Customer Reviews

Landscape and Memory

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Simon Schama's book, LANDSCAPE AND MEMORY is a work of philosopy, mythology, history, art history, and a personal reflection of his life as a Jew. He says he has written a history, and "like all histories, this is less a recipe for action than an invitation to reflection." LANDSCAPE is his most autobiographical book to date. It is not a detailed history of a particular place and time (like PATRIOTS AND LIBERATORS), but rather a synthetic work discussing nothing less than the meaning of life.

To support his thesis that aesthetic and religious expression and nature have always been and remain interconnected, Schama weaves together a variety of elements from many Western historical periods and places. Although on one one level his book could be viewed as a survey of Western art it is not. His premise is that our cultural legacy is the veneration of nature, that we do not inhabit a nature versus cultural world. Our culture is formed from our experience and our memory of our natural world. God is in the details and the impression of the Creator is impressed on the face of her creation.

LANDSCAPE has four main sections: Wood; Water; Rock; and Wood, Water, Rock. He begins with a backward journey to Eastern Europe, where his Jewish ancestors lived long ago. He searches for the family roots, and is reminded by a colleague, "Jews have legs, they don't have roots." Schama describes the great forest of Poland, oddly named Bialowieza--the realm of the Lithuanian Bison. Over the centuries, the forest has provided sustenance and sheltered many. During WWII, it became the hunting ground of the Nazis. His travels take him to Buchenwald the forest of beeches, once worshiped humans and now linked with the horrible deeds of men. Later, with his family, he stands in awe at the base of the giant redwoods--trees the Americans venerate and that the great natualist John Muir urged Teddy Roosevelt to protect for future generations.

Schama discusses the various myths associated with the forest--many of them tied to the German and Celtic people. His stories include the 'Green Man' linked during the Middle Ages to Robin in England, and the sacrificed Lord whose flesh was nailed to a tree. He ends the section with a discussion of the great work of Sir James Frazier, the old stouthearted conservative Scot and adherent of rational thought who in his wildest dreams never realized what he unleashed in his efforts to prove the uselessness of nature myths in his book THE GOLDEN BOUGH.

The second section of Schama's book covers water, wide rivers, flowing streams, and discusses the culture of the Nile with it's legends of Osiris and Isis. He tells the reader the word for palm and immortality are identical in the old Egyptian language. The palm is the tree of life whose waters flow in the form of oil and other liquids. He tells of Cleopatra and her lovers, Caesar and Mark Antony, and Napoleon's infatuation with all things Egyptian. He ends this section with a sad reflection of the destruction of the various temples of antiquity wrought by the building of the Aswan Dam and the flooding of the Nile River valley.

In the third section, we follow the exploits of those who attempted to conquer Mont Blanc and the highest wildest peaks of Europe. We see Bryon and Shelley on Lac Leman searching for various mythological sites and lamenting the drowning of prisoners at Chillon. Oh what is it about the mountain that sparks memory and drives humans to scale it, to embrace it, or in the case of a few deface it (Mount Rushmore, Stone Mountain in Georgia where a KKK rider was planned).

In section four, Schama wraps up his book with a discussion of Acadia--which Acadia? The Europeans alternated beteen terror and awe in their search for Acadia. "Et in Acadia Ego" -- what does it mean. There is the Acadia of Eden where two trees grew and the land of milk and honey where lion and lamb co-exist, and there's that other Acadia, the wilderness that some still want to protect.

In LANDSCAPE, Schama has described the multiple forms of artistic expression that depict the relationship between nature and culture. He covers poems, prose, stories, painting, sculpture from Rodin to Rushmore, gardening from Eden to the dead spaces people call front lawns. He describes the various attempts to shape the landscape from Karnak to Capability Brown to Olmstead in Central Park. His stories range from the Italian clergyman who designed "Holy Land America" just off the Connecticut freeway, to the "wild forests" at Hampstead Heath in London, Fontainbleu just outside Paris, and Waldon Pond just off the commuter rail line in Connecticut. This is a wonderful, wise, and sad book--read it.

In Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama embarks on an epic journey across countries, through mountains and forests, and over time to create a panoramic exploration of the impact landscape has made on culture and in turn how the culture has formed and manipulated the land. Painting, sculpture, printmaking, architecture, rural and urban planning are merely a few of the means by which society has interpreted the world around them, often to conform to its own needs and desires. Schama does not see this as negative, for it is the "cultural habits of humanity" that "have always made room for the sacredness of nature." Schama does not treat the landscape as isolated and individual expressions, but as part of a historical and transcontinental continuum. The spirituality and nationality imbued in the land and rivers transcend time and space to embody a powerfully universal mysticism. Schama's distinctive meandering writing style gives the reader the impression that he or she is in fact taking a journey through woodland trails or down winding rivers. He combines the narrative elements of storytelling with a historical accuracy and specificity in order to describe a vivid and imaginable past. The forests of Lithuania, the elaborite Fountain of the Four Rivers of Italian sculptor Bernini, the mystic landscape paintings of Casper David Friedrich, and Mount Rushmore are just a small sampling of the rich variety of subjects Schama discusses in his authoritative yet intuitive work. Schama begins and ends the book with the words of Henry David Thoreau, thus creating a cyclical feeling quite similar to the turning of the seasons or the movement of one river into another. He ultimately shows that there truely is a primordial connection between the land and the animal human, a connection which can be illustrated in the aesthetic creations of civilization. We become quite aware that are artistic manifestations are rooted in our past and the land which defines and sustains a universal society with a collective memory. This memory, as shown in Schama's memorarble book, interprets the land in myriad ways, but the powerful mysticism of our past transcends boundaries of time and space to appear in paint, stone, paper, and the land itself. I shall end by stating that Landscape and Memory is a cerebral and highly detailed historical work, which is dense, but rich and enjoyable.

