The Cosmos as Garden

Diplomarbeit von Jürgen Hirschmann

Introduction:

The People's Republic of China (PRC), in ideological classification also called ‘Red-China”, is the largest country in East Asia and the most populous in the world with over 1.3 billion people, approximately a fifth of the world's population. Since the economic liberalization began after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, the investment and export-led economy of China has grown 70 times bigger and is among the fastest growing in the world.

Although China cultural as well as political is opening up since about thirty years, the Chinese manner of cerebration, except of few exemptions, has still keep refused most people in the western world.

I also had to learn this the hard way at the beginning of my stay in Shanghai, although I tried to prepare for my travel. Primarily this has to do with the ancient Chinese ideology self. The Chinese, who are calling their country ‘The Empire of the Middle”, were on principle in the past rarely attempted to leave their nation because the remaining world for them was not really livable. Outside the boundaries, there lived the so called barbarians, who in ancient times mostly were embodied by brutal Mongolian tribes, who martially tried to infiltrate China and from them the Chinese had to protect. So, they created their own world, a world in the world, enclosed by the thousands of meters long Great Wall (Chang Cheng), inside of they felt confident and could develop further. This retirement in an enclosed space and last but not least the retirement in oneself paved finally the way for their private gardens, in which they could undisturbed find an access to a better ‘world”.

This essay will deal with these little enclosed garden worlds, these micro-cosmos in a macro-cosmos. This work consists of a searching for their history and the holistically ‘religious” backgrounds, which first made enable these small but coevally ‘infinite” universes. It get to the bottom of the correlations between time and space, establish relationships between narrow and open, bright and dark, and last but not least inside and outside, which all are parts of an all-containing, super-ordinate ‘Great”. It makes close connections to landscape paintings and the gardens self, which as major motif threads through the whole text, will find out that they are close correlated to the ‘Great” and grapple with the centre of the ‘Whole”, with the ‘Zero-Perspective” or the ‘Vapidness”, in which the human as important part at least can dive in to touch the sky.

Of course also the framework of a Chinese private garden, the several elements, are considered, without them no garden could exist. The role and the important task of their walls will be bespoken, the several constructions of their buildings and last but not least the close to the human correlated plants.

All this aspects will be picked up again at a walkabout through three famous Chinese gardens in Suzhou (a for Private Gardens well-known town about 70 kilometers afar from Shanghai), where the mindfully reader finally will notice, that size does not necessarily count in architectural garden space.

Inhaltsverzeichnis:

Text Sample:

Chapter 2.3.2, Poetry:

Differently than in the remaining world, where the painting developed before the script, in China the script formed the basis of the painting and henceforth they both developed together. The verb ‘to paint’ (Hua) accompanied to the expression for ‘writing’ (Xie) only step by step or even would have been increasingly replaced by this term. So it can happen that especially the old painters say that they ‘write’ rocks, trees or landscapes because the Chinese characters are already a picture in itself, and the scholar crushes the same indian ink and leads the same paintbrush, whether in the writing or in the painting.

The basis of both arts is the same segment of a line which rises in the use and finals in a single, unrepeatable arrival. The first line (Yi, one), that separates the sky from the earth, contains all further in themselves and is thus the ‘preceding basis’ of all writings and paintings.

‘In my speech of the art of painting, I spoke simultaneously also of the art of writing’.

Thus writing and painting flow into each other and ‘complement’ themselves as the apparent contrasts of the Dao. One could say that the painting is a ‘dumb’ poem and the poetry a ‘speaking’ (sounding) painting and both have their origin in the innermost feelings of the artist. Painting as well as poetry gives the invisible feelings ‘form’ while they alienable it, whether now in words or in figures because their process is of the same kind, therefore they are able to take turns. Hence that they often recommended to the Chinese painters, that they should read poems in order to attain internal collection and serenity to limn wonderful paintings.

‘In my leisure hours I often read poems of the Qin- and the Tang-time, old or modern, and can find beautiful verses in them that completely express what the human being carries out in his interior and let fully protrude the scenes that he has before eyes. I can use the emotions (xie yi) of these poems to get the emotions for my painting's.

But if I am not correctly quiet and sit in front of a bright window, at a clean table or I do not light a joss stick and make all worries evaporate, that sense which is being inherent in these wonderful verses is not revealed and their hidden feelings as their noble intentions cannot be understood anymore. How should it also would be easy to achieve the emotion that defines the liveliness of the painting’?

But also the approach of both was the same one. In the painting it was attempted to create non-objects which faced in the poetry the quasi non-framing. Of course it was final heavily possible to create a non-object, if ones at least did not want to have a white canvas, which nevertheless some painters succeeded when they had completely reached their innermost middle, but what also finally have been created the term of the ‘dullness’. Thus the painting have already given a certain vague form, but finally it dips this form again into the un-differentiateness, and in the same manner the poem ‘speaks’, but it avoids to express too clearly. Moreover the poems are also contained by emptiness and are pervaded by the same rhythm as well as the paintings.

