I can't stop thinking about "The Garden of Time"
What if it's actually about illness?
I had, in my head, an idea to reserve skulls in my sculptures for the Halloween season. The imagery seems too obvious, too Hot Topic, too far past the point of all subtlety. Then I read “The Garden of Time” by JG Ballard and I cannot stop thinking about it. And then skulls started sneaking into my art.
To start, please read the story, it’s incredibly short and quite good (all quotes are from this linked version). If it sounds familiar, that’s because it inspired the Met Gala theme for 2024. I love the old science fiction stories, so I immediately read it.
In the story, Count Axel and his wife live on a grand estate. Each evening the count goes out and sees a disorganized throng of people and machines advancing toward them, presumably to kill them. However, the grounds surrounding the estate contain a garden of massive crystal flowers that, when plucked, reverse time. The largest flowers turn back time for a few days, the smallest only moments, and they are running out. Axel and his wife (who has no name, or I would use it) decide to spend their final day preserving their estate. They seal manuscripts in cases, arrange vases, and dust art in their gallery. The last thing his wife wants to do is play music, but she is out of time.
Axel passed the next morning quietly in his library, sealing the rarer of his manuscripts into the glass-topped cases between the galleries. He walked slowly down the portrait corridor, polishing each of the pictures carefully, then tidied his desk and locked the door behind him. During the afternoon he busied himself in the drawing rooms, unobtrusively assisting his wife as she cleaned their ornaments and straightened the vases and busts.
His wife picks the final flower as the mob is battering down the door. It is only a bud and it reverses time for just a few moments, at which point she sees something and cries out for her husband to look. Time advances and the mob now finds themselves in a destroyed ruin of the estate, the count and his wife turned to stone.
The doors had rotted from their hinges and the floors had fallen through. In the music-room an ancient harpsichord had been chopped into firewood, but a few keys still lay among the dust. All the books had been toppled from the shelves in the library, the canvases had been slashed, and gilt frames littered the floor.
Many people have said this is a commentary on how the wealthy hoard resources for so long that, by the time people are able to take them back, they have been destroyed. I think that ignores the two quotes I used here. The music room has been “chopped into firewood,” which would have been done by human hands and out of necessity at best, mindless destruction at worst. So too have the books been pulled from their shelves and the art destroyed on the walls, something that would have been contrary to how the count and his wife spent their final day: in acts of preservation.
I think it could be a story about the way we, collectively, harm ourselves, even when we know better. Think, for example, of climate change. It could also be a metaphor for the way that militaries destroy culture as a weapon of war. I think the story can also be a metaphor for chronic illness.
I see the throngs of endless people as the illness itself, advancing without any purpose or reason, just pure momentum. People, alone, are generally good, but when we are put into large groups we can become dangerous. Antibodies are generally good, but when they are “confused,” programmed incorrectly by our immune systems, they become out of control and destructive. And they never stop, even when the very thing they should have been protecting has been destroyed. For example, I had my thyroid completely taken out, but even now my body won’t stop trying to destroy it. I needed my thyroid, just as we all need art, books, and music, but you can’t reason with your immune system.
I see the flowers as medicine. The flowers turn back time but they can’t change anything. They buy the count and his wife more moments, but their lives can never be the same as it was before. Medicine and treatments can buy us time, in some cases they can give us a cure, but they can never restore us to how we were before. Even if the body recovers, I think the subconscious mind never forgets the betrayal of the body. You cannot unlearn that you cannot trust the body you live in, that you are trapped in. Your body, as they say, is your “temple,” your home, but you are marooned in it just as the count and countess live endlessly on their estate.
I see the count and countess as the patient. They live in a state between life and death; in stasis. They know that death is approaching and that it is inevitable, that the flowers (the medicine) only allow them to turn back time, not change the course of it. Death, for us all, is inevitable, but sometimes we enter a liminal state where we are neither living nor actively dying. We live in a suspension of time. I have seen this up close in loved ones, where they are trapped in the garden of time, no longer able to live, but with flowers enough left to keep pushing back the inevitable.
I see the books and music as the things that make life worth holding onto. Even on that last day, the countess wants to spend her final moment playing the harpsichord. The final day on their estate, of their lives, the count and countess don’t spend it with each other, but rather preserving “the arts,” namely literature, fine art, and music. When we are sick, even very sick, or in stasis, there needs to be something that keeps us going. It can be a loved one, pets, hobbies, or entertainment, but there has to be something worth living for and worth preserving.
My reading was surely not intended by the author, but it’s still an interesting one. We bring meaning to all art, so I have no issue exploring alternative meanings. Ballard’s short story made me think more deeply about my art, and it influenced what I make, and for that I am grateful.
Further Reading
If you have been hooked into the story as I have, here are some other interpretations of the that I found interesting.
Alberto Patino Douce, 2016, “JG Ballard’s ‘The Garden of Time’” this post goes over various potential meanings of the story and illustrates it with their own beautiful flower photographs.
BBC, 2012, “A Point Of View: JG Ballard and the Alchemy of Memory” this article gives background on the author’s life and interprets the story as a metaphor for the way we remember; very interesting.
David Pringle and Jim Goddard, 1975, Science Fiction Monthly Interview this is an interview of the author himself so you can dig into what he thinks of his own work; the short story is mentioned by name and he clarifies that it is not about celebrating a bygone days of aristocracy.