The Clouds

What do you think of somebody who enters his play into a contest, writes himself into the script as a character (playing himself), and in the middle of the dialogue, gives himself a longwinded nonsequitur of a soliloquey, in which he berates all the other playwrites in the contest, and pleads for the judges to award him first prize? (and it ain't subtle):

"And now, Gentlemen of the Jury, a few brief words about the Prize,
and the solid benefits you stand to gain by voting for The Clouds-
as you certainly should, in any case..."

Aristophanes: smartass

I know. Awesome, huh?

That's just the beginning. Aristophanes doesn't care much for Socrates, so he makes the entire play a series of shots and parodies of him. It's the story of an average Joe show more (Strepsaides) who enrolls in Socrates' private academy ("The Thinkery" !), and all the absurd and mostly useless lessons he learns there:

1) How to measure small distances by dipping a mite's feet in wax, and then counting his footsteps between points.

2) A philosophical debate about whether gnats fart through their asses, or maybe through their mouths.

3) The revealed secret that the cosmos is actually an oven, and we who think we are people are actually little bits of charcoal, blazing away.

4) The secret oath of the Thinkery:
To abstain from alcohol and the company of women;
To devote oneself to the Thinkery code...
to wrangle,
to niggle,
to haggle,
to battle,
-a loyal soldier of the Tongue, conducting [one]self always like a true philosopher!

5) How ducks should be called, so as to differentiate between the male and the female. ducks and duchesses


Socrates: punk'd

So, there's a lot of fun at Socrates' expense, and it spills over into the surreal in places. In one funny/bizarre section, the embodied forms of PHILOSOPHY and SOPHISTRY get into a fight:

Sophistry: "I may be called mere Sophistry, but I'll chop you down to size. I'll refute you!
Philosophy: "You? Refute me?!? How?"
Sophistry: "With unconventionality. With ultramodernity. With unothodox ideas.
Philosophy: "For whose present vogue we are indebted to this audience of imbeciles and asses."
.
.
.
Sophistry: "Why you Decrepitude! You Doddering Dotard!"
Philosophy: "Why you Precocious Pederast! You Palpable Pervert!"
Sophistry: "Pelt me with roses!"
Philosophy: "You Toadstool! O Cesspool!"
Sophistry: "Wreath my hair with lilies!"
Philosophy: "Why, you Parriside!"
Sophistry: "Shower me with gold! Look, don't you see I welcome your abuse?"
Philosophy: "Welcome it, Monster? In my day we would have cringed with shame."
Sophistry: "Whereas now we're flattered. Times change. The vices of your age are stylish today."
Philosophy: "Repulsive whippersnapper!"
Sophistry: "Disgusting Fogey!"
Philosophy: "Becuase of YOU the schools of Athens
stand deserted; one whole generation
chaffers in the streets, gaping and idle.
Mark my words: someday this city
shall learn what you have made her men:
effeminates and fools."
Sophistry: "Ugh. You're squalid."
Philosophy: "Whereas you've become a Dandy and a Fop!..."

(etc)

You see why this play is a lot of fun, don't you?

Maybe the best shot Aristophanes gets in is when Strepsiades enrolls his son at the Thinkery, and instructs Socrates: "But remember, Socrates: I want him able to make an utter mockery of the Truth."

BURRRRRRNNNNNNNNN!

What's wrong? Don't you like making fun of Socrates? That's okay; this play has masturbation jokes too. (page 71; "I used to make rhythm with this one.")

You gotta have some of them. And dick jokes too. Aristophanes throws a few in, for good measure.

Then a few callouts to the locale and audience:

Socrates (points to a map): See here? This here is Athens.
Strepsiades: That's Athens? Don't be absurd. Why, I don't see a single lawcourt in session.*

*Athenians being apparently renouned for their love of litigation.

The crowd loves it when you tailor it to them.
(every band ever to play in Seattle: "Hello Seattle!!!"

Crowd: Wooooohooooooo!!!)

