Aristophanes says: "Break wind
superannuated codger, seeking artful
words, priest of subtlest hogwash. You we
like because you swagger all over
town, and roll your eyes,
suffering
every kind of woe, and proud on our account." And
he said that female
singer "goddesses give us judgment,
dialectic,
intelligence, fantasy and
double-talking, eloquence and forceful
talk. Just to hear their
voices
makes my very soul take
wing and fly,
makes me long to chop some logic,
blow some elocutive smoke,
bust big maxims with little
maxims."
"One other aspect of production needs to be
mentioned. Socrates first appears in the play
suspended in
air.
"The means of his suspension is
undoubtedly the mechane, which in
tragedy is mostly used for
gods,
"but in comedy is used for
any
character who needs to fly or just be in
the air." To understand this play
Click Here.
While Socrates was a "spiritual" thinker he
surrounded himself with a band of
young men who were gender-distressed and
revolutionary.
Paul warned about those trying to
"fly away"
or "take up anchor" before he defined "singing" as teaching the
already-spoken words of God in Ephesiand 5:18-19. He warned them that
they should be as forceful in putting away the signs of pagan
lostness as the pagans were in their music:
Let all bitterness, and wrath (hard
breathing), and anger, and clamor, and evil speaking, be put away from you,
with all malice: Ephesians 4:31
Let no man deceive you with
vain
words: for because of these things cometh the wrath of God upon the
children of disobedience. Ephesians 5:6
When the performers actually get angry and
"soar away" the Greek is:
Orge (g3709) or-gay'; from 3713; prop. desire (as a
reaching
forth or excitement of the mind), i.e. (by anal)
violent passion (ire, or [justifiable] abhorence); by impl.
punishment: - anger, indignation, vengeance, wrath.
Orgizo (g3710) or-gid'-zo; from 3709; to provoke or enrage, i.e.
(pass.) become exasperated: -
be angry
(wroth).
Another example of the artificial flying
machine for those who have no flight feathers:
[Enter Thetis aloft on the
mechane.]
Chorus Leader
"Ah, what is this motion, what divine being do I see?
Look, women, see! Here is a god who wings his way
through the bright air and
treads the
ground of horse-pasturing Phthia. Euripides Andromache.
And again, In Euripides Medea
Jason
Where did she kill them? In the house or
outside?
Chorus-Leader
Open the gates and you will see your
slaughtered sons.
Jason
Servants, remove the bar at once so that I may
see a double disaster, these children's
corpses and her who did the deed, so
that for these children's murder I may exact punishment.
[Jason tries to open the doors of the house.
Medea
appears aloft in a winged
chariot upon the mechane,
which rises from behind the skene.]
Medea
Why do you rattle these gates and
try to unbar them, in search of the
corpses and me who did the deed? Cease our toil.
The performers often meet their fate because
they try to fly "too close to the sun" and the actor's wax melts. We remember a
wrestler who flew to his death from just such a mechane because, you see, he had no wing
feathers.
Dramatic Tragedy often resulted in real
paganism because people worshipped the clouds rather than the
Creator of
the clouds. Aristophanes shows how the women musicians as "clouds"
took the place of the god who made the clouds. Why? Because the
sound, lightning and water came from the clouds and not from a
visible god. Or is it just too much hot air?
While the language is earthy it teaches how we
should not
honor preaching clergy and musical worship teams rather than God. The
men and women who presume to be a platform upon which
God lands
or as mediators between mankind and God are just blasts of gas from a
wine filled wineskin belly.
Then, as now, there were
real
teachers who loved their God and were dedicated to telling you about
Him. They
are just as shamed as the spectators of these ancient farces because
they put music, drama and artificial
"flying" machines" in the place of the
God whom they honerably represent for little pay or honor.
In Hebrew:
Anan (h6049)
aw-nan'; a prim. root; to cover; used only as denom. from 605
(thundercloud), to cloud
over; figurative: to act covertly, i.
e. practise magic: -bring, enchanter, Meonemin (responsive singer),
observer of times, soothsayer,
sorcerer.
