The idealization, creation and perversion of the landscape

Abstract

Already in the mind of the paleolithic hunter it is possible to see the existence of a primitive idea of landscape and an innate creative will with regard to it. Going back to the beginning, the history of civilization can follow the traces of the progressive intensification of the dialogue between man and landscape, up to the most recent times and the irreversible break between man and nature. And yet, beyond the physical changes at first appreciated and then suffered by the landscape at the hands of man, there exists a necessary relationship between nature and the individual which resides in the contingency of the tangible world and which has to do with the ideal dimension of myth and imagination. From the beginning in fact the landscape has been even the means of our contact with the immaterial dimension of existence. From this point of view it is possible to see the cult of the garden, just as the artistic landscape as well as the literary one, as expressions of the intellectual urgency to embrace that which is fleeing from a realistic view so as to keep it in our imagination and collective conscience.