building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

The main feature of this charming village was the enormous expanse of cultivated
vineyards, creating the basis for the renowned, Californian wine‐producing
economy [Figure 60] .
Parallel to the affirmation of a hard agricultural life, various utopian‐technological
theories also developed, which always had the natural world as their background.
This was the case of the ideas elaborated by John Adolphus Etzler (1791‐1846?) and
set out in his book The paradise within the reach of all men, without labour, by
powers of nature and machinery (1833), in which he imagined and described the
natural forces (wind, tides, waves) and the powers of the technological resources
(steam, burning mirrors, perpetual motion). From the union of these forces Etzler
dreamt of machines capable of redeeming man from agricultural labour and gave
advice on how to construct architecture, in the belief that love for nature (by
gardening) and the passion for machines were basic inclinations of human
behaviour 133 .
Etzler's theory, an author read by Thoreau, explained how religious and social
utopias (and transcendentalist ideas) were tied to the ethics of nature and labour. If
used and exploited correctly, the forces of nature could provide the key to spiritual
fulfilment of the individual. The very fact that Etzler lingers on the set up of a
correct relationship between nature and human settlements confirms the
transversality and importance of his theory.
His concepts of the possibility of the evolution of man were recalled in the vast
literary production by Herbert George Wells (1866‐1946), the genius and father of
contemporary science fiction, together with Jules Verne (1828‐1905).
Religions also offered a rather varied picture. In addition to the Shakers, there were
less influent minor groups, such as the Society of the Women in the Wilderness, The
Amana Colonies (radical German Pietists), the Perfectionists of Oneida, The Aurora
community, etc. Between 1817 and 1819, the Separatists founded Zoar, a small
town of German settlers in the middle of the wild woods of Ohio, endowed with an
entire two and a half‐acre block set aside as a garden: “a large public or Community
133 See ETZLER, John Adolphus, The paradise within the reach of all men, without labour, by poker of
nature and machinery. An Address to All Intelligent Men, London, John Brooks, 1838, pp. 234.
About natural power to see pp. 6‐32; about machinery see pp. 33‐60; about agriculture,
architecture, plan of a community, new state of human life, see pp. 61‐95
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