CIVILIZATION AND THE LANDSCAPE — CROWE 539 



inflected, the columns modified to suit the foibles of the human eye; 

 the Parthenon curves imperceptibly to acknowledge the land forma- 

 tion of its hill. Surely the Greeks knew that geometry and organic 

 form are two facets of a single truth. 



In direct lineage from Greece, down through the Mediterranean 

 tradition in Italy, in France, and in parts of Spain, w^e can trace 

 the clarity of the Greek and Latin brain revealed in the ordered lines 

 of logical thought superimposed upon the organic landscape. But 

 other races have approached the landscape in a different way. They 

 have been more conscious of themselves as a part of nature, less 

 ready to stand aloof and impose upon it their thought patterns. The 

 Celt and the Oriental, for instance, both show a strong identification 

 of themselves with nature. Compare the stone walls of Celtic Britain, 

 twisting with the ground form, making a part of the organic pattern, 

 with the stone terraces of Spain, exact and hard, ruled lines which 

 mark the extent of man's domination and run straight and uninflected 

 into the wild hillside. Or contrast the idealized natural landscape 

 of an Oriental garden with the clear, masterful logic of Le Notre's 

 Vaux-Le-Vicomte. 



A leaning toward the Celtic and Oriental attitude of identification 

 with nature is, I believe, likely to be more fruitful at our present 

 stage of development than the more detached classical approach. 



The impact of human activity on the landscape goes through two 

 stages. In the first stage men's work is placed directly on an un- 

 touched background. The background, because it is not interfered 

 with, maintains its natural ecological balance. In the second stage, 

 men adjust the backgroimd to accept and complement their work. 

 Wlien the classical tradition reaches the second stage it tends either 

 to overreach itself, as for example in the grandiose pattern of ave- 

 nues which the 17th-century landowners imposed on the land- 

 scape, or, more happily, it makes a concession to the natural approach 

 as in the planting of bosche which merge the formal terraces of the 

 Italian Renaissance gardens into the flanking hillsides. The natural 

 tradition, on the other hand, can extend itself indefinitely, welding, 

 adjusting, but never destroying or contradicting the surrounding 

 landscape. 



A superb example of this technique is seen in the estates of 18th- 

 century England. In these it is hard to define the frontier between 

 agriculture, adjusted to man's delight, and pure pleasure grounds 

 shaped as idyllic landscape. This gives to the classical element, 

 confined to the building and perhaps its immediate surroundings, a 

 setting large enough to let it register as a clear statement of human 

 thought seen against a background of natural growth. 



