Chinese
Gardens/中国园林
Peter Nesteruk
China Nationalities Art Photography
Press (2016)
Contents Page 内容页
Prelude: How to Understand the Space of
the Garden
介绍：怎么明白了园林地方
Part One: The
Poetics of Gardens.
第一部分：园林分析与美学
1
Rhetoric & Features 修辞和方面
2 The
Anthropomorphism and Sublimity of Stone
拟人和崇高性的石头
3 Lakes
and Pools: Water 水：湖和水塘
4
Bridges 桥
5 Pavilions
亭子
6
Corridors走廊
7 Ritual
仪式
8
Contemplation I: Public and Private 思考I: 公共和私人
9
Gardens in Painting (i) : On Landscape and Grounds
园林画画儿（i）风景和三景层
10
Gardens in Painting (ii) : ‘On Landscape and
Left/Right’
园林画画儿（ii）风景左右手力
11
Waterfalls 瀑布
12 Time
and the Seasons 时间与季节
13 7
Stars Park, Guilin 七星公园 桂林
14
Confucian Temple 孔子寺庙，国子监
15
Contemplation II: Gardens of Beijing 思考II：北京的园林
16
Comparative Aesthetics/Crossing Cultures 比较美学
17 The
Eternal Present 永远的现在
Part
Two: Passing Seasons 第二部分： 过着季节
1
Forward; Death and Memory, Passing Seasons in the Chinese Garden ; 过季节； 死亡和记忆
2
Prelude.介绍
3 Winter
冬天
4 Spring
春天
5 Summer
夏天
6 Autumn
秋天
7
Other’s Gardens: Finitude and Alterity.
另外者的园林： 有限性和差别性
8 Postscript:
The Philosophical Aesthetics and Poetics of Gardens 后言：哲学，美学和分析园林
Prelude: How to
Understand Garden Space
Garden
space offers a sense of place unlike any other. At once homely and
otherworldly; partaking of the everyday yet suggesting the ideal. A special place with a particular set of meanings. In
contrast to our urban civilization, it offers Nature, greenery, pleasant paths,
the scents of flowers amid restful, even meditative, scenery; a harmonious
space, often blending water and stone, where we can relax, or the perfect
background to the good life. (Or it may be deliberately un-harmonious as in the
case of Romantic or even Baroque, European gardens where it is the wilderness
that is counterfeited). In contrast to real Nature, however, the Garden space,
of whatever kind, is safe, enclosed, with paths we are happy for our children
to tread. The age-old fear of predators is absent: the ancient dream of a
Pastoral landscape realised. We have Nature without
teeth (Nature, as such, is precisely what is excluded). Were we to suddenly
find ourselves in virgin jungle, we would not be so happy.
Gardens,
when we stop to think, are a matter of Culture, of a dream, a vision, the
creation of a heavenly place, apparently natural, but friendly to Mankind -
available here on Earth.
Chinese
garden space in particular has exercised a special spell over garden design
throughout the world. Much copied, from oriental corners in Western botanical
gardens to complete replicas in ‘stately homes’ and public parks; as important
to Western garden designers as Tang poetry to aspiring poets or shuimo (水墨) to students of
art. A ‘globalisation’, from East to West, that began
several hundred years ago. The spell of the Chinese garden is that of an
exquisitely crafted space where the marks of the master craftsman have all but
disappeared… ‘all but’? The space before us is
natural; but impossibly so. Precise, orderly, balanced: the trace of the watch
maker remains. If there are no corners or geometric angles (as predominate in
Western renaissance and ‘classical’ and Arab or Persian influenced gardens)
then there are the windings of path and stream, a careful intertwining of water
and stone, and the slow revelation of a view in the manner of celestial
movements and their orbits. Here too, in the movements of the sun and the
stars, the watchmaker is absent. What then, in short, determines the
specificity of the
For those interested in the problems of
comparison of Chinese and Western cultural artifacts, perhaps without falling
into the trap of one’s own ’way of seeing’, Chapter 16, entitled, ‘Comparative
Aesthetics’, suggests a novel way of comparing and understanding the kinds of
beauty found both East and West - as well as a quick look at a pair of key
concepts we Westerners habitually use to discuss and understand landscape and
garden space, the Beautiful and the Sublime. Suggesting that comparative study
throws light not only on the cultural practice in question, but also on the way
we think – on what is different and on what it is we may share.
