"An expanse offered to the view", such is the definition of landscape proposed by the dictionary. But more than a simple reflection of reality, would it not rather be the very subjective image resulting from a personal and cultural perception? The mountain, which generally arouses repulsion before Rousseau, does it not become sublime landscape from the Age of Enlightenment? Immersed in space, imbued with all his senses, the writer, according to his temperament and his history, finds different agreements with the landscape. Some authors see in it the expression of what is radically foreign to man; others internalize a site, which then becomes a landscape state of mind. Others still prove very receptive to the empathy of man and cosmos, to the subtle play of correspondences... From Chrétien de Troyes to Julien Gracq, from Gérard de Nerval to Patrick Chamoiseau, this work, which takes us from familiar regions to distant horizons, constitutes, through the diversity of perspectives, as many meditations on the genius of places.

Preface by Michel Tournier. 1 vol. 384 p. Text forgotten in Henri Béhar, Shock Waves, New Essays on the Avant-Garde, L'Age d'Homme, 2010, pp. 279-290.

Read my text "Surrealist Landscapes"

Download the chapter The Genius of Place. Edited by Arlette Bouloumié and Isabelle Trivisani-Moreau