Bliss!

/

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Where's that quote from, anyway? I remember a Nabokov story with that title, which got me wondering.

Tom
(totally Stoppard-ignorant, Gaal should take care of that soon...)

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Stoppard-ignorant? Aw, man! You must read Arcadia and The Invention of Love ASAP. Trust me on this.

As for et in Arcadia ego, it's a good question. The phrase is no doubt inspired by Virgil's pastoral Eclogues, but as far as I know appears first in Poussin's famous painting "The Shepherds of Arcadia", also referred to as "Et in Arcadia ego", as it depicts four shepherds examining a tomb bearing that inscription. One interpretation reads it as "Even in Arcadia I [am]", I being Death. Another maintains that it means "I, too, lived in Arcadia", interpreting it as the deceased's final sentiment.

I guess you know the image of classical Arcadia, and the whole shepherds-exchanging-poems fiction etc.

Read Stoppard!

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Aha! Thanks for that. (Now you got me wondering what that Nabokov story was about...) As for Stoppard, I've been meaning to read some of his stuff for ages but I hardly read at all these days (believe it or not). I will, though. Promise.

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You hardly read? How come?

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Well, the answer's a bit complicated, and I was going to write a whole journal entry about it but I can't concentrate very well in Internet cafes. Basically, I found that indulging my book cravings did me more harm than good, physically and spiritually. Or to put it more positively - dammit, at age 24 I've already read more books than most people do in a lifetime, isn't it time for something different? I've generally been trying to drop much of my old intellectualism. Urr. I SHOULD write a whole journal entry about this... Or a whole journal.

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