THis is an odd and remarkable book, a tour of history that mixes art criticism, economic analysis, and even gastronomy. It moves between so many subjects - from a German artist parodying Hitler's siegheil to empty fields, Hasidim logging in the woods of Poland dressed in their customary suits, to the Baroque fountains in French parks - that it is impossible to summarise his message, except to say that we Westerners have a changing relationship with forest, rock, and water.

I was dazzled by Schama's erudition and mastery of language, as he moved from making connections between Egyptian mythology and the fountains of Rome, or the myth of Robin Hood and rustic Englsh eccentrics of the 19C. This is a book that enhances one's experience, particularly if you live in EUrope and every day walk by the things that he describes. For example, I read it while we were living on the edge of Fontainebleau forest, in France, and inside the back cover of the book, I found a map of the forest that included our village of 600! To my astonishment, I then went on to read that Fontainebleau was apparently the first forest to have marked paths for hikers who visit from industrial cities, a method pioneered by a somewhat loopy bonapartist who had retired to the area, and whom the local authorities watched with suspicion in mid 19C. For anyone who loves hiking or sitting outside, you will find sections like that that speak to you, that are illuminating in a quirky personal way.

However, while these passages are wonderful and fun, for me they did not add up to much of anything beyond anecdotes. I enjoyed the facts, as a kind of entertainment that passed by as I read on, but they failed to coalesce into any deeper insights. In that sense, the book came up short for me, though many of the tidbits were indeed delicious. Rather than traditional history, this book is a huge and sprawling essay, like on of those old-style New Yorker articles that went on and on and on, until the point seems lost in detail.

Surprisingly, the other reviewers on this site seem to have missed the point of the book. The point is that our perceptions of nature are not merely historically informed, but historically constituted. The irrespressable Lithuanian Bison was the formative metaphor for the Lithuanian pagan cultural ideal of freedom. Ultimately, it's a cultural case for the preservation of wilderness because that wilderness is part of who we are in the deepest sense. Agree or disagree with Schama's thesis, but you should try to comprehend the book before you review it. Personally, I think it's brilliant.

We need more books like Landscape & Memory. This rich stew of history, nature writing, art iconography and philosophy can be heavy reading, but the rewards are staggering. The reviewer from Western Massachusetts has elegantly depicted the experience of reading the book. As a writer, Schama was made for the hypertext age; at times you have to take on faith that the thread he's following will lead somewhere interesting--and it always does, at least in this book.

As you might expect, where the writing is complex, so are the ideas. At the heart of the book is the notion that cultures create landscapes--in art, literature, photographs, movies, and even in the real world from time to time--as receptacles for cultural memory and identity. In this country, we see this impulse in action all the time, particularly in people who live east of the Mississippi concerning the landscapes WEST of the Mississippi. Consider the debate over whether to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge for oil exploration. There may be good scientific reasons not to allow this invasion to occur, but the notion that we are preserving something "pristine" or "untouched" is hokum--very deep-seated hokum, rooted in the age-old concept of the American wilderness as a thing apart. This mythic wilderness landscape is part of our shared identity as Americans, and we go searching for it by the millions every year in places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. Yet we are more than willing to construct our own artificial landscapes when the "natural" ones we have do not suit our needs; Mt. Rushmore is a fine example, one that Schama deals with in length. This dichotomy is repeated again and again in Western art, and Western culture in general, and it is this that interests Schama the most.

For the most part, Schama concentrates on landscape painting (European art of the late Middle Ages and early Modern Era is one of his speciaties), and by the time the book is done, you get the sense that you've been through a high level course on the subtleties of landscape art. As I said, this book can be tough to get through, but great books have their way of pulling you right back in, and this one is no exception.

In sum: highly, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in art (history or theory), cultural anthropology, mythology, environmental/ecological issues, or really anyone who wants to immerse herself in a long, well-written, meandering book and just ride the currents.

