Idyllic Places

1 9 6 IDYLLIC PLACES

often depicted in classical paintings, is sometimes quoted as meaning 'I too once lived in Arcady', to express the idea of a perfect happiness now lost. This interpretation of the phrase is, however, disputed.

Ah, he doesn't know in the least what he is saying. This is not what he meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again, it is tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the round cheek, his lips are meeting those pouting childlips, and for a long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he may be Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche—it is all one.

CEORCE ELIOT Adam Bede, 1859

If Deptford was my Arcadia, Toronto was a place of no such comfort.

ROBERTSON DAVIES The Manticore, 1972

Ada told herself that Charleston, with its cadres of ancient aunts enforcing elaborate rituals of chaperonage, was perhaps some made-up place, with only a tangent relation to the world she now lived in, like Arcady.

CHARLES FRAZIER Cold Mountain, 1997

Arden The Forest of Arden is the name of a former forest region of north Warwickshire in the English Midlands, the setting of most of Shakespeare's As You Like It (1623). It is often used to represent the ideal of rural as opposed to urban or courtly life. The Forest of Arden can be used as an equivalent of the Garden of Eden, an earthly paradise.

Avalon In Arthurian legend, Avalon was the place to which Arthur was conveyed after his death, often portrayed as a paradise.

Beillah Beulah (literally in Hebrew 'married woman') is the land of Israel: 'thou shalt be called Hephzibah, and thy land Beulah: for the Lord delighteth in thee, and thy land shall be married' (Isa. 62: 4). In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Beulah lies beyond the Valley of the Shadow of Death and also out of the reach of Giant Despair: Yea, here they heard continually the singing of birds, and saw every day the flowers appear in the earth . . . in this country the sun shineth night and day.'

I thought sometimes I saw beyond its wild waters a shore, sweet as the hills of Beulah.

CHARLOTTE BRONTE Jane Eyre, 1847

Canaan Canaan was the land, later known as Ancient Palestine, which the Israelites gradually conquered and occupied during the latter part of the second millennium BC. In the Bible it was the land promised by God to Abraham and his descendants (Gen. 12: 7). By extension, the name Canaan can be applied to any promised land or to heaven. • See special entry o MOSES AND THE

BOOK OF EXODUS 0/7 p. 264.

Fresh green of the river bank; faded terra-cotta of the dining-room wallpaper, colours of distant Canaan, of deserted Eden.

EVELYN WAUGH SCOOp, 1 9 3 8

Up there at the top of the hill, 161 st Street and the Grand Concourse had been the summit of the Jewish dream, of the new Canaan, the new Jewish borough of New York, the Bronx!

TOM WOLFE The Boni)re of the Vanities, 1987

Celestial City In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678, 1684), the Celestial City

IDYLLIC PLACES 1 9 7

is the goal of Christian's pilgrimage, representing Heaven: 'It was builded of pearls and precious stones, also the street thereof was paved with gold.' • See

alSO NEW JERUSALEM.

Cold and purple clouds lay on the hilltops, and rising high into the ruddy light were silvery white peaks that shone like the airy spires of some Celestial City.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT Little Women, 1868

Cloud Cuckoo Land Cloud Cuckoo Land (a translation of the Greek Nephelokokkygia) is the imaginary city built in the air by birds in Aristophanes' play The Birds. Hence any fanciful realm can be described as Cloud Cuckoo Land, a world or state of mind that exists only in a person's imagination, distanced from reality.

Cockaigne The Land of Cockaigne or Cockayne (from the Old French pais de cocaigne, 'fool's paradise') was in medieval legend an imaginary land of luxury and idleness, where good food and drink were plentiful.

She watched the car drive away. It was going to Cloud Cuckoo Land; it was going to the Kingdom of Cockaigne; it was going to Hollywood.

STELLA GIBBONS Cold Comfort Farm, 1932

Delectable Mountains In Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the summit of the Delectable Mountain, 'Emmanuel's Land', is within sight of the Celestial City.

We call this hill the Delectable Mountain, for we can look far away and see the country where we hope to live some time.

LOUISA M. ALCOTT Little Women, 1868

Eden Eden (meaning 'delight'), or the Garden of Eden, was the home of Adam and Eve in the biblical account of the Creation, from which they were banished by God for their disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. The name can be used to refer to a place or state of supreme happiness, innocence, and concord.

Versailles! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze, and stare, and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden.

MARK TWAIN The Innocents Abroad, 1869

Yet this was—the way she relayed it—a redeemed forest and an Eden.

THOMAS KENEALLY The Playmaker, 1987

El Dorado El Dorado was the fabled city (or country) of gold sought in the 16 th century by Spanish conquistadors who believed it existed somewhere in the area of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers. Hence any place of fabulous wealth can be described as an El Dorado.

They would regain the ship and sail under his orders, asking no questions, their recompense: a share of a treasure as vast as a dozen Eldorados.

UMBERTO ECO The Island of the Day Before, 1994

Elysium In Greek mythology, Elysium, or the Elysian Fields, was the name of the fields at the end of the earth to which certain favoured heroes were conveyed by the gods to enjoy a life after death. The name can be used to refer to a place of perfect happiness or bliss.

