Nature reclaiming the works of Man

A staple image (we could say a cliché, if it wasn't so effective) of post-apocalyptic stories consists in having wild animals prancing through the empty ruins of what formerly was a busy urban center, or some other place sinonymous with civilization and man-made environments. I am Legend does this, at least judging from the trailer. So do Children of Men (the deer in the nursery) and Twelve Monkeys (the escaped zoo animals Bruce Willis encounters on his initial excursion).

Much of the rural imagery from the works of the Romantics included aestheticised, picturesque ruins from a previous age (usually, although not always, Classical temples, columns and statues). Early on, I noticed similarities between these images and images of the modern city in ruins in various Science Fiction films or read descriptions of in Science Fiction novels. It occurred to me that the image of a well-known city in ruins was a powerful one that people might use in a variety of ways to express a variety of ideas. What does it mean? Why the fascination?

That quote comes from Where London Stood, a site dedicated to literary depictions of the City in Ruins, and which itself seems to be abandoned. Sad... but oddly appropiate!

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset wrote the following about the Romantic infatuation with ruins:

Civilisation is not "just there," it is not self-supporting. It is artificial and requires the artist or the artisan. If you want to make use of the advantages of civilisation, but are not prepared to concern yourself with the upholding of civilisation- you are done. In a trice you find yourself left without civilisation. Just a slip, and when you look around everything has vanished into air. The primitive forest appears in its native state, just as if curtains covering pure Nature had been drawn back. The jungle is always primitive and, vice versa, everything primitive is mere jungle. The romantics of every period have been excited by those scenes of violation, in which the natural and infrahuman assaults the white form of woman, and they have depicted Leda and the swan, Pasiphae and the bull, Antiope and the goat. Generalising the picture, they have found a more subtly indecent spectacle in the landscape with ruins, where the civilised, geometric stone is stifled beneath the embrace of wild vegetation. When your good romantic catches sight of a building, the first thing his eyes seek is the yellow hedge-mustard on cornice and roof. This proclaims, that in the long run, everything is earth, that the jungle springs up everywhere anew. It would be stupid to laugh at the romantic. The romantic also is in the right. Under these innocently perverse images there lies an immense, ever-present problem: that of the relations between civilisation and what lies behind it- Nature, between the rational and the cosmic.

(José Ortega y Gasset: Revolt of the Masses)

I suppose the definitive Romantic/Postapocalyptic tale would be Mary Shelley's The Last Man, a roman à clef with barely concealed versions of Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley as characters. It's kind of boring, though, and mostly of historical interest.