Et in Arcadia ego

Giovanni Francesco Barbieri , Et in Arcadia ego (1616-1620)

The Arcadian Shepherds , 1st version, Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth , circa 1630

Nicolas Poussin , The Arcadian Shepherds 2nd version, (1638–1640)

Et in Arcadia ego is a Latin phrase . Their meaning is controversial. The linguistically closer translation “I too (am) in Arcadia ” has been replacedmore and morein the course of the history of reception by the version “I (was) in Arcadia too”.

The phrase appears for the first time in the painting of the same name by the Italian baroque painter Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino . There it is written on a section of the wall with a skull on it. The composition is like a still life with the shepherds as viewers in the picture. Through the underlying iconographic tradition, the skull is defined as a symbolic representation of death . The words are thus a saying of death (“I also exist in Arcadia”) and of the kind of Memento Mori (“Remember that you have to die”): they remind the two shepherd boys in the midst of this idyll of death, that is Arcadia was not spared either.

The French baroque painter Nicolas Poussin took up the theme in two paintings with the name The Shepherds of Arcadia , but developed it much further by intervening in the composition. Poussin's most noticeable change is that the piece of wall has been replaced by a sarcophagus. The interpretation of both paintings, especially the second, is controversial. Some interpreters assume that with Poussin it is now not death but the dead who should be thought of as the spokesman for the phrase and that this is accompanied by a change in the et (to ego instead of Arcadia ).

Origin of the Arcadia motif and the tomb in Arcadia

Plato and Pausanias already mention the mythical Arcadian king Lykaon ; According to Pausanias, VII Lykaon sacrificed a child on the altar of Zeus and sprinkled the altar with the child's blood, whereupon the god instantly transformed him into a wolf; according to Lycophron , both Lycaon and his 50 sons were turned into wolves; According to Hyginus , Jupiter only demanded Lykaon's daughter Callisto, but no human sacrifice, so he turned Lykaon into a wolf and struck his sons with lightning; According to Ovid (48–17 B.C.E.), it was only Lykaon who served Zeus with the meat of a prisoner, partly cooked and partly roasted - Zeus then collapsed the roof of his house and turned the fleeing Lykaon into a wolf. Ovid ( Metamorphosen , 1, 163 ff.) And Pausanias (Hellas, 8.2.1-6) explicitly described lycanthropy as a punishment for consuming human flesh and identified the Lykanthropoi (literal translation: "Wolfmenchen", who lived in the forests of Arcadia) the ancient description for the more modern vampire / werewolf motif) as such cursed.

The first mention of a tomb with an inscription (here for Daphnis ) against an idyllic background can be found in Virgil's Eclogae (V, 42 ff.):

et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen:

Daphnis ego in silvis, hinc usque ad sidera notus,

formosi pecoris custos, formosior ipse.

Virgil transferred the Sicilian peasantry idealized by Theocritus in the so-called Eidyllia to the Greek landscape of Arcadia . For him, Arcadia is the land in which poetry has its origin and home and which is therefore also the imaginary home of every poet. In the Renaissance the subject was taken up again by Lorenzo de 'Medici . The Italian poet Jacopo Sannazaro in his bucolic poem Arcadia in 1504 consolidated the image of the modern era of Arcadia as an idyll that he looks back with longing, as did the English writer Philip Sidney in the romance The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia.

In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, the Greek landscape of Arcadia became a symbol of the Golden Age , in which people lived as happy shepherds and devoted themselves entirely to leisure, love, poetry and music in harmony with nature.

The Shepherds of Arcadia

From 1630 to 1640, the French painter Nicolas Poussin painted two versions similar to Barbieri's picture, entitled The Shepherds of Arcadia. The first, from around 1630 ( Chatsworth , Devonshire Collection), shows two shepherds and a shepherdess who unexpectedly stumbled upon the inscription on a sarcophagus with a skull on top. You seem upset and upset. In the foreground is a river god, probably the Alpheios , who flows through Arcadia.

The mood is different in the geometrically structured and classically calm second picture ( Louvre , Paris), in which you look at the inscription on the sarcophagus elegiacly and inspired by a baroque attitude to life. The terrifying skull is missing here. The shepherds communicate with a magnificently clad female figure. This probably best-known picture by Poussin is dated around 1640. It comes at a time when Rembrandt is designing the psychological moment of his night watch , clad in a suggestive chiaroscuro , when Velazquez shows the individuality of the royal court jesters, and it is the year in which Rubens dies, who with his work the one before has done the greatest work in capturing dynamics and space.