Antoine and Françoise with their children, but without ever knowing why, joined the

1 9 8 IDYLLIC PLACES

refugees for the sake of their vision of elysium and because of Don Emmanuel's enthusiasm.

LOUIS DE BERNIÈRES The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts, 1990

Fortunate Isles • See ISLANDS OF THE BLEST.

Goshen Goshen was the fertile region in Egypt allotted to Jacob and the Israelites, where there was light during the plague of darkness: 'there was thick darkness in all the land of Egypt three days . . . but all the people of Israel had light where they dwelt' (Exod. 10: 23). The name Goshen can be applied to a place of plenty or a place of light. VSee special entry u MOSES AND THE BOOK OF

EXODUS on p. 264.

It's a bleak and barren country there, not like this land of Goshen you've been used

to.

GEORGE ELIOT Adam Bede, 1859

Happy Islands • See ISLANDS OF THE BLEST.

Islands of the Blest The Islands of the Blest, often located near where the sun sets in the west, were the place to which people in classical times believed the souls of heroes and the good were conveyed to a life of bliss. They were also known as the Fortunate Isles or the Happy Islands. Like Elysium or the Elysian Fields, the term Islands of the Blest can be applied to heaven or paradise. Tennyson's 'Ulysses' (1842) includes the lines:

'It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles, And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.'

There were no lands of sunshine, heavy with the perfume of flowers. Such things were only old dreams of paradise. The sunlands of the West and the spicelands of the East, the smiling Arcadias and blissful Islands of the Blest—ha! ha!

JACK LONDON In a Far Country, 1900

Land of Promise • See PROMISED LAND.

Never-Never Land Never-Never Land is the magical country to which Peter Pan escorts Wendy, John, and Michael Darling in J. M. Barrie's play Peter Pan (first performed 1904). The land is populated by staple characters from children's stories, such as mermaids and pirates, including the murderous pirate Captain Hook. Never-Never Land can be alluded to as an ideal place far from the problems encountered in the real world.

'Of course,' he added with a flash of his normal style, 'I suppose she could have had a date or something.' The photographer chuckled. 'Yeah,' he said, 'maybe her prince came and took her to Never Never Land.'

MOLLY MCKITTERICK The Medium Is Murder, 1991

If health professionals and writers took the middle line between Never-Never Land and Nightmare on Maternity Street perhaps Life After Babies wouldn't be quite such a rude awakening.

The Independent, 1994

New Jerusalem In Christian theology, the New Jerusalem is the abode of the blessed in heaven. The term can be used to refer to an ideal place or situation.

• See also

IDYLLIC PLACES 1 9 9

You think Victoria is like the New Jerusalem.

c. K. CHESTERTON The Man Who Was Thursday, 1908

It had to come from Cape Town, a place Samuel had never seen in her life but which in her reckoning ranked with the new Jerusalem.

ANDRÉ BRINK Imaginings of Sand, 1996

Paradise Paradise is the Garden of Eden described in the Book of Genesis, the place of perfect happiness enjoyed by Adam and Eve before their Fall and expulsion. The term is more commonly used, however, to refer not to the biblical Eden but rather to Heaven, 'the second Eden', and to a place or state of complete happiness. • See special entry a ADAM AND EVE on p. 5.

Not a river at all, just a trickle of water choked with reeds, and mosquitoes in the evenings, and a caravan park full of screaming children and fat barefoot men in shorts braising sausages over gas cookers. Not Paradise at all.

j . M. COETZEE Age of Iron, 1990

The sun was shining and every stone of the wall seemed as clear as glass and lighted up like a lamp, it was like passing through the gates of Hell and into Paradise.

MARGARET ATWOOD AIJOS CrOŒ, 1 99 6

Promised Land In the Bible, Canaan is described as 'the Promised Land', promised by God to Abraham and his descendants as their heritage (Gen. 12: 7). The term can be applied to any desired place of expected happiness, espe-

cially heaven. • See special entry n MOSES AND THE BOOK OF EXODUS on p. 264.

Years ago, when we were in trouble, we thought we could one day go north. Well, we are north now. We are at that Promised Land.

STUDS TERKEL American Dreams: Lost and Found, 1980

Shangri-la Shangri-la is a Tibetan Utopia depicted in James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon (1933), frequently used as a type of an earthly paradise, a place of retreat from the worries of modern civilization.

He gave a quick, nervous cough. 'Jesus. You can run but you can't hide. I figured that place was Shangri-la. But it's getting as bad up there as it is in the city.'

TED WOOD A Clean Kill, 1995

Utopia Utopia (literally 'no-place') is an imaginary place or condition of ideal perfection. The word was first used as the name of an imaginary island, governed on a perfect political and social system, in the book Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE The Scarlet Letter, 1850

In Mr Carleton's salesman's Utopia the only reason prospective buyers ever gave for not purchasing stock was that they doubted it to be a promising investment.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD The Beautiful and Damned, 1922

We got talking about the permissive sexual mores of the ancient Polynesians, which Yolande described as 'the kind of sexual Utopia we were all pursuing in the sixties - free love and nudity and communal child-rearing!

DAVID LODGE Paradise News, 1992