The Epilogue of Blood Meridian, Part 1

The judges gun in the novel Blood Meridian has the inspription Et In Arcadia Ego. The 1638 painting titled Et In Arcadia Ego above is in part a response to Virgils use of the adage. The adage has a delightful history of being misunderstood and having several interpretaions. I believe this is a handy metaphor for reading Blood Meridian. The inscription, Et In Arcadia Ego on the tomb in Poussins tow paintings here,is generally felt to mean that death is also in Arcadia. It also is translated to mean the person in the tomb once lived and enjoyed life...it suggests that life is brief, mortality is there and to be appreciative of living.

This tradition of memento mori is also found in 17th Century Dutch painting of vanitas. Like Poussins painting there are juxtapositions of life: the young vigorous people looking at the tomb and pointing to the inscription. In the Netherlands painting tradition of vanitas often skulls, flowers, time pieces, rotting fruit, books and musical instruments. These objects remind the viewer "that you will die" by representing the perishable. This tradition also suggests that vanity about ones accomplishments and material possesions are also fleeting.
The Arcadian Sheperds, 1627.
Oddly, and I am sure others as they have re-read Blood Meridian have felt this too...but when you read the novel for a second or in some cases several times...it becomes evident that the story is very simple. It is a rollicking adventure story. There are so many layers of meaning. If a novel has half a dozen references, allusions and associations and well...they are juxtaposed and one can concentrate on why or how the image of a card game lays against a scalping. Two or three images speak to each other and the human brain demands a narrative. But in Blood Meridian the layers of meaning and references are so vast...it's as if finally meaning cancels meaning. We have an event horizon of comprehension. Meanings implode on each other. Blood Meridian may be seen as a collage and The Road may be seen as a line drawing.( thanks The Underground Baker) Stripped down both novels are rollicking adventure stories compelling the reader to find their own morality.
Still Life, Willem Claesz Heda, 1634.
The epilogue, to me, is a stage curtain to enhance the novel as a memeto mori. It's a stand back and see where you are but within circling sentences. Intuitively it reminds me that the entire novel makes me feel life is brief. It can be violent and regenrative in a way that I am afraid of because I too am here, and I too will die. I feel relief I am not living in either the setting of Blood Meridian or The Road. In some ways...this gives the kid in Blood Meridian some stature for me. When he tells the judge "you ain't nothin", it represents all the layers of meaning becoming nothing by so many cancelling each other out. These layers of meaning are why no matter how hard we try we can not come up with an adequate criticism forBlood Meridian. Drawing conclusions depends on ones taste and reflects the readers taste rather than the novel. Blood Meridian's text has embraced everything. It is folly to limit it to one interpretaion. Even the kid disappears in the text finally. He may have been murdered but the text does not allow us to confirm or see how far down the rabbit hole (outhouse?) he has fallen. The reader has gone with him as far as tangible account. Even our intellectualism is a vanitas. We are Catrina the calavera. Poussin has included the studio floor in a corner of his painting Extreme Unction I believe the epilogue is a little like the studio floor showing through.

Some readers have felt The Road repudiates Blood Meridian and in some way it does, but in another the two are deeply connected. They seem to me to be different ways of looking at this mischevious skeleton show. One is engaging and creating the chaos of violence in spite of death and one is showing how to take a stand and try to live despite violence and chaos. In similar situations two men act very differently. Maybe the kid does finally take a stand and find he carries the fire: by saying to the judge "you ain't nothin". The father however is taking an overt stand by saying he carries the fire and reject the death cults by not eating other humans. The epilogue at the end of Blood Meridian puts the reader outside the action as does the trout in the stream at the end of The Road. The very diiferent passages both evoke a distance in the reader. Stand back, look at the memento mori.
Arcadian
good ol wikipedia
E.B.
Meaning In The Visual Arts by Erwin Panofsky.