104. Aristophanes

Performance of the "Verein für historisch-moderne Festspiele" at the Neues Theater, Berlin

Two Aristophanic comedies have been staged by the association of artists and writers, which is now organizing a "historical-modern festival" in Berlin. The "Birds" and the "Women's State". The "Birds" are considered to be the Greek mocker's most witty work, but also the most difficult to interpret. The poet speaks here more boldly than anywhere else about the relationship between humans and the gods. And this always creates very strange intellectual bubbles in the minds of interpreters and commentators. Especially when it comes to a poet whose greatness cannot be dismissed because of the famous asylum for those without judgment, called "consensus gentium" - consensus of all. Everyone wants to recognize that. And that is why he puts into such recognized greatness everything that, in his opinion, deserves recognition. A bad story happened to the writer of the "official playbill" of the "historical-modernists". This writer is one of the many Nietzsche followers. So he wrote about the content of "The Birds": "Two people have fled from Athens and the confusing hustle and bustle of life, end up in a lonely place among the bird world and establish an intermediate state with it, the so-called "Cloud Cuckoo Land", which has the purpose of thwarting the traffic between humans and gods through a kind of trade barrier. In a humorous way, the entire old world of gods and all superstitious religious systems within it are mocked by replacing them with a bird mythology. The gods are starved to death; and in the end, the human race, represented by the gods, takes over the world. The "thunderbolts of Zeus" are now in the hands of man himself, in the spirit of Friedrich Nietzsche's sentence: "All the gods are dead, now we want the superman to live." The comic gentleman who wrote these lines does not seem to have the slightest sense of humor, for he takes the man who appears at the end of the Aristophanic poem with the "thunderbolts of Zeus" seriously. In the spirit of Aristophanes, however, this "superman" cannot be understood in any other way than as the frog that wants to inflate itself until it is as big as an ox. This man is supposed to be an image of irresistible comedy, incredibly ridiculous in that he, the dwarf, stands before us with the attributes of the great god. A dwarf who strives with all his might to become a giant can be a tragic hero; a dwarf who stands up and says: "Behold, I am a giant" is simply ridiculous. And Aristophanes probably only wanted to portray the little man who stands up and thinks he is a god.

Let's take a look at the comedy. Two dissatisfied Athenians, Ratefreund and Hoffegut, emigrate from their city. It has gradually become a bit uncomfortable for them. If you think back to the time in which "The Birds" is set, this seems understandable. It was a time when the citizens of this city were constantly harassed by people who had a fine nose for anything "dangerous to the state". Alcibiades was active at the time. A capable but ambitious man. He wanted to increase Athens' power through major conquests in Sicily. There were opponents of this enterprise. The inhabitants of the city were divided into two camps. Mutual hostility between the parties led to a really uncomfortable situation. There may have been enough people who thought they could lead a more comfortable life abroad, in the manner of Ratefreund and Hoffegut. There must have been people in Athens who imagined salvation abroad in the most rosy colors. They were the right food for Aristophanes; natures like his see through people. He is not inclined to believe that people are better in one place than in another. The folly of his fellow citizens casts an irresistible spell over him. He feels too weak to improve the fools; but he feels all the stronger to ridicule them. And so he may have said to himself: You are fools in your hometown because you make your lives miserable. But once you are fools, you will do no better abroad. And so he wanted two emigrants to do something really stupid. It is the worldly wisdom of fools to grumble about everything that exists; why shouldn't Ratefreund and Hoffegut think of accusing the gods because they have arranged the world so badly that it is unpleasant for Ratefreund and Hoffegut in it. Modern discontent is somewhat tamer. It merely demands a different form of government. Ancient discontents want different gods. Ratefreund and Hoffegut enter the realm of the birds and want to turn them into gods. And now Aristophanes spins this idea out. As a real prankster, he describes the conditions in the newly emerging realm of birds and gods, called "Cloud Cuckoo Land". He unloads everything he has on his mind against human folly. And finally, he also depicts the unequal struggle in all its comedy that arises between the bird-human realm and the gods. Man even takes the basileia (dominion) from the realm of the gods and holds the lightning bolts of Zeus in his hand.

But this man has only pushed the gods from their thrones in his imagination.

The secret of comedy lies in the fact that a complete contradiction appears before us as real. For Aristophanes, it is such a contradiction that the small, weak man rebels against the gods. That is why he makes him appear with the attributes of the gods' power. One should laugh at the little man who appears to be a god.

The "women's state" follows the same recipe. The women disguise themselves as men and decide in the people's assembly that the rule of the state should fall into their hands. They want to realize all the ideals of human coexistence, from the community of goods to free love. By presenting this ideal to us as real, it is intended to make itself ridiculous.

Of all people, the humorist is perhaps the most difficult to understand. We know that there is a deep seriousness in the soul of the truly great humorist. But he cannot give proper expression to this seriousness. The humorist cannot shape what his longing senses. But everything he sees appears as a mockery of this seriousness. And he gives us the mockery. He keeps the seriousness to himself. So it is with Aristophanes. We sense that behind all his mockery lies a serious view of the world. We believe him that this world view gave him the right to mock Socrates. But what this world-view is, we do not know. We wonder in vain what Aristophanes thought about the old gods. Did he want to restore them or was he dreaming of a new worldview?

We must not forget that the Sophists were almost contemporaries of Aristophanes. And we don't really know much about the Sophists either. Did they want to ridicule their contemporaries because they had fallen away from the old good culture, or was a new culture dawning in the souls of these mockers?

But because we ourselves like to keep our seriousness to ourselves, we enjoy the mockers so much. If we only suspect that they are as serious about the world as we are, then we laugh heartily with them and are quite happy that they present us with something to laugh about.

There are few proofs of human power as powerful as laughter. We always feel a certain exaltation at what we can laugh at. Anyone who gets excited about the weaknesses of his fellow human beings is an unliberated person, because he suffers from these weaknesses. But he to whom these weaknesses appear as foolishness laughs and is therefore a free man. He no longer suffers. And Aristophanes appears to us as someone who laughs. He did more than anyone else to overcome the old world view. He showed us what it had become - and we could laugh at it.

The fact that they have reminded us of this great laughter should not be forgotten by the entrepreneurs of the "historical-modern festival".