Underground Rivers - University of New Mexico

Chapter 28 -- Et In Arcadia Ego
Tom Stoppard's Arcadia (1963) -- originally Et In Arcadia Ego --
involves themes of classical beauty and order in conjunction with
the evolution of Western understanding of nature. Thomasina,
unpretentious, innocent in youthful happiness, is the play's
endearing character. Her death before cynical adulthood can
destroy her in the same way that chaos will destroy the universe
seems almost fortuitous.
Arcadia represents a fallen Eden, an intermingling of heavenly
gifts and the folly of humanity. Et In Arcadia Ego -- The sun shines
upon us, but what flows below?
Tracy Twyman's undated "The Real Meaning of 'Et In Arcadia
Ego' and the Underground Stream," The Arcadian Mistique, rolls
the Arcadian tie back to the devine.
Interestingly the word Jah (the name of the Jewish god inside
the Ark of the Covenant) comes from the name Ia, the Lord of
the Earth and Lord of the Deep Waters in Sumeria on which the
Hebrew god Jehovah’s character is partially based... King Ia,
“Lord of the Deep Waters,” was often depicted with water
flowing from his throne. If this throne is now located in the
center of the Earth, in the underworld, as legend tells us, then it
is therefore also the source of an “underground stream.”
It's no light-hearted sail, this particular subterranean Alpheus.
Below are a few Arcadian pieces from later times. Three portray land as those of the early
Renaissance might have envisioned it, a world of blithe innocence. Three portray the land as it
would come to be interpreted, a landscape with wondrous but ominous trees, lurking deity,
protentions of a future uncertain.
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