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Introduction
Introduction
Twice a year at the Dionysian Festivals in Athens writers of comedy were
invited to compete for the three drama prizes. At the City Dionysia of 414
B.C., a tense year in the apparently endless war with Sparta, Aristophanes
entered his brilliant fantasy, The Birds. For some reason it took only the
second prize: the first went to Ameipsias for his Komastai, a comedy that has
not survived; but it is clear that the audience received The Birds with favor,
and even now, more than two millennia later, we can sense much of the delight
and some of the fun that Athens found in it. It is not so general a favorite
as The Frogs, perhaps, nor has it the scandalous domestic force that makes
Lysistrata irresistible; but its vivacity, its otherworldliness, and the
ironic twist of its resolution make it one of the most engaging, as it is
certainly the most beautiful, of the eleven plays of Aristophanes that have
come down to us.
Comedy withers more quickly than tragedy because so much of its material
is drawn from ordinary life, from men as they are. Tragedy idealizes; comedy,
in general, does not. (Aristotle says that tragedy represents men as better
than they are, comedy as worse; but he was thinking of the satiric and
lampooning aspects of comedy as social attack.) It is comedy, not tragedy,
that holds a mirror up to nature. True, daily life has implications as
profound as those that any tragedy could deal with; we, of all men, scarcely
need to be reminded of that; but it is the way of comedy to lighten these
implications by providing a happy solution of the problems involved. A "happy
ending," in the widest sense, is essential to the comic plot. At any level,
from the highest to the lowest, the boy gets the girl, or the man achieves
salvation, or some other desired end is achieved after a struggle. There need
be no laughter, nor even amusement in the ordinary sense: no one in his right
mind would turn to Dante`s Comedy, the greatest of them all, for this kind of
entertainment. Comedy is the representation of difficulties overcome, of
success achieved, by someone who is recognizably one of us. However, if it is
satirical - and all of Aristophanes` comedies are - it is almost bound to
concern itself with local matters, with abuses, scandals, and otherwise
notable situations that the audience will be familiar with. That is to say, it
will be topical; and it is this topicality, so endearing to its original
audience, that makes it wear less well as time passes. The tragedy of an
Antigone or an Oedipus is untouched by time, beyond time; a comedy like The
Birds is timestruck at the heart.
For what becomes of a topical allusion as the years go by? Shakespeare`s
audience in 1609 may have laughed itself helpless over the porter in Macbeth
with his drunken fumbling of the word "equivocation." That was a local joke,
just as "I need him" (to take a rapidly fading example) is a local joke today.
Topical humor very quickly congeals into footnotes, and nothing is less funny
than a joke that needs scholarly explanation. It is the more remarkable, then,
that Aristophanes is still so triumphantly funny. He is more topical than
Shakespeare, his poetry is full of local allusions, many of them impenetrable;
but the humor flashes and burns even in the most desperate obscurities, and
though we may often be confused, we are not bored. It is a victory of poetry
over matter. We enjoy Aristophanes not because we perceive that his
circumstances and our own are alike, but because he enables us to pass with
laughter beyond the circumstances into the inner precincts of man`s nature.
The comic material implements his vision, but it is the vision, not the
material, that counts. What moves us is the transforming power of an art that
takes "men as they are" and makes them more than they are, not merely by
exaggeration, not by turning them into Types, clearly not by generalization or
abstraction, but by a mode of perception and re-creation that is ultimately as
inexplicable as any other of the mysteries of poetry. Happily we do not need
to explain. It is enough to accept, to be grateful to whatever art it is that
can take a cranky old down-easter like Pisthetaerus, the amiably unlovable
hero of The Birds, and turn him into a god without jeopardizing his humanity.
The highest comic impulse ends in a fusion of the human with the divine.
I have spoken of Aristophanes` "vision." The word is not quite reputable
today: we are subjected to so many "visions" on every side; but in this
instance the term is apt enough. The Birds is a vision: it has variously been
called a Utopia, a dream of escape, a romantic fugue. Some authorities have
seen in the founding of Cloudcuckooland an allegory of the great Sicilian
Expedition of 415 B.C., - an enterprise which, if it had succeeded, might well
have brought Athens control of Sicily and of the whole Mediterranean world.
Others have tried to identify Pisthetaerus with Alcibiades, recklessly and
destructively intent upon indulgence at the expense of the public good. Still
others have pronounced it a fantasy of evasion, a retreat from an intolerable
actuality into the never-never land of dream. "The prototype of Utopian
escapism," one of them writes, "the last rejection of human ineptitude lying
(as with Swift) in the rejection of the human form." Everyone agrees that the
topical references are fewer than we should expect from Aristophanes at this
point in his career, and it is this peculiarity that lends color to the theory
of escape. Yet the theory is uneasy. We know little about Aristophanes, and
the great bulk of his work has been lost; but the impulse to avoid an ugly
actuality is not evident in the other plays that we have, and the idea of
disengagement, however temporary, loses much of its force when we consider
that the savagely explicit Lysistrata was written three years later than The
Birds. If the latter is a vision, it may be a Utopia vision, but a Utopia
vision in reverse: that is to say, instead of being an Ideal State, the kind
of commonwealth that Plato describes in the Republic, it is an ironically
contemplated surrogate State where everything is as bad as in real life, only
bad in a different way. The injustice of the Birds has been substituted for
the injustice of mankind, and that is all.