Later on, Aristophanes takes it all back, and berates the audience (p116):

Strepsaides:

"Well, numskulls, what are you gawking at?
Yes! You down there!
You dumb sheep with pigeon faces!
Cats' paws of cleverer men!
Any sophist's suckers!
Oh, shysterbait! Generation of dupes!
Poor twerps!
O Audience of asses, you were born to be taken!

-And now, Gentlemen, a song:
A little ditty of my own, dedicated to me and my son,
offering us warmest congratulations on our successes.

Hahahahah! Something about Aristophanes reminds me of Morrisey. Am I way off base with that? Something about the smart-assedness of it all strikes me as very Morriseyesque.

Q: So where does the "Clouds" title come from?
A: Socrates doesn't worship Zeus; in fact he denies Zeus exists at all. Instead, The Thinkery is devoted to worshipping the Clouds... goddesses who live in the sky and appear to mortal men as the puffy white shape-shifting forms we call clouds.

Strepsaides: But what I want to know is this: why if these ladies are really Clouds, they look like women? For honest Clouds aren't women.

Socrates: Then what do they (i.e. clouds) look like?

Strepsaides: I don't know for sure. Well, they look like mashed-up fluff, not at all like women. No, by Zeus. Women have... er... noses.

If you're in the right mood, this play is a barrel of laughs... or if not quite bust-a-gut, laugh-out-loud humor, at least it will put a smile on your face a dozen times or so. While there are some plays I'd rather see performed than read myself (e.g. Shakespeare's [book:Coriolanus|108171]), I think this was better to read, because- honestly- there are bits which needed explaining, and it was more gratifying to go to the notes in the back of the book and be let in on the jokes than to have them wizzz over my head in a performance.

Eventually this thing develops a plot. Strepsiades enrolls his son Pheidippides in the Thinkery, for the purpose of learning clever arguments to get out of paying debts. And Pheidippides does indeed learn this skill, but an unintended consequence of his education is that he learns disrespect of his father and his old ways. Pheidippides whips Strepsaides, and talks nonsense circles around him about all sorts of ridiculous things.

My favorite exchange in this part goes like this:

Stepsaides: Show a little respect for Zeus.
Pheidippides: Zeus? You old fogy, are you so stupid you still believe there's such a thing as Zeus?
Stepsaides: Of course there's a Zeus.
Pheidippides: Not any more there isn't. Convection-Principle's in power now. Zeus has been deported.
Stepsaides: That's a lie! A lot of cheap Convection-Principle propaganda circulated by those windbags at the Thinkery! I was brainwashed! Why they told me the whole universe was a pot-bellied stove...

In a heartwarming denouement, father and son join forces and burn Socrates' school to the ground. Now how's that for a feel-good family-friendly ending? show less

Strepsiades was a terrible character, and I adored him. The way that he stomped on everything insightful or serious with a fart joke should have pissed me off, but instead it had me laughing out loud. My favorite part is near the beginning, where the chorus comes on for the first time. This must have been hilarious seen on the stage. Socrates is revering the chorus and going, "O great Clouds!" and so forth, and Strepsiades says, with the same religious fervor, that he's so amazed and enraptured by him that if it's allowed, and even if it's not, he's so awed that he must take a crap. I am not at all a fan of crude humor like that on a general basis, but for whatever reason, I find myself unfailingly amused.

The whole thing was a mixture show more of the terribly wonderful. It was interesting to see Socrates being approached as a regular guy with a bit of an ego problem. In my encounters of learning about Socrates, he'd always held some heavy connotations of serious thought, though he did have his light-hearted moments. It's both ridiculous and hilarious to see Socrates, such a revered scholar, being made fun of. Whenever I read Plato, I now have this impression in the back of my mind of some guy swinging down on a wire and talking in a haughty voice about ducks. I'd say the play did its job. show less

It is quite a transition to read this comedy just after having read some 20 tragedies (by the great masters Aeschyles, Sophocles, and Euripides). And although a formal evolution can certainly be observed in the latter from static to dynamic, from solemn sublimity to somewhat more deeply felt interaction, compared to them Aristophanes simply offers a verbal barrage: an accumulation of jokes, satirical references, and puns. Vulgar jests? Certainly, but only to a limited extent (I read among experts that this play is not representative of Aristophanes in that regard).

