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

I've seen more living beauty, ripe and real,
Than all the nonsense of their stone ideal.

In landscape alone is the principle of the critic true; and, having
felt its truth here, it is but the headlong spirit of generalization
which has induced him to pronounce it true throughout all the
domains of Art. Having, I say, felt its truth here. For the feeling is
no affectation or chimera. The mathematics afford no more absolute
demonstrations, than the sentiment of his Art yields to the artist. He
not only believes, but positively knows, that such and such apparently
arbitrary arrangements of matter, or form, constitute, and alone
constitute, the true Beauty. Yet his reasons have not yet been matured
into expression. It remains for a more profound analysis than the
world has yet seen, fully to investigate and express them.
Nevertheless is he confirmed in his instinctive opinions, by the
concurrence of all his compeers. Let a composition be defective, let
an emendation be wrought in its mere arrangement of form; let this
emendation be submitted to every artist in the world; by each will its
necessity be admitted. And even far more than this, in remedy of the
defective composition, each insulated member of the fraternity will
suggest the identical emendation.
I repeat that in landscape arrangements, or collocations alone, is
the physical Nature susceptible of "exaltation" and that, therefore,
her susceptibility of improvement at this one point, was a mystery
which, hitherto I had been unable to solve. It was Mr. Ellison who
first suggested the idea that what we regarded as improvement or
exaltation of the natural beauty, was really such, as respected only
the mortal or human point of view; that each alteration or disturbance
of the primitive scenery might possibly effect a blemish in the
picture, if we could suppose this picture viewed at large from some
remote point in the heavens. "It is easily understood," says Mr.
Ellison, "that what might improve a closely scrutinized detail, might,
at the same time, injure a general and more distantly- observed
effect." He spoke upon this topic with warmth: regarding not so much
its immediate or obvious importance, (which is little,) as the
character of the conclusions to which it might lead, or of the
collateral propositions which it might serve to corroborate or
sustain. There might be a class of beings, human once, but now to
humanity invisible, for whose scrutiny and for whose refined
appreciation of the beautiful, more especially than for our own, had
been set in order by God the great landscape-garden of the whole
earth.
In the course of our discussion, my young friend took occasion to
quote some passages from a writer who has been supposed to have well
treated this theme.
"There are, properly," he writes, "but two styles of
landscape-gardening, the natural and the artificial. One seeks to
recall the original beauty of the country, by adapting its means to
the surrounding scenery; cultivating trees in harmony with the hills