This is an interesting book, which contains the hallmarks of the Schama style: lavish illustration, copious use of physical detail, an apparently novelistic style of sustained anecdotage. What this book is missing is a thesis, beyond the rather vague idea that nature is part of our culture and that this should leave one to be slightly more optimistic about our ecological problems. At the end Schama quotes Thoreau "It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves." Consider the first section of the book, Wood. Schama tells us that as a child he loved Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill. He wanders around rural Poland and remembers Isaac Deutscher's bitter comment "Trees have roots, Jews have legs." He enjoys the taste of Bison, discusses 18th century debates over forestry management in Poland and the exact species of Bison. We learn of Polish nationalists writing in the 19th century about the glories of wooded liberty (as well as a Polish plan to from a Polish-Jewish-Ottoman brigade to fight the Russians during the Crimean war). We learn that Goring liked to have a pot of diamonds near him at all times so he could enjoy the thrill of running his hands through them, and we also learn how the mad Russian Emperor Paul was killed with a malachite paperweight.

As you can see Schama has a tendency to wander, and while the reading can sometimes be interesting, trying to learn anything particularly useful or reading it straight through is not going to be very instructive. So we go on about Tacitus's presentation of the Ancient Germans and then on to how German nationalists exploited this myth to sinister purposes. In the meantime we have interesting accounts of the painters Albrecht Altdorfer, Caspar David Friedrich and the post-Nazi Anselm Kiefer. As the book goes on it appears to be an only vaguely connected series of essays, one on Robin Hood and the English myth of free forests, another on Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers. There is a not particularly relevant sub-section of Walter Raleigh and a more relevant one on the plumbing of Versailes. Then its on to Mountains, the making of Mount Rushmore and the development of the European love affair with climbing them. The final section, "Arcadia Redeisgned," deals with attempts to recreate a better designed Arcadia. And so the reader looks at the painting of Poussin, the plans of Rene de Giradin and Claude Francois Denecourt, the London Zoo and Central Park, and finally discusses Thoreau. But most readers I suspect will conclude that this book is less than the sum of its parts. The emphasis on art and the anecdotes around great individuals is not really a substitute for a more systematic ecological and historical anaylsis. One thinks as an alternative, of Peter McPhee's useful article in the most recent French Historical Studies about the French Revolutionary peasantry and how they dealt with deforestation. The sense of memory as somehow mitigating the aura of ecological crisis is rather vague, and what we have is nothing more than a nice coffee table book. One gets the sense of being a tourist around European history, being informed by an eloquent, articulate, amusing but ultimately superficial travel guide.

You can keep coming back to this brilliant, reflective book. It's a real work of art in itself, not simply history. How does nature become a cultural phenomenon? There are so many angles and Schama cleverly crafts them around the themes of wood, water and rock. From Classical times through to the Romantics we discover a powerful world of artists lives entangled in the conflicts of their times, while expressing timeless truths.

Simon Schama writes in a clear, concise and interesting way. As a purely fiction reader I never thought I could plough through factual stuff - in fact I'd tried and failed many times - then i read my first Schama - about the Slave trade - Rough Crossings - and now I'm working my way through his works. If a philistine like me can read, learn and enjoy from them then they must be good.

We need more books like Landscape & Memory. This rich stew of history, nature writing, art iconography and philosophy can be heavy reading, but the rewards are staggering. The reviewer from Western Massachusetts has elegantly depicted the experience of reading the book. As a writer, Schama was made for the hypertext age; at times you have to take on faith that the thread he's following will lead somewhere interesting--and it always does, at least in this book.

As you might expect, where the writing is complex, so are the ideas. At the heart of the book is the notion that cultures create landscapes--in art, literature, photographs, movies, and even in the real world from time to time--as receptacles for cultural memory and identity. In this country, we see this impulse in action all the time, particularly in people who live east of the Mississippi concerning the landscapes WEST of the Mississippi. Consider the debate over whether to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge for oil exploration. There may be good scientific reasons not to allow this invasion to occur, but the notion that we are preserving something "pristine" or "untouched" is hokum--very deep-seated hokum, rooted in the age-old concept of the American wilderness as a thing apart. This mythic wilderness landscape is part of our shared identity as Americans, and we go searching for it by the millions every year in places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. Yet we are more than willing to construct our own landscapes when the ones we have do not suit our needs; Mt. Rushmore is a fine example, one that Schama deals with in length. This dichotomy is repeated again and again in Western art, and Western culture in general, and it is this that interests Schama the most.

For the most part, Schama concentrates on landscape painting (European art of the late Middle Ages and early Modern Era is one of his speciaties), and by the time the book is done, you get the sense that you've been through a high level course on the subtleties of landscape art. As I said, this book can be tough to get through, but great books have their way of pulling you right back in, and this one is no exception.

In sum: highly, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in art (history or theory), cultural anthropology, mythology, environmental/ecological issues, or really anyone who wants to immerse herself in a long, well-written, meandering book and just ride the currents.

Very well arranged study centering around the relation (both mythic and literal) of man to natural environment. With references, illustrations, and information exceeding most anything available, this book belongs permenently on the shelf and truly lives up to assessment as one of ten best of year.