The content, then. Here, Aristophanes puts the Sophists through the wringer, the itinerant teacher-philosophers who justify what is crooked and vice versa. And he does so with show more gusto, with a word contest between Right and Crooked as the highlight. Amusing and witty, certainly, but compared to the heavy human dramas of the tragedians, this pales in comparison.

And additionally, regarding the form again: I can’t read Ancient Greek, but I wonder if Aristophanes' verbal barrage, the many puns, and witty rhetorical tricks can be done justice in a translation at all. I do see that every translator tries to get the most out of their creative abilities, but frankly, it seems like a hopeless task to me.

For the time-bound aspects of this comedy, see my History account on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6051845829.

Disclaimer: I'm reading and reviewing classic ancient Greek plays, more or less in chronological order. But I'm not giving a rating. How could I, given their age? I'll make an exception only when a play is exceptional and still strikes an emotional and/or intellectual chord. show less

While this edition suffers from a too modern translation The Clouds resonates, all too self aware, castigating the audience, slurring them actually. This great farce takes aim at the secular university and the godless wiseasses it produces.

As Goodreads friend Sologdin noted, it is intriguing to see Socrates cast as a pre-Socratic. Much like Derrida’s post card.

A middle class father is deep in debt as a result of his son's lavish lifestyle. Father hopes education will allow the son to use logic and rhetoric to defeat these legal challenges. Son learns well and eventually canes his father.

The pale effeminate world of the sophists is ridiculed at every turn, though I wasn’t expecting the apocalyptic conclusion.

I recommend this satire show more at those who can still giggle with Deconstruction. show less

This was really decent. It was a play full of high, and low, comedy as well as interesting (historically and fictionally) characters as well as situations that you could appreciate the humour of. I didn't think I would like this very much, but I was proven wrong from almost the beginning. For those who like drama, classics, or Greek literature- you should read this and give it a try.

3.75 stars.

Aristophanes won some of the drama competitions under a pseudonym before he was old enough to enter. He references both Aeschylus (as a conservatives choice) and Euripides (as liked by the new "wrong logic" generation of youth). In addition, he continues his debate/feud with Cleon. More than anything, this work represents the same criticisms put against Socrates during his trial -- that he was leading the youth of the time away from discipline and tradition. The victory of Wrong Logic in his debate with Right logic demonstrates the twisted argument that men found so hard to refute. The sexual innuendo is also thick throughout the interaction with Socrates and his students. I often wonder how much the content has been altered from the show more original when the rhyme is this good. It was fun to read, aloud even, and would make a great speech excerpt. The thought process by Strepsiades is hilarious in places, and the words of the Clouds (chorus) are quite powerful. show less

Of the Aristophanes plays I have read, Clouds has always been my favorite. I read the Arrowsmith translation in school and though it was great. This time around, I read the Henderson, and I liked it even more.

Here's an excerpt that should give you a feel for the translators' differing styles. Socrates has just swung onstage, suspended in a wicker basket. Strepsiades, hollering from the floor, asks him why he is dangling in the air instead of standing on the ground. Socrates responds with the following speech.

Henderson:

Never
Could I make correct celestial discoveries
except by thus suspending my mind, and mixing
my subtle head with the air it's kindred with.
If down below I contemplate what's up,
I'd never find aught; for the earth by natural show more force
draws unto itself the quickening moisture of thought.
The very same process is observable in lettuce.

Arrowsmith:

Precisely. You see,
only by being suspended aloft, by dangling
my mind in the heavens and mingling my rare thought
with the ethereal air, could I ever achieve strict
scientific accuracy in my survey of the vast empyrean.
Had I pursued my inquiries from down there on the ground,
my data would be worthless. The earth, you see, pulls down
the delicate essence of thought to its own gross level.
Much the same thing happens with watercress. show less