How we cite our quotes: Citations follow this format: (Act.Scene)
Quote #1
Septimus: Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat's last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y, and z are whole numbers each raised to the power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2. (1.1)
Septimus is purposely being funny here by juxtaposing two facts that have very different cultural weight – one most people would consider appropriate for him to be teaching Thomasina, and the other might get some members of the PTA coming after him with torches and pitchforks. But by putting these two sentences in such close contact, Septimus makes us wonder: why is it that some kinds of knowledge are often considered acceptable while others are treated as obscene?
Quote #2
Thomasina: Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, xs against ys in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? (1.3)
While Septimus and others are happy to leave math in the realm of the abstract, drawing pictures of perfectly regular forms that don't actually exist outside of a textbook, Thomasina wants to bring math into the real world For her, knowledge doesn't have much point unless it describes something in reality.
Quote #3
Valentine: It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. [...] It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong. (1.4)
Valentine's excitement and enthusiasm suggests that facing the unknown doesn't have to be a terrifying prospect: it also opens up the possibility for new discovery. For him, being wrong can be just as satisfying as being right...so long as you realize that you're wrong.
Quote #4
Valentine: You couldn't see to look before. The electronic calculator was what the telescope was for Galileo. [...] There wasn't enough time before. There weren't enough pencils! (1.4)
Arcadia as a whole seems very concerned not just with knowledge, but with the technology that makes knowledge possible. You could be the greatest genius in the world, but if you don't have a computer, there are some things you just can't do...which implies that what we see as genius is at least partially dependent on historical circumstances.
Quote #5
Valentine: Well, it's all trivial anyway. [...] The questions you're asking don't matter, you see. It's like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn't matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge. (2.5)
So knowledge about people isn't knowledge? While the Newton vs. Leibniz smackdown may not matter to whether you do your calculus homework, does that mean it's a pointless question to ask?
Quote #6
Bernard: If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing "When Father Painted the Parlour"? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes." There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. (2.5)
Bernard offers the extreme opposite view of Valentine's, either because he actually believes it or just for dramatic effect. He raises a different set of questions. Does knowledge about distant stars without any direct impact on day-to-day human lives matter? And what does it mean for knowledge to "matter," anyway?
Quote #7
Hannah: Is there anything in it?
Valentine: In what? We are all doomed? Oh yes, sure – it's called the second law of thermodynamics.
Hannah: Was it known about?
Valentine: By poets and lunatics from time immemorial.
Hannah: Seriously.
Valentine: No. (2.5)
While Valentine may be joking in mentioning "poets and lunatics" here, Hannah later quotes a Byron poem that bears an eerie resemblance to that second law. Perhaps literary knowledge and scientific knowledge aren't entirely in opposition after all.
Quote #8
Hannah: Don't you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect symbol. An idiot in the landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a hermit's hut!
Valentine: You don't know that.
Hannah: Oh, but I do. I do. Somewhere there will be something . . . if only I can find it. (2.5)
While Hannah is often the voice of reason in the play, insisting on more evidence than a CSI investigator, here she sounds much more like Bernard. Is she succumbing to bad thinking? Is she suggesting that knowledge doesn't have to be based on hard evidence to be valid, at least for the person who believes it? What?
Quote #9
Hannah: It's all trivial – your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. (2.7)
Here we get Hannah's manifesto: if she had a Facebook page, this would definitely be in her profile. While Valentine is excited by the possibilities opened up by the unknown, Hannah goes a step further – for her, not knowing is the point. If we could know once and for all, for certain, that would take the fun out of it.
Quote #10
Septimus: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore.
Thomasina: Then we will dance. (2.7)
Yep, we're all doomed, but let's dance anyway. The play raises the question, if the universe is falling apart and we can't stop it, what should we do? Thomasina's answer (party like it's 1899!) may seem frivolous, but are there any better options?