|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Soul of the Far East by Percival Lowell: them. If the description of such dutifulness seems fanciful, the
thing itself surpasses all supposition. Hedges and shrubbery,
clipped into the most fantastic shapes, accept the suggestion of the
pruning-knife as if man's wishes were their own whims. Manikin
maples, Tom Thumb trees, a foot high and thirty years old, with all
the gnarls and knots and knuckles of their fellows of the forest,
grow in his parterres, their native vitality not a whit diminished.
And they are not regarded as monstrosities but only as the most
natural of artificialities; for they are a part of a horticultural
whole. To walk into a Japanese garden is like wandering of a sudden
into one of those strange worlds we see reflected in the polished
|