Aristophanes Clouds
Written 419 B.C.E
Cast
STREPSIADES
PHIDIPPIDES
SERVANT OF STREPSIADES
DISCIPLES OF SOCRATES
SOCRATES
JUST DISCOURSE
UNJUST DISCOURSE
PASIAS, a Money-lender
AMYNIAS, another Money-lender
CHORUS OF CLOUDS
Scene
In the background are two houses, that of Strepsiades and that of
Socrates, the Thoughtery. The latter is small and dingy; the in, terior of the
former is shown and two beds are seen, each occupied.
Socrates (Pretend Socrates
from the Thinkery)
- Clouds
that we revere so greatly,
- show that you have heard my cry!
- You: you heard their voice, their
thunder,
- bellowing with force divine?
Strepsiades
- Honored Clouds, I do revere you;
- let me answer with a fart
- all their thunder: that's how
scared
they've
- made me, that's how terrified!
- Now, if its allowed, or even
- if it's not, I need to crap!
Socrates
- Don't be joking, don't behave like
- one of these comedians!
- Reverence, please! A swarm of
gods are
- stirring and prepared to sing.
Chorus
(I.2)
- Rain-bearing maidens,
- come to the glistening land of
Athena,
- Cecrops' soil with its crop of
fine he-men;
- here is the home of the sanctified
rites
none may speak of,
- the temple in festival open for
worship,
- gifts
for the heavenly gods in abundance,
- temples
on high, sacred statues and
- holy processions and
sacrifice,
- ubiquitous garlands, festivities
here
- throughout the year.
- The onset of spring brings
Dionysian joy,
- maddening dance, the
music of the
flute.
Strepsiades
- Tell me, Socrates, I beg you,
- who these ladies are that
sang
- such a reverent song as this?
- They aren't some kind of heroines?
Socrates
- Not at all. They're clouds from
heaven,
- goddesses for idle men.
- They're the ones who give us
judgment,
- dialectic, intelligence,
- fantasy and
double-talking,
- eloquence and forceful
talk.
Strepsiades
- Just to hear their voices makes my
- very soul take
wing and fly,
- makes me long to chop some logic,
- blow some elocutive
smoke,
- bust big maxims with little
maxims,
- counterpoint an argument!
- Time to see the ladies close
up;
- I'm ready now, if now's the
time!
-
- See how the female prophetesses made souls
fly.
-
- Socrates
- Look this way, then, toward Mt.
Parnes; (N.E. of Athens)
- now I see them coming down
peacefully.
-
- This was the mountain where Apollo had his
Seeker Center. He is Abaddon or
Apollyon.
- See how Lucian of Samosata defined such a
Sucker-Seeker-Center
-
- Strepsiades
- Where? Show them to me.
-
- Socrates
- Quite a bunch are coming on your
side.
-
- Strepsiades
- What's going on?
- I can't see them.
- Socrates
- Look offstage
there.
-
- Strepsiades
- Now I think I'm seeing
them!
-
- Socrates
- Now you've simply got to see
them,
- unless you've got pumpkins in your
eyes!
-
- Strepsiades
- There they are! O reverend ladies!
- They're settling over everything
-
- Socrates
- So, you didn't think that
they were
- goddesses, and disbelieved?
-
- Strepsiades
- Right. I thought that they were
only
- lots of dew and
steam and gas.
-
- Socrates
- Didn't know that they sustain and
- feed a host of specialists,
- sayers of sooth, quack
doctors, [Frogs in Revelation
are Quacks]
- hairy idlers with onyx signet-rings,
- writers of
chorus-bending screeches,
- phony
meteorologists,
- doing nothing useful,
- living only to sing about the Clouds?
-
- Strepsiades
- That's why they write 'O dire
downdraft
- drumming rainclouds radiant',
- 'Locks
of hundred-headed Typho',
- (Typhon, serpent or Egyptian
Set)
- 'blasting squalls of mighty
blow',
- 'airy
scudders crook'd of talon,
- birds breast-stroking up on high',
- 'rain of waters down from
dew-clouds.'
- Then, for
poems like that, they get
- fine fillets of choicest
mullet,
- avian breast of thrush
supreme!
-
- Socrates
- Thanks to the Clouds; don't they deserve
it?
-
- Strepsiades
- Tell me, if they're really
clouds,
- what's the reason why they look
so
- much like mortal women
do?
- Sky-clouds don't resemble these clouds.
-
- Socrates
- What do they look like to you?
