NPPF--commentary--629--The fate of beasts

[Paul Mackin]

The commentary is mostly about the alleged variant (The madman's fate)
rather than what S ended up with.

"Even in Arcadia am I,: says Dementia, chained to her gray column. (says
K in speaking about cases of lunacy in New Wye)

Apart from Dementia and her gray column, the origin of the phrase "Et in
Arcadia ego" apparently can only be speculated upon. We know it does not
originate in antiquity (not in Virgil).Panofsky suggests the possibility
that Pope Clement IX coined it while still a humble poet monk. Or maybe
later when he commissioned a painting by Guercino (an old friend) in
which the words appear on a scroll issuing from a death's head on a tomb
in Arcadia. According to Panofsky, correct Latin requires that "ego" be
the subject of the sentence. Therefore Death is the speaker. (in G's
painting)


The sense of "Et in Arcadia ego" is apparently that there is death even
in mythological Arcadia. A land of perfection. In some ways New Wye is
an Arcadia but people still go crazy there for which K gives an example.
The greater example might have been K himself. Is he Dementia chained to
her gray columnn?  Possible tie in with Gradus. 

Famous Poussin painting "Et in Arcadia" depicts Shepherds discovering a
tomb. The deaths head is absent. The Poussin painting was done a few
years after that of Guercino.


Apparently Shade was of the opinion that the appearance of madness under
certain circumstances might be a sign of health.  (possibly after
prominent psychiatrist of day Laing) He disabuses Mrs. H's view with
regard to the the railway employee's behavior.. 

Hudibrastic refers to poems like Samual Butler's Hudibras. 

Mock-heroic eight syllable couplets. 

Not the Samual Butler who wrote Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh but the
17th C. poet. 


Might have thought K would have cut Butler's versification more slack
since Hudibras was anti-puritan and admired by Charles II.