Hortus Vitae: Una invitación a cultivar el jardín interior

by Violet Paget, Juan Camilo Perdomo Morales (Translator)

 Hay libros que no se leen, sino que se habitan. Hortus Vitae es uno de ellos. Estas páginas nos ofrecen una meditación delicada sobre el arte de vivir. 

 Publicado por primera vez en 1923, con la autoría de Vernon Lee, seudónimo de Violet Paget, este libro reúne veinticuatro ensayos que, más que observar el mundo, lo acarician con la mirada. El jardín, lejos de ser metáfora decorativa, es aquí territorio un espacio que se cultiva con lo bueno y lo malo, con las estaciones del alma, con silencios y palabras. 

 Cada ensayo es un acto de contemplación, una invitación a demorar el paso, a pensar la existencia como un arte lento y necesario. En la prosa de Paget florecen el arte, los libros, el teatro, la música, la muerte, la amistad y el tiempo como presencias suaves, sin estridencias, tejidas con el hilo fino de quien ha vivido mucho y ha mirado más. 

 Más que un ejercicio estético, este libro es una propuesta aprender a cuidar nuestra mirada, a vivir con atención, a descubrir la belleza que nos rodea y que, tantas veces, dejamos pasar. Paget nos enseña que la contemplación no es inacción, sino un acto profundo de transformación interior.   

 El sentido último de toda filosofía es comprender nuestra existencia, y Paget lo hace de manera única al mostrarnos que ésta se hace más apacible, diáfana y bella cuando sabemos cultivar nuestro jardín interior a través del arte. 

203 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 19, 2025

About the author

Vernon Lee was the pseudonym of the British writer Violet Paget (1856 – 1935). She is now known mostly for her supernatural fiction; she wrote also essays and poetry; she contributed to The Yellow Book. She was a follower of Walter Pater.
An engaged feminist, she always dressed á la garçonne, and was a member of the Union of democratic control[1].

Her literary works explored the themes of haunting and possession. The English writer and translator, Montague Summers described Vernon Lee as "the greatest [...] of modern exponents of the supernatural in fiction."[2]

She was responsible for introducing the concept of empathy (Einfühling) into the English language. Empathy was a key concept in Lee's psychological aesthetics which she developed on the basis of prior work by Theodor Lipps. Her response to aesthetics interpreted art as a mental and corporeal experience. This was a significant contribution to the philosophy of art which has been largely neglected.

"The Lie of the Land", in the voume "Limbo, and other Essays", has been one of the most influential essays on landscaping.

Additionally she wrote, along with her friend and colleague Henry James, critically about the relationship between the writer and his/her audience pioneering the concept of criticism and expanding the idea of critical assessment among all the arts as relating to an audience's (or her personal) response. She was a strong, though vexed, proponent of the Aesthetic movement, and after a lengthy written correspondence met the movement's effective leader, Walter Pater, in England in 1881, just after encountering his famous disciple Oscar Wilde. Her interpretation of the movement called for social action, setting her apart from both Wilde and Pater.