Arcadia à la Russe

President Macron’s concerned remarks about the need to accord Russia special treatment were not immediately met with complete understanding. They certainly made us realise at once just how differently our European minds are furnished depending on our distance from the East. This cannot easily be changed.  

One can try, using examples firmly rooted in French culture, to show that sooner or later everyone—even the most exceptional and unpredictable ‘statesmen’—realises that, like simple shepherds, they remain in Arcadia only briefly. 

The profiles and faces of Russia’s warlords are far better suited to Et in Arcadia ego in Guercino’s Italian version than to Poussin’s picture, as manicured as the gardens of Versailles. 

Guercino frightens us with the remnants of life clinging to a skull. It is nowhere near as pleasant as Poussin’s serene, perspectivally flawless world. The East, as a land of straightforward terror, may merge somewhere on the Scythian steppes with the misery of the impoverished South.