Abstract
In Poussin's first version ofEt in Arcadia ego, the formal tension between the discrete and the continuous, between the movement of reality, on the one hand, and the immobility imposed by pictorial representation, on the other, this formal tension characteristic of painting becomes the image of the tension proper to human existence - tension or rather contradiction, if not the scandal of the human condition, namely the brutal irruption of death into the continuity of life.
Unlike Le Guerchin, in Poussin's work, each element does not make sense separately: it is not the sum of the meanings of the elements that produces the total meaning, but the overall structure of the image that must be interpreted. This question applies to all interpretations of images as well as texts: how important are the details of a work? Should details take precedence over the whole, or vice versa? Can a detail overturn the meaning of the whole?
Poussin's three shepherds, two men and a woman, running towards a tomb and stopping abruptly in front of it, are also reminiscent of the Gospel according to Saint John, when Jesus' disciples discover the empty tomb of their master. For humanist and Christian viewers of the painter's time, the Gospel reference is inescapable. The three shepherds prefigure the three disciples, with a clear message: in the world before Revelation, death triumphs. Such a Christian reading of the painting is prepared by the painter without being imposed by the image. If Poussin's trick is to leave the meaning open and remain ambiguous, so as not to offend prevailing convictions or religious authorities, we too, as viewers and interpreters, must be attentive to the possibilities of interpretation, without forcing it one way or the other.
How can an image show the intellectual act of understanding? This is what Poussin achieves in this painting, and even more so in his second version, painted around 1638. When it arrived in Versailles in 1685, the painting hung in the private apartments of Louis XIV and Louis XV, and remained invisible to most visitors for a long time, though this did not prevent critics, artists and poets from talking about it and imitating it without ever having seen it. It's a painting we know by hearsay, so distortions gradually set in. Diderot and Delille describe it as a depiction of a happy Arcadia, with young people feasting. In reality, however, the landscape is rather arid and rocky, and the figures motionless and meditative.
The painting tells us that Arcadia itself has changed: it's no longer what it used to be, it's desolate and a little sad. The inscription could then mean: "It was still Arcadia, where I lived." The implication is that Arcadia no longer exists, having disappeared with the dead, and become a waste land. Here's an allegory for our times: at the current rate of pollution, climate change and political and global disorganization, will our grandchildren be able to say they knew Arcadia? Nothing is less certain. This new, up-to-the-minute reading of the painting should be added to the various contradictory interpretations provided by art historians over the last few decades.
