El jardinero del Chahar-Bagh

The gardens of each culture represent the effort to sublimate the land and its products beyond their utilitarian character, concentrating in a certain space floral beauties and perennial greenery destined for rest and contemplation. If calligraphy reveals to us the art of stopping time through brief notches, signs and ideograms, the art of gardening appears among men to sacralize a space and delimit an aspiration: the will to dominate nature while capturing it. of a water that, when flowing through symmetrical channels, contrasts with the disorder of the rivers and the random rhythm of the rain. In a way, each garden is closed to the external world to open, on the other hand, the imaginary channel of man towards regions of freshness and dreams. Knowing the main features of a culture implies observing the lines of its calligraphy, walking through its gardens and listening to its music. The letter, the parterre, the note; they are their own conquests as well as gifts for others, works of art whose expression traverses the annals, myths and chronicles. The six stories in this book reconstruct those pleasure grounds that were once erected in Persia or Japan, Andalusia, Italy or France, through the efforts of few and for the pleasure of many. Often the joy they wanted to provide is based on crime and dispute, violence and love, competitive spirit or simple devotion.