序：如何理解园林空间
园林所提供的空间感与其他地方大不相同。平凡与脱俗并存，支撑着一种完美主义理念，是一处有着特定含义的地标。与都市相比，园林提供给我们自然、绿植，令人愉悦的小径，芬芳的花朵，甚至是让人冥思的风景，水流石涧，和谐而优美——可以选择在这里放松小憩，或是把它当做美好生活的完美背景。（有时也会故意建造得不那么和谐，如浪漫主义或巴洛克风格，欧洲园林中会伪造出荒草丛生的景象。）当然，同真正的自然界相比，无论是何种园林都是安全的、封闭的，可以放心的让孩子们在小径上跑跳踩踏的。圆了古老的田园风光梦，还不用担心有肉食动物虎视眈眈。园林让我们拥有了没有獠牙的大自然（自然界中的危险作为自然界中的一部分，却被其本身精确的排除在外了），假如真的在未经开发的原始丛林中惊醒，应该没人能高兴得起来吧。
停下来想一想，园林，关乎文化、关乎梦想、关乎理念，是按照臆想创造出的天堂，自然得显而易见，却更趋近于人类——令之在地球上更具可行性。所有的园林都有着伊甸园的痕迹，所有“坠落”之前的坊间神话都是与自然分不开的。就文化和自然的平衡而言，这宏大的人类文明传说体现了人类生活的真谛，蕴含在对园林的思考之中（是自然还是文化造就了我们，“先天还是后天”），这份思考可鉴于一个人的文化内涵，可见于其鉴赏能力，亦或是自己亲手设计建造一座园林的能力。文化背景通常是身份构成中非常重要的一部分，关乎人之于自己的想象和定位。因此，园林提醒着我们自己到底是什么样的人，想要过什么样的生活，是个人修养，估量自身文明程度，或者引导自身向往的要素。
中国园林空间在世界园林设计界独具魅力，到处是被模仿的影子，从西方植物园的东方角，到完完全全仿制的“豪宅”和公共园林，这种模仿对西方的园林设计师来说尤为重要，有如唐诗对胸怀抱负的诗人或水墨对艺术生那样重要。自东至西，“全球化”现象始于几百年前。中国园林的奇特魅力在于，大师在精心建造中留下了许多印迹，却又全部消失不见了……全部？精准、有序、平衡：追随着钟表匠的足迹。如果没有角落或几何角度（例如在西方占主导地位的，受文艺复兴、“经典主义”，或是阿拉伯以及波斯的影响的园林），就会有小路、小溪蜿蜒其中，小心翼翼的将水和石缠结在一起，缓缓的昭示出一种天体运动及轨道的视图。钟表匠并不在意太阳和星星的运行，那么简而言之，到底是什么决定了中国园林的特异之处呢？定位自然界中某些情感性的标志性特征，再用最清晰，最具魅力的方式重塑它们。但这将会占据本书的大部分内容，第一章紧随序言。
对关于中西方文化或艺术品比较的问题感兴趣，且没有落入自己“观看之道”的陷阱，总而言之，称之为“比较美学”，就像快速浏览两个我们西方人惯用于理解和讨论风景与园林的关键词，美丽和雄伟——指出一种新奇的方式去比较和理解东西方文化中各种不同的美。建议比较性学习不仅要考虑文化实践，还要在思考中收获——我们的区别与共享。
(翻译：李鑫)
Copyright Peter Nesteruk, 2016