"The Landscape Garden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Poe Edgar Allan)

Mr. Ellison became neither musician nor poet; although no man
lived more profoundly enamored both of Music and the Muse. Under other
circumstances than those which invested him, it is not impossible that
he would have become a painter. The field of sculpture, although in
its nature rigidly poetical, was too limited in its extent and in
its consequences, to have occupied, at any time, much of his
attention. And I have now mentioned all the provinces in which even
the most liberal understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared
this sentiment capable of expatiating. I mean the most liberal
public or recognized conception of the idea involved in the phrase
"poetic sentiment." But Mr. Ellison imagined that the richest, and
altogether the most natural and most suitable province, had been
blindly neglected. No definition had spoken of the Landscape-Gardener,
as of the poet; yet my friend could not fail to perceive that the
creation of the Landscape-Garden offered to the true muse the most
magnificent of opportunities. Here was, indeed, the fairest field
for the display of invention, or imagination, in the endless combining
of forms of novel Beauty; the elements which should enter into
combination being, at all times, and by a vast superiority, the most
glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform of the tree,
and in the multicolor of the flower, he recognized the most direct and
the most energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in
the direction or concentration of this effort, or, still more
properly, in its adaption to the eyes which were to behold it upon
earth, he perceived that he should be employing the best means-
laboring to the greatest advantage- in the fulfilment of his destiny
as Poet.
"Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it upon earth."
In his explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much towards
solving what has always seemed to me an enigma. I mean the fact (which
none but the ignorant dispute,) that no such combinations of scenery
exist in Nature as the painter of genius has in his power to
produce. No such Paradises are to be found in reality as have glowed
upon the canvass of Claude. In the most enchanting of natural
landscapes, there will always be found a defect or an excess- many
excesses and defects. While the component parts may exceed,
individually, the highest skill of the artist, the arrangement of
the parts will always be susceptible of improvement. In short, no
position can be attained, from which an artistical eye, looking
steadily, will not find matter of offence, in what is technically
termed the composition of a natural landscape. And yet how
unintelligible is this! In all other matters we are justly
instructed to regard Nature as supreme. With her details we shrink
from competition. Who shall presume to imitate the colors of the
tulip, or to improve the proportions of the lily of the valley? The
criticism which says, of sculpture or of portraiture, that "Nature
is to be exalted rather than imitated," is in error. No pictorial or
sculptural combinations of points of human loveliness, do more than
approach the living and breathing human beauty as it gladdens our
daily path. Byron, who often erred, erred not in saying,