If one assumes that the lively, the sensual and the illusionistic and effective are the main characteristics of baroque painting, it is difficult to classify this picture or even a large part of Poussin's work as “typically baroque”. But other characteristics can very well be assigned to the baroque. On the one hand, there is the stylistic device of contrast. The juxtaposition of the illuminated and pure colored figures in the foreground, which are determined by preoccupation with their find and its inscription, with the gentle, mixed-toned and unspecifically idealized landscape, creates a peculiar tension, as harmonious as the picture at first glance may affect the viewer.

Another element of baroque painting is the theatrical and pathetic. The seemingly frozen people wake up with their unnatural gestures, especially in view of the stage-like scenario, like posing actors who want to show the audience the situation for as long as possible. In addition, the term “fantasy art” is often used in connection with baroque painting. Poussin's fantasy, which here combines aspects of the pastoral genre image with the impression of a mystical background, a narrated event with philosophical knowledge processes, lives out here in a subtle way. Poussin, who, like many other Baroque painters, deals with ancient mythology, philosophy and history, combines these interests into a whole that corresponds to his imagination.

The symbolism of the picture also shows Poussin as a baroque painter. First of all, of course, the mysterious inscription, which can be translated and interpreted in various ways, should be mentioned, but the lonely, forgotten grave also suggests certain contents.

A second aspect is Poussin's special concept of nature. For him, nature, which is presented untouched and idealized, is the highest expression of human self-knowledge. This view can probably be regarded as a specifically French component of baroque painting, which can also be seen in the works of his contemporary Claude Lorrain .

Interpretations

In the sentence Et in Arcadia ego the copula , a form of esse (= to  be ), is missing , which is possible in Latin but leads to different interpretations.

The change in the motif in literature and art history also resulted in a change in the interpretation of the inscription. Et in Arcadia ego was no longer related to death but to the author of the inscription; So instead of “ I exist even in Arcadia ” or “ I am also in Arcadia ”, the interpretation “I was in Arcadia too”. This translation is suggested by Poussin's second picture, but it is difficult to reconcile it with the Latin grammar , but represents the common understanding of the quotation (also due to the reference to the 5th Eclogue). In this interpretation, the epitaph reminds us that every person is born in Arcadia, as is the one buried in the tomb on Poussin's painting.

According to the interpretation of Brandt and Becht-Jördens / Wehmeier, the female figure on the front right is the allegory of Pictura (Latin = painting) or, so now in 2006, Daphne-Laura, d. H. the fame of the art of painting, although Poussin's picture lacks any attribute belonging to the iconography of this allegory . According to this thesis, with the discovery of their own image in silhouette, the shepherds also discovered the basic principle of painting, mimesis . This corresponds to the ancient tradition in Pliny , Naturalis historia , books 35, 16, 5. The point is that painting, which was previously regarded as a craft and is not represented among the nine muses , asserts its presence in Arcadia and has an equal status Claim a place among the arts, d. In other words , the picture should be understood as Poussin's contribution to the then still virulent art theory debate Ut pictura poesis . The reinterpretation of the Latin inscription ("I was / am in Arcadia too") results from the new assignment of the statement to Pictura. Contrary to Panofsky's assessment, it is grammatically entirely possible and therefore already intended by Poussin.

In their psychoanalytic interpretation of the image, Becht-Jördens and Wehmeier adopt the female figure as the pictura, but are looking for a connection between the two themes of the discovery of mortality and the discovery of the art of painting, which, as Brandt's observations have shown, can be identified as components of the composition and could hardly be tied together without Poussin's intention. The authors initially find this on the level of the semantics of the individual pictorial objects in the double meaning of the shadow. As the outline of the reading shepherd, it is in the sense of mimesis (image) of the living, i.e. Pictura, as a shadow, on the other hand, it also refers to death as its impending individual, but also to all people, including the viewer, common fate. The double meaning of a central pictorial object requires a correspondence on the level of the overall message of the picture composition. For this reason, the authors reject the reinterpretation of the Latin expression, which is so powerful in terms of reception history, as a self-statement of the deceased, since this breaks the connection between the two topics mentioned, which, especially in view of the grammatical hardness, could not agree with the intentions of the artist. Rather, Pictura refers to the original statement of death (not, as Brandt tries to make plausible, of the dead) and with this justifies its own office: Because death itself rules in Arcadia, so its rule knows no borders, the art of painting also rules wherever and whenever he is at work. Because he or the consciousness of his inescapable reality is it, which is why people need art and the consolation that they grant due to their ability to represent the absent. In this way, it allows imaginary encounters with other people across spatial and temporal boundaries, and it also allows communicative confrontation with the painful subject of mortality and even one's own death while at the same time maintaining the necessary regulation of pathos . It enables mortality to be experienced as the common fate of all people, but to which they are not helpless. In this way, it first enables people to live in the face of death without falling into panic or depression. And this is the reason why the discovery of mortality and the art of painting coincided in Poussin's composition and moved to Arcadia. The art of painting is man's answer to the discovery of mortality, which enables him to claim life and autonomy even under the rule of death, a statement that Poussin also formulated with his self-portrait in the Louvre .

