ΚΕΕΛΓ- Διαδικτυακή διάλεξη της Beth Harper
“The Old Man in the Garden, or cultivating a repertoire for life in ancient Roman and Chinese horticultural poetics”
Το Κέντρον Ερεύνης της Ελληνικής και Λατινικής Γραμματείας της Ακαδημίας Αθηνών διοργανώνει τη διαδικτυακή διάλεξη της Beth Harper (The University of Hong Kong) με τίτλο “The Old Man in the Garden, or cultivating a repertoire for life in ancient Roman and Chinese horticultural poetics”. Η διάλεξη θα πραγματοποιηθεί την Πέμπτη 9 Ιουλίου στις 15.00.
Περίληψη
In Roman literature, the hortus constellates contradictory facets of the ideal Roman vir who must be wealthy and successful enough to own horti, but Stoic and humble (humilis) enough to know in what true ownership of the soil consists. Against the sturdy self-sufficiency of the farmer of old (agricola) and the decadent excess of land-owning imperial elites playing at gardening, we might ask whether there is a third space for a common garden-world, an approach to life that privileges careful tending, a year-round commitment, and a true heredium not only for one’s self, one’s heirs and future generations, but perhaps even for the earth itself. This paper will ask whether this kind of thinking about the place of the garden holds for classical Chinese conceptions. If the garden is the place where nothing happens, it is also where we learn the place of the person defined against the environment. Here I put into dialogue Chinese writers such as Tao Yuanming, Bai Juyi, Su Shi, Sima Guang and Shao Yong who thought deeply about the place of the garden in literati life, with Roman writers such as Cato, Varro, Cicero, Seneca, Virgil, Horace and Horace who explore various attunements between human and natural worlds. This paper will explore a shared nostalgia for the natural wisdom and spiritual freedom of traditional practices, looking again at the figure of the old man in the garden to recover an ontic exuberance amidst the exigencies of empire, both Chinese and Roman.
Ηλ. Διεύθυνση επικοινωνίας για τον σύνδεσμο ZOOM mkonaris@academyofathens.gr