The reference to Swift seems equally insecure. It is true that in that
appalling last book of Gulliver`s Travels Swift seems to "reject the human
form." Here we have a real Utopia; but the happy citizens are horses, not men,
and it is the human form of the Yahoos that symbolizes everything that is
brutish and disgusting. If final illumination is madness, Swift is mad in
these pages, and it would be a blessing if the madness were contagious.
However that may be, the elevation of the Houyhnhnms and the abasement of the
Yahoos can not be taken as a "rejection of the human form." The noble Horses
are not really horses at all, but men idealized. Their customs, their beliefs,
even their speech (since we hear them mostly in translation, as it were) are
equine only per accidents; what they do and what they think are what men at
their best are capable of doing and thinking. By making them horses Swift is
merely employing the shock technic of the Beast Fable. He is not rejecting
humanity. He is not saying that the world would be better if it were
controlled by noble animals. He is saying that we men have debased our
humanity, forgotten it, and so rejected it; that we behave like the bestial
Yahoos in violation of the moral order; and that consequently the best beast,
the virtuous Houyhnhnm, is in every way our superior. I do not pretend that
"A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms" is an agreeable story; but if you
are looking for the affirmative, loving element in social satire, you will
find more of it here than anywhere else in the Travels.
Aristophanes is hardly comparable. In his Fable there is not even a
superficial rejection of the human form. Cloudcuckooland is full of birds, of
course, and the hero himself becomes birdlike to the extent of sprouting wings
and acquiring a comic beak; but the human form is never lost sight of. "Are
you laughing at me?" the Hoopoe indignantly asks at one point. "No, by Zeus,"
he is told, "we`re laughing at that absurd beak of yours." "Ah," he says,
"that`s what Sophocles did to me in that play of his." Exactly. The human
being is always there - "immanent," we might say - beneath the feathers,
behind the beak. Like Bottom, he has been "translated," but he is no more (and
no less) a Hoopoe than Bottom is an Ass. His pretty wife is a Nightingale; but
the poet represents her as a flute girl, beautifully adorned, wearing a bird
mask. The bird artisans and soldiers are Cranes, Storks, Kites, and the like -
nominally birds; but the fun lies in the instant perception of the human
beneath the inhuman disguise. It is precisely because the Birds look so much
like birds that Aristophanes` device is so chilling. For a moment we had
thought that a different order of animal life might bring a different and
happier world to pass, but the ironic truth is that the Birds are only
feathered men and that Cloudcuckooland is only an aerial Athens. Aristophanes
is even more disheartening than Swift; for the Houyhnhnms at least give us a
glimpse of what men might be like, but the Birds provide no hope at all.
The Birds is fantasy, but it is not a fantasy of escape. Oddly, though,
it begins with an escape. Two respectable old men are taking a walk through
difficult country. Their names are Pisthetaerus and Euelpides - that is to
say, "Faithful Friend" and "Natural Optimist" - and they are householders of
ancient Athens; but when we have made allowances for the more than two
thousand years that separate us from them, we find that they are not very
different from anxious citizens that we meet every day. They are merely more
irascible. They are voters tried beyond endurance, and that is why they are
taking their walk - away from Athens, away from taxes, party commitments, and
civic duties, away from the informers, the packed courts, the inspirational
clergymen, the homosexuals, the generals and admirals, the futile theorists of
uplift, the city planners, the New Science, the whole sorry mess. They are
heading north - north is the direction of witchcraft and improbable solutions
- to meet a person named Terues. This Terues, if they have remembered their
mythology, is a notable. His story is a compound of rape, incest, murder, and
cannibalism; but the point is that he himself, who was once King of Thrace,
has magically turned into a Hoopoe - a flamboyant and filthy kind of hawk -
and is now the ruler of All Birds. Pisthetaerus and his friend meet Tereus,
ingratiate themselves with him, and convince him that they are the harbingers
of a new order - for the Birds, of course. It is the Birds, they tell him, who
should inherit the heavens and the earth. Birds antedate everything, even the
Olympian gods. Primal creation proceeded from an Egg, and Zeus and his
supporters are a usurping conspiracy. As for mankind, it is despicable and
powerless. Then why not establish a Bird City State? Pisthetaerus will show
Tereus how. What a marvelous concept, to seize the air between heaven and
earth! Birds could then dictate to gods and men alike, since Olympus would be
cut off from the necessary incense of ritual sacrifice, and the earth would be
open to devastating raids from the sky. The Birds are persuaded. The aerial
City is built, fortified, and dedicated with exquisite rites. Tereus may be
the nominal King, but Pisthetaerus is more glorious still: deified, the human
Founder marries a goddess, herself one of the defeated Olympians, and becomes
the patron divinity of the State. The new realm is named Nepeaokokkyria, and
the word means Cloudcuckooland.