As a motto or quote

18th century

• Herder quotes the sentence in his ideas on the philosophy of history (1784–91): "I too was in Arcadia is the funerary inscription of all living in the constantly changing, regenerating creation."
• Schiller's poem Resignation , printed in 1787 in Schiller's magazine Thalia , begins with the words: "I too was born in Arcadia".
• The Italian landscape architect Ercole Silva (1756–1840) had the inscription ET IN ARCADIA EGO recorded on a sarcophagus in the garden of Villa Ghirlanda Silva in Cinisello around 1800 . The garden is a first example of an English garden in Italy.

19th century

Detailed view of CW Kolbe, I was in Arcadia too (1801)

Aubrey Beardsley: Et in Arcadia Ego (1896)

• I was also in Arcadia is the title of a copper engraving by Carl Wilhelm Kolbe from 1801. In a lush tropical landscape, a young couple stands in front of an ancient grave monument with the inscription ET IN ARCADIA EGO.
• "I too in Arcadia!" Was given by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe to his Italian trip (1813/17) as the motto, but was deleted again in the last edition of 1829. Later in his campaign in France, Goethe refers to this motto again by adding it to his text in a modified form: "I too in Champagne!"
• The second section of ETA Hoffmann's novel Life Views of the Katers Murr (1819/21) is headed with “Life experiences of the young man” and “I was in Arcadia too”.
• Between 1834 and 1838 Joseph von Eichendorff wrote a short story entitled I was in Arcadia too.
• Walter Pater headlines the chapter on Winckelmann in his book The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (1837) with the modified quote “Et in Arcadia fui”.
• Nietzsche's Aphorism No. 295 from Menschliches, Allzumenschliches II. A book for free spirits (1879) is entitled “Et in Arcadia Ego”.
• In 1896, Aubrey Beardsley quoted the sentence on one of the back pages of the 8th and last issue of his magazine The Savoy , alluding to the picture of Poussin. The next page contains a drawing by him that parodies the Poussin theme and shows a dandy contemplating the inscription on a grave monument (see illustration).

20th century

• Et in Arcadia Fui is the title of a watercolor from 1907 by the English writer and painter Maxwell Armfield (1881–1972), which is in the Chazen Museum of Art in Wisconsin, USA. The image was to be printed with an Armfield poem beginning with the line “Et ego in Arcadia”. The picture shows an idyllic naked youth who is resting on a pine tree on a slope above the Mediterranean Sea and playing the panpipe, and alludes to the homoerotic context of the poem.
• A section in Katherine Mansfield's diary is entitled “Et in Arcadia ego” (around 1927).
• William Faulkner's 1929 novel The Sound and the Fury varied the sentence as “Et ego in arcadia”.
• Et in Arcadia ego is the title of a book by the Italian author Emilio Cecchi about a trip to Greece , which was published by Hoepli in 1936 and was translated into German around 1950 under the title Arcadia. Experienced Greece was published.
• Evelyn Waugh headed the first book of his novel Brideshead Revisited (1944) with the Latin quote.
• In 1952 a short story by Ingeborg Bachmann was published with the title I also lived in Arcadia .
• In 1952 Wolf von Niebelschütz undertook a nine-day trip to Italy, about which he wrote a report two years later, which was published posthumously in 1987 under the title Auch ich in Arkadien. Disrespectful Epistles to the Friends was published.
• In his novel Pale Fire (Pale Fire) from 1962 is Vladimir Nabokov twice on Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds and Panofsky's interpretation; first with "Even in Arcadia am I, says Death in the tombal sculpture" and then in the notes of the fictional editor, where the sentence is varied as "Even in Arcadia am I, says Dementia chained to her gray column".
• Et in Arcadia Ego is the title of a poem by WH Auden from 1965.

