THEand the first things you draw when you’re little are colored flowers and butterflies, be careful not to go outside the lines with the crayons given to you for your birthday. I have a weakness for butterflies but I’m in good company, following this passion, the great Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov also became a notable entomologist and during his adventurous excursions which gave him more joy than literature he discovered new brightly colored species preserved under glass in the St. Petersburg museum. Will these be the only colorful butterflies we will still be able to see in the future?
According to scientific research published by Guardian, in territories invaded by intensive cultivation, brightly colored butterflies are increasingly rare while those with dark and greyish hues have taken over.
Among the various disasters caused by the voracity of human beings, we also lacked this aesthetic drift to make our horizon darker. The good news is that, where a natural balance is restored, by magic, little by little, the colors return like in a cartoon with a happy ending.
Serena Dandini (photo by Gianmarco Chieregato).
In the meantime there are always literary gardens that remain unchanged over time and they are there to welcome us whenever we wish. They are the landscapes evoked by the great writers who Sandra Lawrence author and garden expert has collected in Literary gardens (Hippocampus), a lush book thanks also to seductive illustrations by Lucille Clerc.
“Literary Gardens” by Sandra Lawrence with illustrations by Lucille Clerc (The Hippocampus)
Remaining comfortably seated in an armchair we can explore Beatrix Potter’s vegetable garden and the gardens of Alice in Wonderlandpass through Borges’s disturbing labyrinths and Italo Calvino’s magnificent enchanted garden discovered by chance by two children who slipped into a hole in a hedge.
Lawrence, as a passionate gardener, knows all the seductions of nature but also the deceptions and threatsbecause these enchanted places remind us of the joys of childhood but also of the tortuous spirals of our anxieties and pains: peace and torment, ingredients that only good readings can provide.
All articles by Serena Dandini.
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