“"Beyond the bounds of truth" : cultural translation and William Chamber's Chinese garden” (Publication, 2008)
Year
2008
Text
Porter, David. "Beyond the bounds of truth" : cultural translation and William Chamber's Chinese garden. In : Dinographies : writing China. Eric Hayot, Haun Saussy, and Steven G. Yao, eds. (Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2008). (Cham5)
Type
Publication
Mentioned People (1)
Chambers, William (1)
(Göteborg 1723-1796 London) : Architekt, Gartenarchitekt, Autor
Subjects
Art : Architecture and Landscape Architecture
/
Literature : Occident : Great Britain
/
References / Sources
Chronology Entries (5)
| # | Year | Text | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1743-1744 | William Chambers arbeitet in Canton im Auftrag der Swedish East India Company. Er besucht Tempel und Gärten und macht Notizen und Zeichnungen. [Guangzhou (Guangdong)]. |
|
| 2 | 1748-1749 | William Chambers arbeitet in Canton im Auftrag der Swedish East India Company. Er bestucht Tempel und Gärten und macht Notizen und Zeichnungen. [Guangzhou (Guangdong)]. |
|
| 3 | 1750-1796 |
William Chambers und die chinesische Gartenarchitektur. 1996 Ludwig Trauzettel : Der Einfluss Chambers auf den Gartengeschmack wie auf die Gartenliebhaber und Gestalter Europas hat bis heute eine nachhaltige Wirkung. In seinen Argumenten sahen Chambers Anhänger das Ideal einer Naturnachahmung am vollendetsten erreicht und durchgesetzt. Die Umsetzung chinesischer Stilelement im Garten beschränkte sich jedoch in den meisten Fällen auf die Ausstattung mit chinesischen und später auch orientalischen Gestaltungselementen – mit Teehäusern, Pagoden und Moschen sowie auf die Verwendung von Zelten, Schirmen, Brücken und fernöstlich wirkendem Gartenmobiliar. Seine Absichten sind nur noch in wenigen Gärten zu spüren und der unter seiner Einwirkung entstandene Jardin anglo-chinois ist schon längst Gartengeschichte geworden, er wurde von anderen Entwicklungen abgelöst und gehört der Vergangenheit an. Chambers' Bepflanzungsvorschläge sowie seine Artenauswahl sind von der europäischen Gartenpraxis bestimmt und keineswegs chinesisch. 1996 Adrian von Buttlar : Die Authentizität von Chambers' Chinoiserien ist aus heutigem Verständnis bis zu einem gewissen Grade eine Fiktion, doch war man sich dessen seinerzeit kaum bewusst. Der Einfluss den Chambers auf die deutschen Gärten und Garten-Chinoiserien übte, war die klassizistische Variante der Chinoiserie im Innenraumdekor. Kew Gardens wird zum Modell fürstlicher Gärten. 2008 David Porter : Chambers was sufficiently proud of his production to ship off copies soon after its publication to a host of European notables, including the King of Sweden and Voltaire, and to boast in at least one letter of the period that it had 'met with a very favorable reception' in England, though this seems not actually to have been the case. At the same time, other letters introducing the work to his correspondents describe it as so much 'coglioneri', or foolishness, and 'a piece of nonsense', gestures of dismissal considerably harsher than conventions of authorial humility would normally require. In the Explanatory discourse that accompanied the second edition as a response to the criticisms the first edition had provoked, Chambers initially repudiates any Chinese inspiration behind his ideas, describing their oriental setting in the earlier work as a mere ruse, a failed attempt to '[clothe] truth in the garb of fashion, to secure it a patient hearing'. The paradoxical disjuncture between Chamber's aesthetic affinities together with his endless equivocations concerning his own allegiance to the Chinese style have rendered the interpretation of his Chinese writings, and the Dissertation in particular, a bewildering task, and a critical consensus has remained elusive. Certain readers, on confronting his descriptions of the horrid and enchanted scenes found in Chinese gardens, with their imported tigers, elephants, implements of torture, and bolts of artificial lightning, have been inclined to dismiss his more extravagant recommendations as nonsensical absurdities, playful diversions, or proto-romantic flights of fantasy, while others have confessed to ambivalence about the seriousness with which they are intended. At least one garden historian has demonstrated that Chambers's central ideas about gardening derive from earlier English sources, while another has shown, equally persuasively, that they are firmly rooted in Chinese theories of gardening. Some critics have seen the jealous attach on Capability Brown as the chief 'raison d'être' for the work, while others have stressed the prophetic importance of its original contribution to the theory of landscape design. One of the few points of agreement among students of Chambers's work is that his representation of the Dissertation as a work of