Now, if one considers a landscape painting, one mostly can find poems that were written to the upper edge into the sky. This poem is not a merely superimposed annotation, rather it lives from the painting, so as the painting lives from the poem because what the poetry is not able to express completely with words anymore, exceeds the art of the writing and changes into painting and if the art of the painting encounters its limits, shapes are becoming words.

‘When I enjoy a poem Wang Weis, I can find a painting in that, and when I consider a painting from him, I can find a poem’.

But the poems have an even deeper meaning because they bring the live dimension of the time in the picture. Through the poems rhythm and contents they are able to extend the space. Through the reverberation which causes it, the painting still extends further. A time in the lived and constantly renewed rhythm, one that can hold the space open and makes the human being possible in this manner to presence among sky and earth also if they are not figurative shown.

Layout of Private gardens:

‘As a young man I was known as a painter. I was interested by the nature in seeking out the unusual; since I derived most pleasure from the brushes of Guan Tong and Jing Hao, I paid homage to their style in all my work’.

This passage comes from Ji Cheng, a famous painter and landscape gardener from the Ming Dynasty. The Chinese landscape gardening is closely associated with painting and poetry. They penetrate and complement each other. As well as the ‘great’ picture from what the painters always swarmed, also the garden is to be regarded as a manifestation of the Dao. It is thus not only a pure landscape copy, it is, like the landscape painting self, a microcosm with its aid the artist could get a connection to the nature macrocosm. As well as the rhythmic change of Yin and Yang, the cosmic breath, pass through the universe, it also penetrate the garden and guarantees thus for a continuous change of the events still before the climax is reached.

As well as a landscape picture, also the garden consists of basic elements from which mountain and water represent the most important ones. Without shan and shui (mountain and water), whose constantly changes the nature as it appears, no Chinese garden could exist. But also plants play a not subordinate role. They were not only just plants rather they were springs for hopes, feelings and virtues of the garden owners.

Moreover of course also buildings were set, which one saw them as a contradictory aspect to the natural ‘elements’. Water, mountains and plants that continuously change form the ‘soft’, while buildings are symbolizing the static and the ‘hard’ thing. We will also see later that even these two take turns cyclically, if one is moving through the garden.

The buildings furthermore symbolize with their sharp delimitations and their symmetry also the Confucian aspect of the garden which was opposed to the natural forms of the Daoism. And all these elements arise through the rhythmic breath that pervades them cyclically, such as a symphony, which sounds in the tact of the ever changing universe.

Spatial concept:

The essential basic idea of the spatial concept is to enlarge the space beyond its borders. A reason for that is certainly that most private gardens were directly constructed among the city, where the space was bounded.

However, a surely more essentially reason was, that the constructors wanted to provide the feeling of the infinity of the Dao. At least, they wanted to achieve the empty condition of the infinite hub, which gave them the possibility to associate with the universe and to become that ‘immortal’. They wanted to dive into the infinite void of the picturesque universe because the garden is not anything other than a landscape picture, which finally lets the observer become a timeless one in an infinite space.

And to suggest the infinite space of the Dao, the constructors used some ‘tricks’. On the one hand they divided the limited space into further smaller subspaces. In the first moment one would like to think, that this technique causes a rather restricting space feeling, but the skilfully distribution and visual connection caused exactly the opposite.

The visual connection could be described very simple as ‘borrow the landscape’, which, however, also odours, noises and even shadows could be borrowed from. A further measure to achieve an immense space was never to show the whole landscape space at the same time. In a Chinese private garden one can never overlook the whole terrain from one point, up to some intended exceptions. But all these topics will be expatiated even later.

In order to let the stream of the life flow in the garden, first the terrain must be observed exact that one is able to pay attention to the natural conditions.

‘Following the existing lie of the land may mean any of this skills: designing in accordance with the rise and fall of the natural contours, to accentuate their intrinsic form; or to looping branches from trees that block the view and using rocks to direct the flow of a spring, so that each borrows value from the other. Where a pavilion would be appropriate, ones should build a pavilion, and where a gazebo should lies, one build a gazebo. It does not matter if the paths are hidden away; in fact they should be laid out so that they twist and turn with the land like the cosmic breath; this is what is meant by artistry through suitability’.

As we can recognize in this passage of the Ye Yuan or Craft of Gardens, the art to build a garden lays to adapt the objects to the factors of the terrain and if possible, still to refine. Every terrain is different as well as the character of each garden constructor. Only stimulation can be given, the rest was due to the inspiration of the artist.

Nevertheless there was a certain fundamental procedure. First the buildings had to be placed, especially the main hall with its companions, water and mountain. Thus one received mostly the main landscape space around which one could group the other spaces in further consequence. The buildings were joined at the end with enclosed or open walkways. They all formed the static structure of the imaginary painting, the ‘skeleton’ of the garden.