1 Dispensing with the pretense of objectivity, Sand writes as an embodied subject, here analyzing and there rhapsodizing. In this way the text stands out from more methodical contemporary accounts of Parisian landscape architecture, including the authoritative tome Les Promenades de Paris (1868–73) by Adolphe Alphand, the city’s chief engineer of parks and gardens. “Rêverie à Paris” begins by stating what it is not: a systematic survey of public parks and gardens constructed, modified, or preserved amid the redevelopment then ongoing under the command of “Baron” Georges-Eugène Haussmann “a study of nature acclimatized to our world of rubble and dust.” The author begs forgiveness of her editor Louis Ulbach (and, by extension, of the reader) for submitting a mere “retrospective impression.” But her freewheeling, confessional style allows her to convey lush sensory experiences, critical judgment, and people-watching pleasure. Toggling deliberately between empirical and poetic modes, “Rêverie à Paris” uses theatrical metaphors to argue that one can simultaneously respect the integrity of landscape as given, and enjoy artfully artificial renderings of “nature.” An essay in the guise of a daydream, ‘Rêverie à Paris’ grapples with serious questions about the purposes and possibilities of public space. Everyone, she argues, deserves access not merely to green space, but to landscapes evocative of wonder and delight. Sand’s essay is a love letter to public space and a defense of decorative landscape embellishments. the nascent field of landscape architecture. But here, in a short piece that she tossed off for Paris-Guide - a 2,340-page anthology of essays by 125 of France’s leading writers, published on the occasion of the 1867 Exposition universelle - she serves up a critical reflection on contemporary urban design and garden art, a.k.a. The novelist often wove vivid landscape imagery into her stories and travelogues. Īn essay in the guise of a daydream, George Sand’s “Rêverie à Paris” grapples with serious questions about the purposes and possibilities of public space. ![]() ![]() Photographed by Charles Marville, 1858–60. Grotto and cascade at the mare aux biches (doe’s pond), part of an extensive water system installed by Adolphe Alphand, chief engineer of parks and gardens, in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris. In 1867, as the first modern urban park system was being built in Paris, George Sand argued that its extravagant artifice was a vital public good.
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