cross-cultural translation complicates its reading considerably, in that the substance of his ideas on gardening is distorted beneath the 'fashionable garb' of chinoiserie. For all the success enjoyed by his treatise, Chambers made no claim to originality in the work. The role he saw for himself, rather, was that of a compiler and an adjudicator of taste. He imitates the Chinese more directly in his carefully assembled menagerie of exotic species. The prominence of water in his fantasy garden, and of 'close walks' and 'intricate windings', suggest meanwhile a more generalized influence of Chinese gardening principles. The Dissertation frequently reads, in fact, like an allegorical narrative of voyage and discovery, with its visitor described repeatedly as a 'traveler' or 'passenger' as he makes his way among the garden's seemingly endless labyrinthine passages. The magnificence of the vistas he encounters fully justifies the use of such terms : these are not backyard arrangements of rock gardens and goldfish ponds, but seemingly full-scale depictions of natural wonders that transport the 'visitor' into a compellingly 'real' virtual world. Chambers's depiction of the genius of Chinese gardeners is directed at two polemical aims. The author intends, most conspicuously, to paint an unflattering contrast between the exalted abilities of landscape artists in China and those of their English counterparts, and especially of his nemesis Capability Brown. But he also hopes, more constructively, to elevate the status of this art in England to that which architecture now enjoyed. As a cross-cultural translation, the Dissertation should be read not as a more or less accurate rendering of 'authentic' Chinese practice than as a narrative mapping of the experience of Chinese difference. The genius of Chinese gardening expressed itself, for Chambers, through an aesthetic of contrast, variety, and surprise. While the modern English landscape park numbed the viewer with its monotonous repetition of formulaic conventions, the Chinese garden spurred the imagination with a splendid panoply of riveting scenes, calculated to lead the viewer through a succession of intense emotional catharses. The basic components of the aesthetic vision Chambers ascribed to Chinese gardeners had more obvious precedents not only in Burke's conception of the sublime but also in the English gardening theory of the previous half century. If the Chinese garden, for Chambers, embodies the essence of his impressions of China in its genius, variety, and wondrous indecipherability, the dream of transforming the kingdom into a garden represents the transposition of an enthralling imaginative response to foreignness back to his more immediate surroundings. The dream is Chinese not in its specific content, but rather in the derivation of its aesthetic vision from a subjective confrontation with Chinese difference. |
|
| 4 | 1750-1762 |
William Chambers und Kew Garden in London. 1762 Bau der Pagode in Kew Gardens durch William Chambers. Sekundärliteratur 1773-1780 Fredrik Magnus Piper arbeitete während seiner Studienreisen in England, Frankreich, Deutschland und Italien teilweise für Chambers. Er vermerkte über Kew, Chambers habe die "gleichförmige Ebene vor dem Landsitz in Kew sehr sorgsam mit Hilfe von Bodenmodellierung und der Grabung eines kunstreichen Serpentinenkanals, welcher den Monopterosgrund und die kleinen Anhöhen mit dem chinesischen Turm und verschiedenen Tempeln gliedert, in einen viel besuchten Garten umgearbeitet". 1779-1785 Christian Cajus Lorenz Hirschfeld : "William Chambers wählte dort [Kew Garden], anstatt der geraden die gebrochene Linie, gab den Bächen geschlängelten Lauf, verpflanzte Anhöhen, ohne sie zu ebnen, verschönerte natürliche Buschwerke, ohne sie zu zerstören, zog gründende Rasen einem sandigen Platze vor, eröffnete dem Auge eine Menge reizender Aussichten, veredelte einen anmutigen Hain mit Gebäuden, kurz, Kent fand den Garten, wo er ihn suchte, in der Natur." 1923 Adolf Reichwein : Das erste Beispiel eines chinesischen Gartens in Europa schuf William Chambers in Kew Garden. Diese Anlage wurde teils durch Chambers' Schrift, teils durch die Berichte der Reisenden in ganz Europa vorbildlich für alle Gärten des neuen Stils, der bald in Frankreich als 'chinesisch-englisch' bezeichnet wurde. Chambers hat selbst die Pagode, sein eigenes Werk, ausführlich beschrieben und mit Stichen in Plans, elevations, sections, and perspective views of the gardens and buildings at Kew in Surry [ID D26935] erläutert. Sie wächst danach in neun Stockwerken zu einer Höhe von 160 Fuss. Jedes Stockwerk endet in einem überspringenden chinesischen Dach. Die Dachecken sind mit 80 Drachen geziert, die alle mit einer Glasur in verschiedenen Farben überzogen sind. Rühmend wird hervorgehoben, dass die Pagode nach einigen Richtungen 40 Meilen Aussicht gewähre. Chambers gruppierte um die beherrschende Pagode, als das Zeichen des chinesischen Geschmacks, ein 'Haus des Konfuzius' am Rande des Sees, eine Moschee, einen römischen Triumphbogen – als Tribut an den bereits wieder regen Geschmack für die Antike -, eine Alhambra und eine gotisches Gebäude, in der Front einer Kathedrale gleichend. 