Edward James — described by Salvador Dalí as “crazier than all the Surrealists together” — designed a sculpture garden that defies any architectural label and testifies that delusions of grandeur can come alive. Blue-blooded British poet and early patron of Surrealism James used his privilege of noble descent to make his dream garden become concrete: Las Pozas (The Pools) became the most famous example of his life-long devotion to manifesting the surreal. This sculpture garden unlike any other in the world, spreads out over an area of 30 hectare deep in the jungle, a seven-hour drive north of Mexico City.
If you want to find out more about this curious man
start with this little film: Part I, Part II
I have seen such beauty as one man has seldom seen;
therefore will I be grateful to die in this little room,
surrounded by the forests, the great green gloom
of trees my only gloom — and the sound, the sound of green.
Here amid the warmth of the rain, what might have been
is resolved into the tenderness of a tall doom
who says: ‘You did your best, rest’ – and after you the bloom
of what you loved and planted still will whisper what you mean.
And the ghosts of the birds I loved, will attend me each a friend;
like them shall I have flown beyond the realm of words.
You, through the trees, shall hear them, long after the end
calling me beyond the river. For the cries of birds
continue, as – defended by the cortege of their wings —
my soul among strange silences yet sings.
Edward James