Hamilton Finlay: ET IN ARCADIA EGO, Hofvijver, The Hague

• Ian Hamilton Finlay has dealt with the sentence in various works.
  A relief from 1976 in the manner of a baroque emblem shows a tank in front of a bucolic group of trees in the upper part, the lower part with the epigram reads: “ET IN ARCADIA EGO. After Nicolas Poussin. ”
  A Hamilton Finlay inscription panel with the sentence in capital letters (in classical antiqua ) is set into a brick wall on Hofvijver in The Hague .
• In the film Go Trabi go (1991), Wolfgang Stumph plays a German teacher from Bitterfeld (at that time still GDR ), who goes to Italy with his wife and daughter in the upheaval situation in 1990, quoted several times in corresponding passages from Goethe's "Italian Journey" and thus when looking at the Lake Garda says: "I too in Arcadia".
• "Et in Arcadia Ego" is the title of an oil painting by Heinz Zander from 1991.
• Tom Stoppard refers to the Latin quote several times in his 1993 play Arcadia . One of the characters in the piece translates Felibien's interpretation, i. H. Its French translation of the Latin quotation into English: “The person buried in this tomb has lived in Arcadia”, and discussions between those involved follow about an alternative interpretation of the sentence. The English translation as "Here I am in Arcadia" (Also in Arcadia I am [Death]) thus sets a tone for the piece in which two people are tragically killed.
• The sentence "Et in Arcadia ego" is engraved on a person's rifle in Cormac McCarthy's tale Blood Meridian (1996) and indicates the interpretation of the quote as Memento Mori .
• Et in Arcadia Ego is the title of Moritz Eggert's 2nd string quartet from 1997.

21st century

• In the second volume of 2006 in the comic series Rex Mundi by Arvid Nelson and Juan Ferreyra, the painting by Poussin and the Latin inscription are both an object of the plot and the heading of a chapter.
• In 2008 the Kunsthalle Memmingen published a catalog for an exhibition by the photographer Wilhelm von Gloeden under the title Auch ich in Arkadien .
• In 2010 Pier Damiano Peretti composed a piece for organ and oboe entitled Et in Arcadia ego .
• In 2011 I also appeared in Arcadia. Travel novel about Italy by the Austrian author Bernhard Hüttenegger .
• 2015: Et in Arcadia Ego - World Chaos and Idylle is the title of an exhibition in the Museum Kurhaus Kleve .
• 2014/2015: Et in Arcadia Ego is the title of a group exhibition at the Centro Culturale Man Ray in Cagliari.
• 2018: Et in Arcadia Ego is a musical adaptation of the Faust material as a composition lyrique sur des œuvres de Jean-Philippe Rameau . Libretto by Éric Reinhardt, Opéra comique Paris .
• 2018: In Julia Whelan's debut novel My Oxford Year (German title = Mein Jahr mit Dir), young students call it a prank.
• 2020: Et in Arcadia Ego is the name of the two-part final episode of the first season of the series Star Trek: Picard .

