Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with G
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Gardens: An Essay on the Human Condition |
Author: Robert Pogue Harrison
Published: 2008-05-15 |
List price: $24.00
Our price: $16.32
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As of: December 03rd, 2008 09:30:49 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 A garden of delights
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.
Scholarly and Deep
Brilliant and revealing. BEAR IN MIND THAT THIS IS
ABOVE ALL, A SCHOLARLY, IN-DEPTH WORK.
I'll need to read it again to let the major points sink in
(I'm no scholar).
The treatment of the Eden myth is remarkably thoughtful.
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