Well, this is a kind of escape - but for Pisthetaerus, not for us. Note
what happens once the City is established. Pisthetaerus meets and deals with
all sorts of unwelcome visitors from abroad. One of them is a City Planner. As
a matter of fact, he is a historical character, one Meton, and hence a true
Topical Allusion; and Pisthetaerus drives him away. An Oracle Monger, a dealer
in inspirational literature, is physically assaulted. A would-be Parricide - a
most beguiling young man - is drafted into the army and sent off to the
equivalent of Korea. And so it goes. On the celestial side we have the goddess
Iris, the Heavenly Messenger, who is grossly insulted and sent weeping away;
we have Prometheus, absurdly disguised as an Elect Maiden of the Panathenian
Escort; and finally we have a Peace Delegation from Olympus composed of no
less than three divinities, all of them slapstick gods. It is noteworthy, but
it was to be expected, that every one of the visitors from earth represents
some aspect of civic evil, and that they are all defeated by violence or by
the threat of violence. What was less to be expected is the contemptuous
treatment of the gods. We may say that this was part of the comedic tradition,
that blasphemy of a comic sort was licensed at the Dionysian Festivals.
Nevertheless there is something more than ritual license in this glorification
of everything that Greek moderation dreaded - the exaltation of a man, the
degradation of the immortal gods. Our ideas of blasphemy are not those of the
Greeks, but there is more in the apotheosis of Pisthetaerus than traditional
excess. I think it is philosophical irony.
Clouds and cuckoos are volatile and unstable. A State founded upon a
dream of them may satisfy a Pisthetaerus, but Aristophanes would not be the
moralist that he is if he were to be content with this much. We must not be
deceived by the appearance of a New Deal. Is not Cloudcuckooland founded upon
deception and injustice? Even before Pisthetaerus` triumph there have been
oppressive hints of what is in store for the Birds: the very roasts for his
wedding feast are roast bird subversives - a shockingly prompt comment on the
ways of idealistic reform, but shocking only in its promptness. Dubious
oratory, slippery theorizing, and the strategy of bribery and unscrupulous
blockade may be necessary to political reform, but they do not suggest the
return of the Golden Age. Cloudcuckooland is a beginning again, but in the old
way and in the same hopeless direction. Human pride and human excess may be
disguised in all sorts of ways, but they still challenge Nemesis. No vision of
escape works in this way: you do not surmount your vexations when you picture
them as inevitable, unchangeable, though you may manage to learn resignation.
Aristophanes is smilingly unconsoling. The beauty of his writing, the
unearthly music, the brilliant bird pageant, together with the strong male
delight in the contentions and savors of living - these qualities, powerful as
they are, should not blind us to the ironic judgment that lies at the heart of
this poem. The incantation of art only intensifies the central disenchantment.
I should say a few words about the present translation. It is described
as "composite," and its origin is - to me, at any rate - dark. I do not know
who made the original prose version upon which it is based. In any case, it
was published privately and anonymously, and it had been circulating more or
less obscurely when Professors Oates and O`Neill included it, with many
alterations made in the interests of liveliness and a closer approach to
sayable English, in their two-volume collection of Greek drama. Since then it
has undergone at least two more revisions, for one of which I myself am
responsible; but the diction and the spirit of the original translation are so
idiosyncratic as to defy this kind of tinkering, however hard an editor may
try. That is to say, it has its own integrity; and it has, moreover, the
virtue of being literal. If we can distinguish what a man said from the way he
said it - a distinction that has its difficulties - our composite translation
gives us the prose sense of what Aristophanes said.
Needless to say, the Greek is not prose. To speak only of form: the
metrical variety and the strophic complexity of Aristophanes` poetry can not
be too much admired: his lightness, his speed, his virtuosity, are among the
wonders of art. A prose translation will not even suggest these qualities;
quite properly, it will not try to do so. It is difficult enough to suggest
them in verse. Swinburne has probably come closest in his version of the
parabasis of this play:
It was Chaos and Night at the first, and the blackness of darkness, and Hell`s
broad border,
Earth was not, nor air, neither heaven; when in depths of the womb of the dark
without order
First thing first-born of the black-plumed Night was a wind-egg hatched in her
bosom,
Whence timely with seasons revolving again sweet Love burst out as a blossom,
Gold wings glittering forth of his back, like whirlwinds gustily turning . . .
The lines have something of the anapestic plunge, the color, though there
is a shrillness, a windy nervousness, that would make an extended reading
uncomfortable. But even a flamboyant tone serves to remind us that
Aristophanes is color and movement, and that a reduction to the neutrality of
prose is a betrayal. Most translation, for that matter, is betrayal; we have
to choose among compromises. If we bear in mind that what we are reading is
never more than the ghost of what the original poet said - and a poor ghost at
that, raised by the private mutterings of a medium very frequently uncertain
in the seance - we shall at any rate not be led astray. Our pose translation
keeps a certain faith. We can perceive some of the substance though we miss
the form. Possibly that is all we had a right to expect.
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