The spirit of luxury : Shenstone, Delille and the garden theory

Abstract

"One cannot talk about the eighteenth-century garden without mentioning the locomotive abilities of man’s body; the story of the Leasowes or Stowe belongs to the order of the foot. William Shenstone in one paragraph moves from aesthetics to politics, from the immovable eye to the mobile body. Criticizing the geometric patterns of the formal horticultural designs, the owner of the Leasowes estate writes: “To stand still and survey such avenues, may afford some slender satisfaction, through the change derived from perspective; but to move on continually and find no change of scene in the least attendant on our change of place, must give actual pain to a person of taste. For such an one to be condemned to pass along the famous vista from Moscow to Petersburg, or that other from Agra to Lahor in India, must be as disagreeable a sentence, as to be condemned to labour at the gallies. 1 As we shall see, Jacques Delille will think of spirit also in the categories of the foot and meandering path." (fragment tekstu)