Résumé :
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What do we see in our mind's eye when we talk about "nature" ? where do those images come from that haunt our minds of the forest primeval, the river of life, the sacred mountain ? are they myths, or were they once real places ? opening a radically new and original path into history, simon schama explores the scenery of our western culture, both real landscapes and landscapes of the mind that have given us our sense of homeland, the dark woods of our imagined origins. what unfolds is a series of compelling journeys through space and time : from the ancient woodland of poland, a symbol over the centuries of national endurance, through the forest birthplace of the german psyche, to the big trees of yosemite that gave a new nation its holy past... from the banks of the nile and the fountains of rome to the great flow of old father thames, carrying memories of the waterway as the blood of life itself through the world... from the cliffs of alexander's greece , where men first tested their need to measure themselves against mountains and write themselves onto their very surfaces, all way to mount rushmore. through all of history, from pre-classical antiquity to the third reich and beyond, schama uncovers the myths and memories that have stamped themselves on our most basic social instincts and institutions : territorial identity, the wild and domestic, mortality and immortality. poweful and even disturbing as some of these myths are, schama offers them as a celebration rather than a lament, a correction to the pessimism that holds that the west has treated nature as mere machinery. instead, he tells stories of "guardians of memory" foresters and mountain-scuptors, obelisk-haulers and boatmen -poets who have passed on the traditions of the western vision of nature from generation to generation.
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