1950 R.C. Bald : William Chambers was employed by the Princess of Wales in the grounds of her residence at Kew. The park already contained several covered seats and other decorative buildings in the classical style, a 'Temple of Confucius' and a 'Gothic Cathedral'. Chambers added greater variety. In addition to a bridge, an orangery, and several smaller classical temples, he designed and erected an 'Allhambra', a mosque, and the ruins of a Roman triumphal arch. He also added two buildings in the Chinese style : a charming little pavilion in the centre of the lake near the menagerie, and the famous pagoda. Chambers was the first trained architect to publish architectural drawings of Chinese buildings, and his mimitations of them at Kew were not only admired for their authenticity, but also demonstrated their possibilities in a European environment. 1990 Willy Richard Berger : Für Chambers zeugte das klassizistische Naturempfinden von Mangel an Einbildungskraft ; statt zur edlen Einfalt der Antike zu führen, brachten diese Gärten nur Langweile hervor. Und so empfahl er exotische Bauwerke als Mittel gegen die Öde, die Einfallslosigkeit, die sklavische Naturnachahmung, die sich hier ausbreitete. Chambers hat selbst sein Geschmacksideal in der Anlage von Kew Gardens zu verwirklichen gesucht. Diese Gartenlandschaft stattete Chambers mit fremdartigen Dingen aus, die keineswegs dazu angetan waren, einen stilechten chinesischen Garten hervorzubringen. Noch angehen mochten die künstlichen Felsen, die er auftürmte ; die Kaskaden, die sich malerisch darüber ergossen ; die Brücke, die sich über den Bach zog ; die vielstöckige Pagode, wie sie bald zum obligatorischen Bestandteil englischer Gärten in Europa werden sollte ; der kleine Pavillon (Ting) mit durchbrochenem Lattenwerk oder auf ein Haus des Konfuzius, gleichsam der Tribut der Gartenarchitektur an das China-Bild der Philosophen. Dazu aber gesellte sich exotischer Architektur-Nippes aller Art : eine Moschee, eine Reihe von griechischen Tempeln, die Ruine eines römischen Triumphbogens, eine maurische Alhambra und ein gotisches Gebäude, das versuchte, einer Kathedrale zu gleichen – ein kurioses Stilgemisch, das mit den Vorstellungen, die bei der Entstehung des englischen Gartens Pate gestanden hatte, wenig mehr zu tun hatte. 1996 John Harris : Im exotischen Garten mit den beiden Treibhäusern (Great Stove und Bark Stove) gelangt man durch einen Torbogen in den Blumengarten mit der grossen Voliere. Die daran anschliessende Menagerie umschliesst ein ovales Wasserbecken mit einem chinesischen Pavillon (Chinese Ting) auf einer kleinen Insel. Die Pagode mit ihren glitzernden grünen und weissen Ziegelverblendungen und den goldenen Drachen ist noch heute die wichtigste Sehenswürdigkeit. Auch wenn uns Chambers suggeriert, der Chinese Tan Chet Qua sei für die Idee verantwortlich, ist dies nicht richtig. Tatsächlich ist der 'Mandarin der neun Schnurrbarthaare' nämlich Chambers selbst verantwortlich für die Gestaltung. 2008 David Porter : A tension between admiration and disavowal appears in the collection of plans and panoramas from Kew Garden that Chambers published on completing his work there. [Plans, elevations, sections, and perspective views of the gardens and buildings at Kew in Surry [ID D26935]. The centerpiece of the volume is a fold-out depiction of the Great Pagoda that, even now, towers over the garden in incontrovertibly oriental splendor. His lavish description of this plate and its three accompanying illustrations of the pagoda in various sections and stages suggest considerable pride in the accomplishment, and the textual reminder that an engraving of the Chinese original had first appeared in the Designs volume six years before seems intended to reaffirm his own authority in the realm of Chinese architecture. The one other important building in the garden, the House of Confucius, warrants only a single illustration and a summary description. Chambers himself disowns the creation, vaguely asserting that it was 'built a good many years ago, I believe from the designs of Mr Goupy', a contemporary craftsman in the rococo style. |
|
| 5 | 1757 |
