building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

certainly encouraged the ambition of many religious sects to recreate the Garden of
Eden here on Earth 61 .
A certain narrow‐mindedness of the sects, their considerable fragmentation and the
radicalism of the ideals expressed by some of them, all led to less widespread
slavery. Letters from an American Farmer (1782) by J. Hector St. John de Crèvecœur
(1735‐1813), a naturalized French‐American writer, described for the first time the
life of these farmers of the American frontier. Crèvecœur spoke in great detail of
the customs, the climate, the plants and the animals, the villages and the Native
Americans, interpreting the main questions about America. His comment on these
landscapes draws the attention to the best aspects the countryside can offer, and in
particular he lingers on agriculture as a means to belong to the Land and as a tool
for the ideology of the homeland.
Questioning the essence of the American man, he theorized probably the first
educated version of the American dream:
What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a country
where he had nothing? The knowledge of the language, the love of a
few kindred as poor as himself, were the only cords that tied him: his
country is now that which gives him land, bread, protection, and
consequence: Ubi panis ibi patria is the motto of all emigrants.
What then is the American, this new man?
He is either a European, or the descendant of a European, hence that
strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country. I could
point out to you a family whose grandfather was an Englishman, whose
wife was Dutch, whose son married a French woman, and whose
present four sons have now four wives of different nations. He is an
American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient prejudices and
manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life he has
embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he holds.
He becomes an American by being received in the broad lap of our great
Alma Mater. Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of
men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in
61 Rykwert wrote “Whatever their religious or political beliefs, they [all these religious groups,
editor’s note] did have one thing in common: their towns and villages were intended to last, and that
made many of these settlers model agriculturalists and horticulturalists; since some felt that they
were recreating paradise on Earth –a garden of Eden‐ they became very assiduous orchard keepers.
This was in strong contrast to the more secular farmers who, in moving slowly westward, practiced a
form of slash‐and‐burn cultivation, and relied on the resale value of their exhausted land for profit to
bolster any income they might obtain from their farm produce”, published in RYKWERT, Joseph, The
seduction of Place. The History and Future of the City, New York, p. 55 (Italian translation by Duccio
Sacchi, La seduzione del luogo. Storia e futuro della città, Torino, Einaudi, 2003 pp. 67‐72)
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