Signs and sites of friendship in Delille's Les Jardins

摘要

The publication of Jacques Delille's landscape poem Les Jardins on l'art d'embellir les paysages in 1782 was a major literary event. The author was already famous for his translation of Virgil's The Georgics, an accomplishment which had won him -- on its own -- an election to the Academic Francaise. Les Jardins attracted further attention because it engaged one of the most popular debates of its time. In this new work, Delille discussed the relative merits and faults of the so-called 'French' and 'English' gardens; yet contrary to many of his contemporaries, he did not reject Andre Le Notre's rigidly structured designs in favour of William Kent's allegedly more natural ones. Rather, he mapped a social hierarchy onto his formal precepts: Delille argued that the monumental, symmetrical forms that were appropriate for a king were ill-suited to a modest property owner. Having thus solved this crucial politico-aesthetic problem, Delille was free to concentrate on the characteristics of an ideal picturesque garden.