Evelyn Waugh famously called “Et in Arcadia Ego” the first long section of Brideshead Revisited. Even though it might seem at first glance that “ego” is Charles Ryder (the protagonist) and “Arcadia,” Oxford, a closer inspection of the novel and of the Latin in the phrase suggests that the more likely intended meaning of those words (inscribed on a skull) is that “Death reigns too in Arcadia.” Paintings by Guercino and Poussin, depicting herders around tombs in a bucolic environment, contribute to confirm this interpretation of the phrase, especially as Charles, in the fiction, was a painter, likely familiar with those works, one of which is named “Et in Arcadia Ego.”
Leaving aside the original public meaning of the phrase as a memento mori (legal pun intended!), I would like to offer here a competing but complementary interpretation. For these purposes I will briefly elaborate on the nature of Arcadia as a place, if a place indeed it is. I find useful to explore at the same time a different but related question: Who dwells in Arcadia?
It is my submission that in Brideshead Revisited (and in similar other contexts) “Arcadia” is better understood not as a place but as a state of affairs. The phrase’s reference has certainly no meaningful connection with the contemporary Greek region (“Arcadia”) or with the “Acadia” that in the eighteenth century moved from somewhere in Canada to somewhere in what today is Louisiana. (The missing “r” in the latter is a mystery worth resolving, though this assumes that the “r” is indeed missing.)
Waugh’s “Arcadia” does have some connection, however, with the mythological region in the Peloponnese known as “Arcadia,” because in such mythology the word is inextricably charged with feeling: The pastoral Arcadia, represented by the Italian and French painters was an imaginary place of bliss—an idyllic state of affairs really, perhaps similar to heaven on earth.
But there is no heaven on earth! The central case of Arcadia—true, unlimited bliss—is heaven … in heaven. That has to be how Arcadia really feels: heavenlike. If “saints” are, by definition, the only humans who dwell in heaven; and Arcadia is like heaven, then “ego” is better understood as “a saint.” Humanly speaking, saints—whether canonized or not—are all dead (though of course they are very alive in a different, resurrected sense); so my interpretation is fully compatible with the prevailing interpretation that “ego,” in the phrase, means “death.” We need to keep in mind that “death” is not a person. Metaphors apart, only some people who have died—the saints—enjoy heavenly bliss.
As we read in the pages of the Rover, we “cannot escape the reality of death. It stands at the ready, prepared to stop your artificial world in its tracks by its mere mention.” Death will come to us inexorably indeed, as the likely intended meaning of Et in Arcadia Ego reminds us (and Barbie too!). We need to prepare every day to dwell in the true, lasting kingdom. The saints dwell in Arcadia.
Santi Legarre is a visiting professor at Notre Dame Law School and longtime friend of the Rover.
