Landscapes are a source of real and imagined memories for individuals, through which we return to the past and re-experience the emotions of observing the scene, possibly with greater depth while also searching for something to respond to our individual needs. The reflective and healing experience of the natural landscape and the meditative power offered were attributes extolled by Wordsworth and Ruskin. In his book, The Art of Travel, De Botton explores this relationship between the immediate impact of the landscape and the representations of landscape through memories. He examines the strong human desire to capture landscape through journeys or close reflection, through writing or drawing. The same longing for the remembered landscape that de Botton reveals in Wordsworth’s ‘Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey’, can be found in Australian Dorothea Mackellar’s ‘My Country’. In the art world, de Botton offers the example of Van Gogh whose pursuit of the complex relationship between the landscape and the observer motivated him to spend numerous hours trying to capture the details of the ‘Cypress’. Each representation of the landscape, whether written or drawn has had an influence on the way we see and remember what we have observed.
Reflection on remembered landscapes creates the opportunity to recapture a scene while evaluating the observer’s relationship to the landscape and the wider world. De Botton’s identifies that Wordsworth moved beyond ‘natural phenomena’ of the landscape to develop a deeply personal relationship with a focus on the details: placid lakes, a sparrow’s nest, and the sound of nightingales. Critics at the time, particularly Byron, saw this relationship as unsophisticated, ‘namby-pamby’, and yet de Botton reminds us that Wordsworth’s philosophy of nature has had a ‘hugely influential claim about our requirements for happiness’ and the origins of our unhappiness. With his ...