Arcadia

[jenks]

New biog out by Hermione Lee. I’ve seen quite a few of his plays including Arcadia and have taught it too. When he gets it right the balance between heart and head is unlike any other recent dramatist. I see Sher in Travasties in the late 90s and it was one of the best things I’ve seen in the theatre.
Arcadian ideas are a constant theme in British Drama - for all its mess and anarchy Butterworth’s Jerusalem is another. Obviously Shakespeare regularly returns to it with his comedies -As You Like It for example.
In painting, Poussin’s In Arcadia et ego, immediately springs to mind. Even there death exists. At one level it’s a hankering for a retreat from the modern, a disavowal of ‘progress’ a desire to be still in an ever turning world.

 

[shiels]

Arcadia was the answer to a question on university challenge tonight and I got it right because of this thread

 

[sufi]

Arcadia was the answer to a question on university challenge tonight and I got it right because of this thread

what was the question?

 

[shiels]

Something about the countryside and chaos and a big influence on other things

 

[sufi]

Something about the countryside and chaos and a big influence on other things

eh? that's a tricky one, well done for getting that.

 

[sufi]

Yes, I think you'd like it, I was a big fan.

It takes place in a single room in a British house, landed aristocracy type deal in the countryside, alternating between 1809 and present-day.

The 1809 characters are a young precocious girl named Thomasina and her tutor Septimus. Septimus gets entangled in multiple love triangles, is challenged to duels, and is constantly tripping over himself trying to instruct Thomasina in pure mathematics and geometry, while she keeps grilling him about the meaning of "carnal embrace."

The present-day characters are two writers, Hannah and Bernard, plus the descendents of the 1809 residents. They use the paper trail of the house's old library to piece together a narrative of the past, which is wildly divergent from actual events.

The book is theme- and pun-heavy—lots of stuff about entropy, structure, memory, fashion, rationality vs. feeling, etc

sounds like you're looking for a bit of

120 Years of 'Girls in Pearls' at the Beautiful Rooms and Blushing Brides exhibition - Country Life

To celebrate Country Life’s 120th anniversary, the magazine is staging an exhibition called 'Beautiful Rooms & Blushing Brides' at Linley Belgravia.

www.countrylife.co.uk

 

[luka]

sounds like you're looking for a bit of

120 Years of 'Girls in Pearls' at the Beautiful Rooms and Blushing Brides exhibition - Country Life

To celebrate Country Life’s 120th anniversary, the magazine is staging an exhibition called 'Beautiful Rooms & Blushing Brides' at Linley Belgravia.

www.countrylife.co.uk

Sufi was actually in this magazine. His family is 'established'

 

[sufi]

Sufi was actually in this magazine. His family is 'established'

deep state chieftans

 

[luka]

Debretts

 

[sufi]

New biog out by Hermione Lee. I’ve seen quite a few of his plays including Arcadia and have taught it too. When he gets it right the balance between heart and head is unlike any other recent dramatist. I see Sher in Travasties in the late 90s and it was one of the best things I’ve seen in the theatre.
Arcadian ideas are a constant theme in British Drama - for all its mess and anarchy Butterworth’s Jerusalem is another. Obviously Shakespeare regularly returns to it with his comedies -As You Like It for example.
In painting, Poussin’s In Arcadia et ego, immediately springs to mind. Even there death exists. At one level it’s a hankering for a retreat from the modern, a disavowal of ‘progress’ a desire to be still in an ever turning world.

rural idyll is as bogus now as poussin was,
whether its country life poshos or manicured commuter villages

 

[luka]

Tweed, purple corduroys, muddy boots, sitting in a tractor tyre

 

[luka]

The science boy was telling me about a meal round the Ben Watson household and he was trying to sell them on the idea of nature but of course communism is hostile to nature the point is to eradicate nature entirely. The trees will heal you he was saying and they were looking at him with deep suspicion and scorn

 

[sufi]

The science boy was telling me about a meal round the Ben Watson household and he was trying to sell them on the idea of nature but of course communism is hostile to nature the point is to eradicate nature entirely. The trees will heal you he was saying and they were looking at him with deep suspicion and scorn

the trees are not our mates https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-for-male-trees-has-made-your-hay-fever-worse

there might be like 3 people in the uk living in tree harmony + @catalog

 

[luka]

I don't get hayfever

 

[jenks]

rural idyll is as bogus now as poussin was,
whether its country life poshos or manicured commuter villages

Yep even Hesiod knew that. Doesn’t stop the yearning though - whether it’s Tom and Barbara in The Good Life or Virgil’s Eclogues.