Chinese
Gardens: Raising the Spirits
Garden design is a matter
of spatial strategy. Strategies of spatial arrangement, the disposition of
matter, is key to the design of the garden. Matter disposed: but to what end?
Classical
Chinese Gardens are so constructed (it is often noted) as to look like Nature,
but ¡®Nature improved¡¯, ¡®Nature tamed¡¯. A culture pretending to the Nature;
borrowing, abrogating, incorporating Nature¡¯s claim to universality and
eternity - to being a-historical (which no being can be). As if Nature was not
already historical on two counts: its process of evolution (what we call
science) and the evolution or history of its concept; so already part of the
debates in philosophy on the relative influences of Nature and Culture, and the
very historicity of these debates in turn. Without this historical
self-consciousness we repeat the errors (or fashions) of the past, believing
them to be eternal verities, last words (or first principles, foundations,
axioms, grounds¡). So like all universals, concepts, cultures, all pretend to
be Nature (in the sense of pretending eternity) but actually all are still just
historically-bound, short-lived Culture - really only present in the present,
our, my (your) eternal present (or imagination). For, if we are to be honest
about it, our experience needs others to confirm its reality; otherwise put,
empirical truth is always shared, inter-personal - personal experience (the
place we live out our lives) is not¡ until we agree upon it with others. Which
is where science begins, with inter-subjectivity, shared experience; this is
where testable ¡®reality¡¯ really begins. Not our own truth, our own experience -
which is contingent. And there¡¯s the rub. Our own experience is nevertheless
where we are, radically, permanently, always and unavoidably - are - our starting point and finishing
point. And so imagined as a kind of permanence (and in our imagining we are
right, for we are, ¡®in permanence¡¯ situated in our experience, ¡®always now¡¯,
¡®always here¡¯). This sense of the personal present extrapolated, universalised, writ large, gives eternity: a parallel
¡®world¡¯ always present but invisible (unlimited, unhistorical, untouchable), to
parallel our sense of living in a kind of Eternal Present (limited to our
individual existence). Yet the permanence of this shadow or imagined ¡®eternity¡¯,
the ¡®eternal realm¡¯ of the heavens, home to gods and universals, the place of
the nature of Nature is actually the nature of our human nature (we need to
imagine such a non-place). Culture is our everyday temporal experience; what we
make and do (and inherit from the past). Nature¡¯s eternity and vice versa (the
eternity of nature) is also a cultural creation (witness the range from Nature
to Heaven to Universals to Axioms) yet one we appear to need: whence the
repeated move to deny cultural historicity or contingency and affirm, or claim
natural eternity, the eternity owing to what is natural¡ the rhetoric of eternity.
And it is the
rhetoric of eternity which for centuries has motivated the aesthetics of the
Chinese garden¡
The
disposition of matter (the placement of stone, the expanses of water, and ¡®the
space above water¡¯, the opening and closing of space, the movement of air - and
the passages and places which permit the stasis and movement of ourselves); but
to what end? The disposition of the rhetoric of eternity. Incarnate in matter,
in space, in place. In the sense of place.
But we are missing a
step¡ first space, brute matter and cold extension, must become place. The
disposition of matter is the means, the end is the sense of place.
A
sense of place¡ by means of making sacred¡ Raising the spirits, the spirits of
the place, genius loci, but no
longer, found, in Nature, rather¡ constructed¡ such that they, the spirits, are
many, as are the places, the rooms, the populated spaces, in Nature, in this
tamed nature we have constructed, such that they too are many - and all are
special¡ and all offer the combination of the living and the dead, of plants,
greenery, trees and shrubs¡ and stone¡ like the presence of any sign -
physically inert, but as a symbol full of significance.
¡®Objectively¡¯,
raising the spirits (calling up the dead, or those who dwell... elsewhere).
Calling up the spirits of the past, connoting myth, ancestors, nature, gods,
immortals; all incarnated in stone, focused in stone, the stone shapes that
point back¡ way, way back and beyond¡ A kind of stone worship - shared by East
and West alike, Indo-European cultures and Eastern cultures (but not always
Middle-eastern cultures, where object right does not prevail and often gives birth
to iconoclastic beliefs). All the sources of our religious belief, ancestor
worship and Nature worship, come together in this¡ this cultivation, this
practice of a mental attitude - also a ¡®practice of the self¡¯ (Foucault).
The classical Chinese
Garden is a prosopopoeia in
landscape, a material trope which simultaneously, in calling up from cultural
memory the past, embodies a spirit in the present; our present, our spirit,
ourselves.
Subjectively,
to raise our spirts, our mood, which is also our current mental embodiment, our
identity, raising our level (raising-up as calling-up and lifting-up) morally,
aesthetically, spiritually, culturally¡ Raising our level of civilization;
culture ¡®on the up¡¯, ¡®high culture¡¯¡ like poetry, an exercise in formalized
language to uplift the reader, (see the Western ¡®courtly love tradition¡¯ for
the selfsame rhetoric, part of the ¡®civilising
process¡¯). A raising applied to space to provoke culture¡ The human animal
(¡®human nature¡¯) raising itself up¡. Lifting itself toward an ideal. Into
culture. An art culture which was once also an art of living¡ A shrine to the
culture of the possessor.
This
¡®third¡¯ or mediate term, ¡®middle voice¡¯ or unity of subject and object, or set
which includes subject and objective positions, is our culture and its quality;
our quality of life. So again, the classical Chinese Garden is a shrine to
culture and a still living part of the ¡®civilising
process¡¯ (Norbert Elias).
What difference then
between the senses of the sacred called up in the space of a real shrine and
that of a dwelling, or more precisely its garden space. What difference between
a temple and garden? In the temple space, the cultural and spiritual centre is inside the building; the outside space prepares
one for this, the entry, a kind of ritual passage. With garden space, on the
other hand, while often integrated into halls, pavilions, walkways and other
interiors, these latter exist as places from which to look out at and
experience the views of garden space proper. (¡®Halfway¡¯ places, distinct from
living spaces; covered but open: or open to the sky, but walled, wooden decked
or paved ¨C ¡®rooms in nature¡¯). So with gardens, it is the exterior which is the
spiritual centre; or rather, we should say, centres ¨C for, as argued above, all the varied outside
garden spaces are designed to carry a sacred charge. So with the garden space,
it is the outside that is read, is felt, to be sacred: special in the sense
that each space, each section, behind its wall, is so constructed as to be
found remarkable. The inside, as normal living space, does not compete with
beauties of ¡®nature tamed¡¯, with its sculptural lift (but which contains a
relatively low degree of eye-raising¡¯ -or hypsosis-
rather the spirit is ¡®raised¡¯ by ¡®the space above water¡¯ and enticed by the
many ¡®tunnel views¡¯ or vanishing points that surround a pond, or pool or lake,
or descend from a pavilion on a mock mountain). ¡®Mock nature¡¯ is more
symbolically powerful than culture as culture (the culture indoors¡). Unless it
is that of the tomb or the temple¡ or of the shrine¡ (and we might remember
that many gardens once held plots, as dwellings once held corners; shrines, in
effect, where the remains of the dead where both maintained and venerated¡).
A quiet space put
aside¡
The temple is the
place for mortals to make obsequies to the gods, present in effigy or in
spirit; the place to offer sacrifices and make requests to the heavens. In the
garden we are in Heaven; the gods (present also in Nature and in the eternity
promised by the presence of stone) are ourselves¡
*
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2018
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2018