We must think of
Versailles as music. The great central vista is the main theme, an
untroubled progress to the horizon, simple, noble, and mysterious. Then
there are variations, developments, lesser themes, smooth passages of
water, gay effects of flowers, fanciful interludes in the bosquets [formal, planned, woods]. But
all is music, calm and confident, with no doubtful effects or random
charms, no chance felicities which may or may not succeed. We share the
intellectual tranquility of perfection, a conviction of the inevitably
right, which sways our spirits to peace, as Duns Scotus swayed Hopkins.
But I am incurably English. I do not like Versailles except to think about at a distance. I do not particularly enjoy the sensation of being what Corneille calls saoul de gloire [drunken glory]; for me the peace too easily becomes boredom. I believe that Le Notre [designer of the Versailles gardens] is the greatest of gardeners, but it is a judgement outside my personal liking.
“The basis of all artistic genius” (it is Pater again) “lies in the power of conceiving humanity in a new and striking way, of putting a happy world of its own creation in place of the meaner world of our common days.” Most modern artists seem to ignore the happy, but certainly Versailles puts a world of its own creation in place of our meaner one. But how does it create this other world? Its finished order may seem inevitable, but even an imitation of the Grand Manner is difficult for those not born to it, as we can see by considering the fussy and pretentious triteness of most public parks and formal gardens laid out in England since the early nineteenth century."
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HW: Read at least 100 more lines of Tennyson. Be prepared to discuss what you read tomorrow. Begin J14.
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| Tennyson (1809-1892) |
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