See also

Commons : Et in Arcadia ego  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Gereon Becht-Jördens, Peter M. Wehmeier: Picasso and Christian Iconography. Reimer, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-496-01272-2 , pp. 181-209.
• Gereon Becht-Jördens, Peter M. Wehmeier: Life in the face of death. The invention of art as a medium for overcoming fear by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). In: Erik Boehlke, Hans Förstl, Manfred P. Heuser (eds.): Time and transience. Edition GIB, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-024659-3 , pp. 74-90. (Series of publications by the German-speaking Society for Art and Psychopathology of Expression. Vol. 27).
• Reinhard Brandt : Arcadia in Art, Philosophy and Poetry. 3. Edition. Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau and Berlin 2006. (Sources on art; Vol. 25.) ISBN 3-7930-9440-5 .
• Reinhard Brandt: Nicolas Poussin. Et in Arcadia Ego. In: R. Brandt: Philosophy in Pictures. From Giorgione to Magritte. 2nd Edition. DuMont, Cologne 2001, pp. 265–282. ISBN 3-7701-5293-X .
• Max Denzler: Et in Arcadia ego. ( Memento from December 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ). In: Real Lexicon on German Art History . Vol. 6, 1968, col. 117-131.
• Louis Marin : On A Theory Of Reading In The Visual Arts: Poussin's Arcadian Shepherds. In: Wolfgang Kemp (ed.): The viewer is in the picture. Art history and reception aesthetics. DuMont, Cologne 1985, pp. 110-146. ISBN 3-7701-1720-4 .
• Erwin Panofsky : Et in Arcadia ego. Poussin and the tradition of the elegiac. Edited by Volker Breidecker. Friedenauer Presse, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-932109-28-7 .
• Genevieve Warwick: Commemorating Poussin. Reception and Interpretation of the Artist. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1999, ISBN 0-521-64004-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ P. Vergili maronis ecloga qvinta.
2. ↑ German = "and piles up a hill and on top of the hill writes the song: I was Daphnis in the forest, known to the stars: what I guarded was beautiful, the cattle, but I myself was more beautiful".
3. ^ Allan R. Ruff: Arcadian Visions. Pastoral influences on poetry, painting and painting and the design of landscape. Windgather Press, Oxford 2015. ISBN 978-1-909686-66-3 .
4. ^ Poussin holdings in the Devonshire Collection.
5. ↑ The elegiac change of the Arcadian motif and the end of sheep farming.
6. ^ Erwin Panofsky: Et in Arcadia ego. Friedenauer Presse, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-932109-28-7 .
7. ↑ Reinhard Brandt: Philosophy in Pictures. Cologne 2nd edition 2001, pp. 265–282, ISBN 978-3-7701-5293-3 .
8. ↑ Gereon Becht-Jördens, Peter M. Wehmeier: Picasso and Christian Iconography. Mother relationship and artistic position. Berlin 2003, pp. 181-209, ISBN 3-496-01272-2 .
   Gereon Becht-Jördens, Peter M. Wehmeier: Life in the face of death. The invention of art as a medium for overcoming fear by Nicolas Poussin (1594–1665). In: Boehlke / Förstl / Heuser (Ed.): Time and transience. Pp. 74-90.
9. ↑ Herder: Ideas for the philosophy of the history of mankind. Book 7, chap. 1.
10. ^ Friedrich Schiller: Resignation. Full text.
11. ↑ A play on words: Goethe came through Champagne during the campaign.
12. ↑ Eichendorff : I was in Arcadia too! A fantasy. On: projekt-gutenberg.org.
13. ^ Father : Et in Arcadia fui. On: authorama.com.
14. ^ Nietzsche : Et in Arcadia Ego. On: textlog.de.
15. ↑ The Savoy, 8 (1896), p. 88 f.  - Internet Archive
16. ↑ Figure
17. ↑ Peter Bovenmyer: The Golden Age of British Watercolors, 1790-1910. In: arthistory.wisc.edu. Retrieved January 23, 2020.
18. ^ Journal of Katherine Mansfield. Et in Arcadia Ego. On: nzetc.victoria.ac.nz.
19. ↑ The "Et in Arcadia Ego" Skull. Symbolism, Imagery, Allegory. On: shmoop.com.
20. ^ Nabokov: Pale Fire. New York 1962. pp. 174, 176. Quoted from Emmy Waldman: Who's speaking in Arcady: The Voices of Death, Dementia and Art in Nabokovs Pale Fire. In: Nabokov Online Journal. Vol. IV. 2010. PDF.
21. ^ Auden : Et in Arcadia Ego. On: nybooks.com.
22. ^ Ian Hamilton Finlay: Wall of the quay of the Hofvijver on the side of the Gevangenpoort. On: stroom.nl.
23. ↑ Michael McNay: Ian Hamilton Finlay. On: theguardian.com.
24. ^ Death come to Arcadia. On: penhook.org.
25. ^ Hanna Scolnicov: Et in Arcadia ego. Stoppard revisits neoclassizism. Theater Sudies, Tel-Aviv University. 2005.
26. ^ Raymond J. Wilson: Gardens in Stoppard, Austen, and Goethe. In: Gardens and the Passion of Infinite. Dordrecht 2003. p. 59 ff.
27. ↑ Rex mundi. Contents. On: comicguide.de.
28. ^ Wilhelm von Gloeden: I too in Arcadia. Exhibition catalog Memmingen. Cologne 2007.
29. ^ Pier Damiano Peretti : Et in Arcadia ego. Concerto spirituale per oboe ed organo. On: youtube.com.
30. ^ Centro Culturale Man Ray. Retrieved October 13, 2018.
31. ^ Opéra comique, Paris. Retrieved January 9, 2018.