Literary notes about garden (AI summary)
The word "garden" in literature often transcends its literal meaning to evoke a space of cultivation, refuge, and transformation. In Voltaire’s Candide [1], for example, the garden becomes a metaphor for self-improvement and responsible stewardship, while in Dickens’s works [2, 3] it frequently denotes a threshold between the public world and a more intimate, controlled private realm. In contrast, for writers like Frances Hodgson Burnett [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10], the garden is a mysterious, even enchanted space that harbors secrets and potential for personal rebirth. Authors such as Edgar Allan Poe [11, 12] and Victor Hugo [13, 14, 15, 16, 17] use the garden not only as a vivid setting for beauty and art but also as a symbol of decay and neglected promise. Beyond these physical spaces, the garden sometimes takes on an idealized, almost philosophical dimension, as seen in Santayana’s portrayal [18] where it represents a fertile ground for ideals and creative impulse. Overall, whether as sanctuary, social arena, or symbol of moral and personal cultivation, the garden remains a versatile and powerful literary trope.
- "All that is very well," answered Candide, "but let us cultivate our garden."
— from Candide by Voltaire - The ladies were at the garden gate, waiting for their arrival and their breakfast.
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - ‘Cook,’ said the lady abbess, who took care to be on the top stair, the very last of the group—‘cook, why don’t you go a little way into the garden?’
— from The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens - "In the garden!"
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - “In the garden!”
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - In five minutes Mary was with Dickon in their garden.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - “When Mary found this garden it looked quite dead,” the orator proceeded.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - He had gone away and the secret garden was empty—except for the robin who had just flown across the wall and sat on a standard rose-bush watching her.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - “It’s in the garden no one can go into,” she said to herself.
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - How real that dream had been—how wonderful and clear the voice which called back to him, "In the garden—In the garden!"
— from The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett - Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene, adds to it a great beauty.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - Whatever may be said against the abuses of the artificial landscape-gardening, a mixture of pure art in a garden scene adds to it a great beauty.
— from The Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven Edition by Edgar Allan Poe - At night, when they were there, that garden seemed a living and a sacred spot.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - He walked straight up to the man whom he saw in the garden.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - She saw him displace the bar and slip into the garden.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Another walk made the circuit of the garden, and skirted the white wall which enclosed it.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - When he saw that this wretched resource was becoming exhausted, he gave up his garden and allowed it to run to waste.
— from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo - Nature is a perfect garden of ideals, and passion is the perpetual and fertile soil for poetry, myth, and speculation.
— from The Life of Reason: The Phases of Human Progress by George Santayana