Landscape and Memory

by Simon Schama

Book Overview

A Time Magazine Best Books of the Year. In Landscape and Memory, award-winning author Simon Schama ranges over continents and centuries to reveal the psychic claims that human beings have made on... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679402551
• ISBN13: 9780679402558
• Release Date: April 1995
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 652 Pages
• Weight: 2.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.9" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Needs editing

Reading this for research on the connection between landscape and identity - the editor failed horribly here. Lots of pretty sentences that do not add anything to the writer's thesis. This book would be more powerful if it were half as long.

Excellent historically-informed philosophy from a great mind

Surprisingly, the other reviewers on this site seem to have missed the point of the book. The point is that our perceptions of nature are not merely historically informed, but historically constituted. The irrespressable Lithuanian Bison was the formative metaphor for the Lithuanian pagan cultural ideal of freedom. Ultimately, it's a cultural case for the preservation of wilderness because that wilderness is part of who we are in the deepest sense. Agree or disagree with Schama's thesis, but you should try to comprehend the book before you review it. Personally, I think it's brilliant.

Visions of Arcadia.....

Simon Schama's book, LANDSCAPE AND MEMORY is a work of philosopy, mythology, history, art history, and a personal reflection of his life as a Jew. He says he has written a history, and "like all histories, this is less a recipe for action than an invitation to reflection." LANDSCAPE is his most autobiographical book to date. It is not a detailed history of a particular place and time (like PATRIOTS AND LIBERATORS), but rather a synthetic work discussing nothing less than the meaning of life. To support his thesis that aesthetic and religious expression and nature have always been and remain interconnected, Schama weaves together a variety of elements from many Western historical periods and places. Although on one one level his book could be viewed as a survey of Western art it is not. His premise is that our cultural legacy is the veneration of nature, that we do not inhabit a nature versus cultural world. Our culture is formed from our experience and our memory of our natural world. God is in the details and the impression of the Creator is impressed on the face of her creation. LANDSCAPE has four main sections: Wood; Water; Rock; and Wood, Water, Rock. He begins with a backward journey to Eastern Europe, where his Jewish ancestors lived long ago. He searches for the family roots, and is reminded by a colleague, "Jews have legs, they don't have roots." Schama describes the great forest of Poland, oddly named Bialowieza--the realm of the Lithuanian Bison. Over the centuries, the forest has provided sustenance and sheltered many. During WWII, it became the hunting ground of the Nazis. His travels take him to Buchenwald the forest of beeches, once worshiped humans and now linked with the horrible deeds of men. Later, with his family, he stands in awe at the base of the giant redwoods--trees the Americans venerate and that the great natualist John Muir urged Teddy Roosevelt to protect for future generations. Schama discusses the various myths associated with the forest--many of them tied to the German and Celtic people. His stories include the 'Green Man' linked during the Middle Ages to Robin in England, and the sacrificed Lord whose flesh was nailed to a tree. He ends the section with a discussion of the great work of Sir James Frazier, the old stouthearted conservative Scot and adherent of rational thought who in his wildest dreams never realized what he unleashed in his efforts to prove the uselessness of nature myths in his book THE GOLDEN BOUGH.The second section of Schama's book covers water, wide rivers, flowing streams, and discusses the culture of the Nile with it's legends of Osiris and Isis. He tells the reader the word for palm and immortality are identical in the old Egyptian language. The palm is the tree of life whose waters flow in the form of oil and other liquids. He tells of Cleopatra and her lovers, Caesar and Mark Antony, and Napoleon's infatuation with all things Egyptian. He ends this section with a sad reflection of the d

Deserves a place on every serious reader's bookshelf

We need more books like Landscape & Memory. This rich stew of history, nature writing, art iconography and philosophy can be heavy reading, but the rewards are staggering. The reviewer from Western Massachusetts has elegantly depicted the experience of reading the book. As a writer, Schama was made for the hypertext age; at times you have to take on faith that the thread he's following will lead somewhere interesting--and it always does, at least in this book.As you might expect, where the writing is complex, so are the ideas. At the heart of the book is the notion that cultures create landscapes--in art, literature, photographs, movies, and even in the real world from time to time--as receptacles for cultural memory and identity. In this country, we see this impulse in action all the time, particularly in people who live east of the Mississippi concerning the landscapes WEST of the Mississippi. Consider the debate over whether to open an Alaskan wildlife refuge for oil exploration. There may be good scientific reasons not to allow this invasion to occur, but the notion that we are preserving something "pristine" or "untouched" is hokum--very deep-seated hokum, rooted in the age-old concept of the American wilderness as a thing apart. This mythic wilderness landscape is part of our shared identity as Americans, and we go searching for it by the millions every year in places like the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone. Yet we are more than willing to construct our own artificial landscapes when the "natural" ones we have do not suit our needs; Mt. Rushmore is a fine example, one that Schama deals with in length. This dichotomy is repeated again and again in Western art, and Western culture in general, and it is this that interests Schama the most.For the most part, Schama concentrates on landscape painting (European art of the late Middle Ages and early Modern Era is one of his speciaties), and by the time the book is done, you get the sense that you've been through a high level course on the subtleties of landscape art. As I said, this book can be tough to get through, but great books have their way of pulling you right back in, and this one is no exception.In sum: highly, highly recommended for anyone with an interest in art (history or theory), cultural anthropology, mythology, environmental/ecological issues, or really anyone who wants to immerse herself in a long, well-written, meandering book and just ride the currents.

Landscape and Memory

Very well arranged study centering around the relation (both mythic and literal) of man to natural environment. With references, illustrations, and information exceeding most anything available, this book belongs permenently on the shelf and truly lives up to assessment as one of ten best of year.

The relationship of humankind to the vast landscape.

In Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama embarks on an epic journey across countries, through mountains and forests, and over time to create a panoramic exploration of the impact landscape has made on culture and in turn how the culture has formed and manipulated the land. Painting, sculpture, printmaking, architecture, rural and urban planning are merely a few of the means by which society has interpreted the world around them, often to conform to its own needs and desires. Schama does not see this as negative, for it is the "cultural habits of humanity" that "have always made room for the sacredness of nature." Schama does not treat the landscape as isolated and individual expressions, but as part of a historical and transcontinental continuum. The spirituality and nationality imbued in the land and rivers transcend time and space to embody a powerfully universal mysticism. Schama's distinctive meandering writing style gives the reader the impression that he or she is in fact taking a journey through woodland trails or down winding rivers. He combines the narrative elements of storytelling with a historical accuracy and specificity in order to describe a vivid and imaginable past. The forests of Lithuania, the elaborite Fountain of the Four Rivers of Italian sculptor Bernini, the mystic landscape paintings of Casper David Friedrich, and Mount Rushmore are just a small sampling of the rich variety of subjects Schama discusses in his authoritative yet intuitive work. Schama begins and ends the book with the words of Henry David Thoreau, thus creating a cyclical feeling quite similar to the turning of the seasons or the movement of one river into another. He ultimately shows that there truely is a primordial connection between the land and the animal human, a connection which can be illustrated in the aesthetic creations of civilization. We become quite aware that are artistic manifestations are rooted in our past and the land which defines and sustains a universal society with a collective memory. This memory, as shown in Schama's memorarble book, interprets the land in myriad ways, but the powerful mysticism of our past transcends boundaries of time and space to appear in paint, stone, paper, and the land itself. I shall end by stating that Landscape and Memory is a cerebral and highly detailed historical work, which is dense, but rich and enjoyable.