Landscape and Memory by Simon Schama (review)

Landscape and Memory Simon Schama New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995. Reviewed by Ja m e s W. S c o t t Western Washington University O n ly on very rare occasions does a work appear that, although strongly rooted in a particular academic discipline, transcends its bounds and exerts an appeal that impels the interest of readers out­ side the field. Landscape and Memory is just such a work. Written by a distinguished historian, this book will appeal not only to his fellow historians, but to cultural and other geographers, and to psy­ chologists, environmental scientists, and numerous other scholars. Beginning on an autobiographical note which vividly links au­ thor to subject and helps to provide overall perspective, this massive and far-ranging work is organized around the three elements of wood, water, and rock: the “forest primeval,” the “river of life,” and the “sacred mountain.” The focus throughout is on Western culture, al­ though there are frequent references to Oriental and other non-Western cultures. Part One is entitled “Wood,” and consists of four chapters that treat in sequence “In the Realm of the Lithuanian Bison,” “Deer Holzweg: The Track Through the Woods,” “The Liberties of the Greenwood,” and “The Verdant Cross.” Each chapter contains a 181 182 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 57 • 1995 multitude of insightful comments on, and explanations concerning, the evolution of four geographical regions: Poland, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. The treatment is essentially chrono­ logical, but geography and culture are given equal play. For the reader, this leads to a deeply satisfying understanding of the forces that have played a part in the creation of the past and present landscapes of these four countries. And while the author acknowledges—even to some extent analyzes—the events that have led to environmental degradation and destruction of resources and habitats, there are no judgmental assessments. In Schama’s words: Landscapes are culture before they are nature; constructs of the imagina­ tion projected on to the wood and water and rock___But it should also be acknowledged that once a certain idea of landscape, a myth or vision, establishes itself in an actual place, it has a peculiar way of muddling categories, of making metaphors more real than their referents, of becom­ ing, in fact, part of the scene, (p. 61) Part Two, titled “Water,” is considerably shorter. It consists of just two chapters: “Streams of Consciousness” and “Bloodstreams.” Herein lie masterful cogitations and brilliant analyses that move us effortlessly across time and space in contemplating the centrality of water in human affairs—not only in its practical applications, such as transportation and irrigation, but the role water has played in myth and art. Of approximately equal length is Part Three, titled “Rock.” Once again there are two chapters: “Dinocrates and the Shaman: Altitude, Beatitude, Magnitude” and “Vertical Empires, Cerebral Chasms.” In these, as everywhere else in the book, we recognize the needle-sharp insights that span both space and time, as we are moved from classical through to modem times, and from the ancient East to the modem Occident. The final section, which is titled “Wood, Water, Rock,” looks at “Arcadia Redesigned.” In this the author examines the two kinds of Arcadia, those he describes as “shaggy and smooth; dark and light; a place of bucolic leisure and a place of primitive panic” (p. 517). He goes on to argue that we need to recognize both sorts and not to SCOTT: Review of Landscape and Memory 183 conclude, as did Thoreau—and by extension a host of others—that there can be but one pastoral ideal. In Schama’s words: It seems to me that neither the frontiers between the wild and the cultivated, nor those that lie between the past and the present, are so easily fixed. Whether we scramble the slopes or ramble the woods, our Western sensibilities carry a bulging backpack of myth and recollection (p. 574). The book’s six hundred-plus pages of text are admirably comple­ mented by forty-five color plates and more than two hundred black-and-white illustrations, most of them of startling aptness. Thirtyfour pages of notes are followed by an excellent bibliographical guide...