Man in the Landscape: a Historic View of the Esthetics of Nature

342 Pages·2002·17.183 MB·English

by  Foreman, Dave;Shepard, Paul

MAN IN THE
LANDSCAPE
A Historic View of the
Esthetics of Nature
PAUL S H E P A RD
With a new foreword by Dave Foreman
The University of Georgia Press
Athens & London
ISBN for this digital edition: 978-0-8203-2714-3
Published in 2002 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
© 1967, 1991 by Paul Shepard
Foreword © 2002 by Dave Foreman
All rights reserved
Printed and bound by Thomson-Shore
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for
permanence and durability of the Committee on
Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the
Council on Library Resources.
Printed in the United States of America
02 03 04 05 06 P 5 4 3 21
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shepard, Paul, 1925-
Man in the landscape : a historic view of the
esthetics of nature / Paul Shepard ;
with a new foreword by Dave Foreman.
p. cm.
Originally published: 2nd ed. College Station :
Texas A&M University Press, c!991, in series:
Environmental history series.
Includes bibliographic references and index.
ISBN 0-8203-2440-X (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Nature (Aesthetics) I. Title.
BH301.N3 S45 2002
1111.85—dc21 2002069554
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Excerpt from "Castles and Distances" in
Ceremony and Other Poems, copyright 1950
and renewed 1978 by Richard Wilbur,
reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
The original hardcover version of this text
was published in 1967 by Knopf; a second edition was
published in 1991 by Texas A&M University Press.
TO
Clara Grigsby Shepard
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Contents
FOREWORD
by Dave Foreman
ix
PREFACE
xxi
PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION
xxix
INTRODUCTION
xxxi
CHAPTER ONE
THE EYE, in which we are supposing the human
vision of the world to be pedestrian ripening of a long
interval of monkeying around with a view that was
fishy to begin with 3
CHAPTER TWO
A SENSE OF PLACE, a collation of events and pro-
cesses which together ensure uniqueness and difference
in an environment always in danger of slacking off
into insipidity 28
CHAPTER THREE
THE IMAGE OF THE GARDEN, which argues that
men's best communication to one another about the
nature of the world is made in garden art, and that
the message is Mama 65
CHAPTER FOUR
THE ITINERANT EYE, -wherein travel is con-
sidered to be responsible for the idea of scenery—
an abstraction necessary before some men could de-
stroy nature or others could find it beautiful 119
CHAPTER FIVE
THE VIRGIN DREAM, or requiem for the now
unfashionable idea that nature loves us, and -will
love us best when it comes to us undefiled 157
CHAPTER SIX
FELLOW CREATURES, an argument for killing
them for their own good and ours 190
CHAPTER SEVEN
VARIETIES OF NATURE HATING, a chroni-
cle of the times, an account of some of the ideas
which, when pooled in one society, inspire sufficient
motive for doing to our environment what we are
doing 214
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE AMERICAN WEST, a case history holding
that there is a value in the American wilderness
discovered by some gentlemen who thought it
looked like something else 238
SOURCES AND REFERENCES
275
INDEX
follows page 290
Illustrations
follow page 170
1. Giovanni Bellini: St. Francis in the Desert
2. Francisco de Goya: Fantastic Vision
3. Claude Lor rain: Landscape with the Marriage of
Isaac and Rebekah ("The Mill")
4. Asher B. Durand: White Mountain Scenery,
Franconia Notch
5. Illustration from Roman de la Rose
6. El Greco: View of Toledo
7. Delagrive: A Plan of Versailles
8. Giovanni di Paolo: Madonna of Humility
9. Salvator Rosa: Tobias and the Angel
(Tobia e VAngelo)
10. Vasily Kandinsky: Landscape with Rain
(Landschaft mit Regen)
11. Albert Bierstadt: The Hetch Hetchy Valley,
California
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Foreword
ONE NIGHT IN AFRICA, we came upon a leopard just after
she had killed an impala. We watched as she carried her prey
up twenty-five feet to the crook of a tree. Her muzzle was
pink from warm blood. She was the most beautiful creature I
had ever seen; I was in the most wonderful moment of my life.
Paul Shepard would have understood. The leopard was not a
figment of my imagination; ahh, but the leopard fueled my
thoughts. And does to this day.
For thirty years, I have been in the thick of the conserva-
tion movement. Through those decades, I have been inspired
by the genius of Paul Shepard, who is to my mind the most
important thinker of our time. I stumbled onto him at
the beginning of my conservation life in 1971 by reading his
anthology with Daniel McKinley The Subversive Science: Essays
toward an Ecology of Man. Paul Shepard's introduction caught
my fancy: "The rejection of animality is a rejection of nature
as a whole."1 Aha, thought I, another who understands we
are animals! Over the next decade, as his books—The Tender
Carnivore and the Sacred Game, Thinking Animals, and Nature and
Madness—came out, I gobbled them up like sizzling elk steaks.
Paul Shepard's lifelong quest was to answer the thor-
oughly practical and urgent question, "Why do men persist in
destroying their habitat?"2 He went deeper than anyone before
in seeking an answer: "An uncanny something seems to block
the corrective will, not simply private cupidity or political
inertia."3 His answer was that agriculture, pastoralism, and