The Fountain in the Garden of Love

When being in a garden starts to feel like something very familiar, one is not on new territory, or in the realm of new experience. Gardens have a way of waking up that part of the human spirit that connects to the forces of nature. It’s an innate quality, and one that many people forget until they experience it for the first time.

Gardens do have a way of speaking to that part of the soul. Nature has been part of the divide on the other side of culture or technology, and is also equated with the things of intuition and emotion. It’s not by chance, then, that there are so many references to the Garden of Love in the history of art. Love seems to be at one here with the landscape, because it comes from an elementary source that’s as deep as the roots and the fountains .

In most of these depictions, the garden is the place of joy, luxury, and sensual pleasure, and is therefore well-suited to love. In William Blake ’s version, however, there’s a different story. Here, the garden reflects an entirely different world view, where nature and desire are ordered and controlled. The power of his work lies in its ability to both confirm the generally accepted view of gardens, and to turn it on its head.