Moving from the theoretical assumption that the attempt to recreate the mythical garden of delights implies a complex series of oppositions and paradoxes, this essay investigates The Garden, Andrew Marvell’s last short poem. What seems a mere celebration of the joys of natural life as opposed to urban artificiality has prompted numerous, and diametrically contrasting, critical readings of the lyric: by defining it either as a ‘rural’ or as a ‘pastoral’ poem, even as a ‘political allegory’, critics still debate its genre.
The Garden can be interpreted as a summa of Marvell’s previous lyrics: by thoroughly rejecting eroticism for the sake of a total disintegration in the world of nature, the poem obliquely represents a nostalgic recreation of the primeval state of androgyny – «this delicious Solitude» (l. 16).