Chambers, William. Designs of Chinese buildings, furniture, dresses, machines, and utensils [ID D1838]. Preface by Samuel Johnson : "It is difficult to avoid praising too little or too much. The boundless panegyricks which have been lavished upon the Chinese learning, policy, and arts, shew with what power novelty attracts regard, and how naturally esteem swells into admiration. I am far from desiring to be numbered among the exaggerators of Chinese excellence. I consider them as great, or wise, only in comparison with the nations that surround them ; and have no intention to place them in competition either with the antients, or with the moderns of this part of the world ; yet they must be allowed to claim our notice as a distinct and very singular race of men ; as the inhabitants of a region divided by it's situation from all civilized countries ; who have formed their own manners, and invented their own arts, without the assistance of example". Chambers then went on to point out that no accurate designs of Chinese buildings had yet appeared in Europe, and that his plates "might be of use in putting a stop to the extravagancies that daily appear under the name of Chinese, though most of them are mere inventions, the rest copies from the lame representations found on porcelain and paperhangings". Das Buch enthält ein chinesisches Gedicht, dessen Übersetzung und Bedeutung Chambers nicht kannte. Die Verse gehören zu den Chinoiserien, die er von seinen Reisen aus Südchina mitbrachte. Er schreibt : "Ich hab mir viele dieser Inschriften aus China mitgebracht, aber ich habe vergessen, sie mir erklären zu lassen". Chambers gebrauchte die chinesischen Schriftzeichen als Symbol für das Exotische überhaupt. Die Zeichen sollten als Symbol für chinesische Kultur verstanden werden, das hier in einem leicht kopierbaren Muster vorlag. Sämtliche in seinen verwendeten Schriftverzierungen entstammen diesen Gedichtsstrophen. Das 'Chinesische' sollte wie ein Sinnbild für die von ihm geforderte Wirkung von Mannigfaltigkeit aufgefasst werden, wobei der Gartenkünstler "die Unzulänglichkeit der Natur ersetzen muss". Sekundärliteratur R.C. Bald : Chambers had no intension of advocating or encouraging the use of Chinese architecture on any large scale in Europe, although it might have a place “in extensive parks and gardens, where a great variety of scenes are required”, and in “the inferior apartments of immense palaces”. The designs of Chinese furniture would be helpful to English cabinet-makers, and even the drawings of Chinese costumes would "be useful in masquerades, and other entertainments of that kind, as well as in grotesque paintings". Chalmers believed, Englishmen could learn from having the correct Chinese model before them. "The Chinese excel in the art of laying out gardens". "Their taste in that is good, and what we have seen for some time past been aiming at in England, though not always with success. I have endeavoured to be distinct in my account of it, and hope it may be of some service to our Gardeners." Plate VI illustrates two delightful garden pavilions, one from an island in a lake, and plate VII shows a bridge from the garden of a Cantonese merchant. Included in plate IX is a courtyard garden with its moon-gate, lattice-windows, rockery, bamboo arbour, and lotus pool. In his essay Chambers successfully emphasizes the two features in the gardens of the Chinese which still seem strangest to Europeans : their characteristic but completely unfamiliar use of rockery and their extreme fondness for water. Chambers not only expresses his admiration for the skill with which they managed streams and cascades in their gardens, but also realizes that "in the small ones, if the situation admits, they frequently lay almost the whole ground under water ; leaving only some islands and rocks". David Porter : Chambers continually wavered in his expressions of commitment to the Chinese style, a fact that suggests he was acutely aware of the problems posed by his divided aesthetic loyalities, but which also makes it difficult to assess the true nature and depth of his interest in China. This ambivalence first appears to his Designs of Chinese buildings. On the other hand, he seems genuinely to admire Chinese architects for their originality and for the 'singularity, justness, simplicity, and beauty' of their creations, going so far as to note certain resemblances with structures of classical antiquity. Yet on the other hand, he feels compelled, at least in part by concerns for his reputation, to disclaim any intent 'to promote a taste so much inferior to the antique', and ultimately dismisses the Chinese buildings whose designs fill his volume as mere curiosities and 'toys in architecture'. This equivocation reflects, in part, a contemporary ambivalence in Britain toward the much vaunted achievements of Chinese civilization. Chambers was stepping out on a limb, in his defense of Chinese design, and it is not at all surprising that he felt obliged to temper his praise. |
|
Cited by (1)
| # | Year | Bibliographical Data | Type / Abbreviation | Linked Data |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2000- | Asien-Orient-Institut Universität Zürich | Organisation / AOI |
|