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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LANDSCAPE IN THE RESEARCH OF ENVIRONMENTAL HUMANITIES 179
charge of meanings. It has eliminated the concept of homogeneous space (Keszei
2019: 101; Warf — Arias 2009; Withers 2009: 638). This change in attitude has
influenced the natural sciences and humanities alike.
According to the research of Dénes Lóczy, the Hungarian word #4j (‘landscape,
region) means a “definite area of land” (areal unit) and “the appearance of the
land as we perceive it” (the sight from a vantage point) (Léczy 2002: 18), but it
also means province, landscape (painting), as well. Döra Drexler has also pointed
out other implications of the everyday meaning of the word, such as surroundings,
countryside (Drexler 2010: 26-28). Its usage and meaning were also largely
influenced by the artistic view of the landscape in the periods of the Renaissance
and Romanticism and by politics (Antrop 2019: 1-3). Thedictionary reveals that
the Hungarian word #4j was used in the first two meanings in the Middle Ages as
well; in this regard it is similar to the German Landschaft (Drexler 2010: 39; Benké
1976: 822). Déra Drexler’s meticulous comparisons of words have brought to
light the fact that the French paysage and the English landscape do not perfectly
correspond in content to the synonymous Hungarian and German terms, so the
use of the latter as scholarly terms has not been without difficulties. Moreover,
different interpretive, theoretical frameworks are attached to them (Drexler 2010:
37-40). (On the international usage, see also: Antrop 2019; Potsin — Bastian 2004:
2; Schama 1996: 10).
The term landscape was “made great” by science. In his above-mentioned work,
Denes Löczy also points out that the word landscape, also widely used in the
colloquial language, is hard to fill with content for analytic research. Therefore it
is becoming increasingly customary to use “value neutral” special terms: words
that indicate the spatial units but are not linked to the polysemantic and emotionally
charged concept of landscape (Löczy 2002: 14). Such are ecosystem (system model),
ecotope (habitat), or a special ethnographic term, region, which appears mainly
in the works of Baläzs Borsos. In ethnography, it may be substituted for many
technical terms (including landscape) with several connotations (Borsos 2002:
111). At the same time, the landscape is far more than a piece of space, and despite
efforts to change, it is still present not only in the terminology of analytic research,
but also in that of syntheses. Landscape is inspiration, habitat, a carrier of aesthetic
values, and a source of scholarship, as well.
Eternal landscape
Were one to look for issues of environmental humanities whose prehistory is lost
deep in the mist of the Palaeolithic, one would surely find the relationship between
the landscape and the human being living in it as one. Palaeolithic hunters following
hordes of wild game, Neolithic settlers tilling the soil, and Bronze Age people
mining and smelting ore were groups of people living in, and from, the landscape.
The landscape does not mean only the sight, or simply the environment. It is
much rather a well-confined but also subjectively interpretable context which its
users perceived as a system, and on the resources of which they subsisted. True,
we have very little knowledge about it, as our ancestors rarely left behind such
“data banks” as the works of painters, poets, and writers. It is, however, important
to stress that “prehistoric” people were also capable of thinking about the landscape