Natural World and Human History: Deserted Gardens, Devastated Landscapes

Abstract

The garden that Virginia Woolf depicts in ´Time Passes´ (1927) may not be the first of its kind in the literary tradition, but undoubtedly, no such garden existed in the history of painting until that date. Humanity gone, lush vegetation reigns. Following Alice Oswald´s conception of poetry as an art of erosion, this essay delves into a landscape archaeology of ruined gardens, revealing a singular Kunstliteratur. Anchored in the confluence of natural and human history, the interpretation proposed deepens into geological cross-sections where time becomes space, and past memories, an oracle for the future.