"Armonie botaniche e simmetrie geometriche: The Garden Of Cyrus di Sir Thomas Browne come anatomia del mondo in prospettiva saggistica"

This essay offers a reading of Sir Thomas Browne’s The Garden of Cyrus (1658) in connection with the light thrown on it by one of Browne’s most ardent devotees, i.e. the German writer Winfried Georg Sebald (1944-2001). At the same time, The Garden of Cyrus will be analyzed with an eye to the wider context of a relevant essayistic tradition which, in many significant cases, drew inspiration from the literary topos of the garden. Finally, a close reading will reveal how the main subject of Browne’s text proves to be the quincunx, a geometrical pattern through which the author, as if spurred by an irrepressible exegetical/esoteric enthusiasm, set out to find a principle of metaphysical design in all Creation.