Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition [Hardcover]

Robert Pogue Harrison (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawing from sources religious, literary and scholarly, Italian literature professor Harrison examines the human quest for happiness through centuries of gardens and gardeners, both real and fictional: "For millennia and throughout world cultures, our predecessors conceived of human happiness in its perfected state as a garden existence." Gardens have provided education, creative expression and sanctuary throughout time, yet are "by nature impermanent creations that only rarely leave behind evidence of their existence." Epicurus was among those who taught by means of the garden, cultivating patience in his followers: "a serene acceptance of both what is given and what is withheld by life in the present." Other subjects include Homer, Camus, Dante and Boccaccio; what gardens in the Bible and the Qur'an say about attitudes toward life and afterlife; and the difficulty of perception in the modern world ("We live in an age... that makes it increasingly difficult to see what is right in front of us"). A fitting follow-up to The Dominion of the Dead, his thoughtful look at mortality, Harrison's latest will give gardeners and nature-lovers a fascinating historical tour and a deeper appreciation for the craft: "Neither consumption nor productivity fulfills. Only caretaking does."
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From Booklist

In contemplating gardens, Harrison references works of literature to provide much perceptiveness about the human predicament. Gardening and actual gardens appear but fleetingly to limn larger ideas Harrison discerns in literary creations’ representations of gardens, including the biblical Eden. A superbly refined writer, Harrison regards care as a supreme attribute of the human relationship to gardens, in two senses. First, gardens are sanctuaries from worry and anxiety, and second, gardens are arenas of cultivation. Caretaking, whether literally of plants or figuratively of personal relationships and of the natural world, draws Harrison into epic poetry, Boccaccio’s The Decameron, and Andrew Marvell’s The Garden. The concept of the university as a pedagogical garden (Harrison is a professor) inspires the author’s discussion of Plato’s original grove of academe, while the garden as a refuge from modernism informs his consideration of certain twentieth-century poems and novels. Growth and decay, life and death, the purposes of human striving––such fundamental ruminations prompted by gardens receive a profoundly humanistic appreciation from Harrison, also the author of the comparable Forests (1992). --Gilbert Taylor

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 262 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (May 15, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226317897
• ISBN-13: 978-0226317892
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #560,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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  Books > Home & Garden > Gardening & Horticulture > Essays

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A garden of delights, November 22, 2008

By	George Allan (Mechanicsburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (Hardcover)

Harrison is insightful -- and inciteful -- in his exploration of the various kinds of gardens that are important to our sense of who we are, our self-understanding as members of Western civilization. He is erudite in the wealth of literary and philosophical materials from which he draws, but he writes clearly so what he has to say is very accessible to a reader without specialized knowledge about those materials. He has profound things to say about everyday gardens, about gardening in the literal sense of creating a place where flowers or other plants grow. He develops sometimes startling ideas about the meaning of gardens such as Eden's (thanks to Eve, we escaped its dehumanizing confines), Louis XIV's (Versailles imposes a deadening abstract human construct on the living vitality of nature), and Paradise (to be avoided). The garden of Epicurus is his recommended kind of garden: where we can learn patience, hope, and gratitude - the virtues that will save us from the frenetic denaturing extremes of our contemporary way of living. This is a wonderful book, as were Harrison's earlier books on the forest and on death.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gardens as a lens into the human spirit, January 31, 2009

By	K. G. Karl (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (Hardcover)

Another fine meditation and critical study by Robert Pogue Harrison of man's relationship to nature, this time through the lens of "the garden". From the Garden of Eden, to Japanese zen gardens, to manicured formal gardens, to tiny spaces in homeless encampments, Mr. Harrison explores mankind's need for and relationship to gardens -- their importance as quiet spaces in which we can relate to nature on a human scale, as retreats for quieting and refilling the spirit, as sources of literary and romantic inspiration, as windows into biological process and truth. His writing is at once scholarly, poetic, thought provoking and insightful, and is best read slowly, both to savor Pogue's beautiful language and to allow his ideas to take root and flower in your mind.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Professor Harrison again provides insight, December 6, 2008

By	Kenneth R. Gundle (Boston, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition (Hardcover)

As in "Dominion of the Dead," Professor Harrison has taken a topic (this time Gardens and our relations to them) and interwoven scholarship with stirring judgment. I am no gardener; this book can resonate with all who take up work and action to cultivate anyone or anything. The chapter on Care was particularly poignant. For example, on page 27, Harrison writes: "Care is accustomed to act, to take the initiative, to stake its claims, yet powerlessness and even helplessness are as intrinsic to the lived experience of care as the latter's irrepressible impulse to act, enable, nurse, and promote."

If you have read and were moved by "Dominion of the Dead," or if you are one of the many listeners of his insightful radio show/podcast called "Entitled Opinions," or if you are one of us seeking for bold thinkers willing to powerfully interpret our current human condition, then sit down somewhere comfortable and open this important book.