-
- Strepsiades
- Can't exactly say. They look like
- balls of wool spread out up
there,
- not at all like women, no sir;
- these are wearing noses, too.
-
- Socrates
- Answer me a little question.
-
- Strepsiades
- Fire away, whatever you like.
-
- Socrates
- Ever gazed up and seen a cloud
that
- looked just like a centaur, or
- a wolf, or bull, perhaps a
leopard?
-
- Strepsiades
- Sure I have; but what's the
point?
-
- Socrates
- Clouds take
any shape they fancy.
- Say they see a shaggy tough,
- one of those hairy (bearded) guys we all know,
- e.g. Xenophantus' son:
(hereditary effeminacy)
- they'll make fun of his
affectations,
- making centaurs of
themselves
-
- (Note: "People too fond of amusement are
thought to be profligate,
- but really they are soft;
- for amusement is rest,
and therefore a slackening of
effort,
- and addiction to amusement is a form of excessive slackness.")
-
- Strepsiades
- Say they spot a man who
steals from
- public funds, as Simon does?
-
- Socrates
- They'll expose his character by
- turning into hungry wolves
-
- Strepsiades
- That's why, when yesterday they
saw
- Cleonymus who lost his shield,
- showing up his cowardice
they
- took the shape of running deer!
("I wonder whence comes this fearful voracity of Cleonymus. 'Tis said that when dining with a rich host, he
springs at
the dishes with the gluttony of a wild beast and never leaves the
bread-bin
until his host seizes him round the knees, exclaiming, "Go, go, good
gentleman, in mercy go, and spare my poor table!" Where is the son of
Cleonymus? Sing me something before going back to the feast. I am at
least certain he will not sing of battles, for his father is far too
careful a man. )
Socrates
- Now it's Cleisthenes they've
spotted:
- see him? Thus the Clouds are women.
[Enter Cleisthenes,
dressed as a woman.] " Euripides singed and depilated him and
disguised him as a woman."
Strepsiades
- Hail then, sovereign Ladies! If
you've
- ever so favored another man,
- break
for me too, Queens almighty,
- a sound that spans the heavens
wide!
Chorus-Leader
- Greetings, superannuated codger,
- seeking artful
words;
- you too, priest of
subtlest hogwash,
- tell us what your heart desires.
- You alone we listen to,
- of all the scientists today,
- Prodicus
(sophist ) excepted, for his
- cleverness and judgment fine.
- You we like because you swagger
- all over town, and roll your
eyes,
- barefoot, suffering every kind o
- woe, and proud on our
account.
Wherefore, when the right moment comes, one must say,
"And give me your attention, for it concerns you as much as myself";
and, "I will tell you such a thing as you have never yet" heard of,
so strange and wonderful. This is what Prodicus used to
do; whenever his hearers began to nod, he would throw in a dash of his
fifty-drachma lecture
Strepsiades
- Mother Earth, the sound they make!
- How holy, august, wonderful!
Socrates
- These are the only gods, my man;
and
- all the rest are fantasies.
Strepsiades
- Come now, don't you all consider
- Zeus on high to be a god?
Socrates
- Zeus, you say? Don't kid me!
- There's no Zeus at all.
Strepsiades
- What's that you say?
- Who makes rain, then? That's what I
would
- like to know right off the bat.
Socrates
- Clouds, of
course! I'll prove it so by
- arguments irrefutable.
- Tell me, have you ever seen it
- raining when there were no clouds?
- Why can't Zeus produce a rainstorm
- while the clouds are out of town?
Strepsiades
- By Apollo, what you say jibes
- well with what you said before.
- When it rained I used to think that
- Zeus was pissing through a sieve!
- Tell me, though, who makes the thunder:
- that's what makes me shake and
quake.
-
This is a
sieve. It was like the hollow, old wineskin
of the witch of Endor. She mumbled into it and the echo and confused
voice was sold as the voice of the gods. The familiar spirit is also
the nebel or harp device. Pagans always told the audience that the
voice coming from stretched strings was the gods living inside. Paul
speaks of a bronze vase or echo-chamber as a hi-tek familiar spirit
while warning the Corinthian churches that such "speaking in tongues"
was not appropriate for the Christian assembly. Lucian of Samosata shows that at the Oracle at Delphi home of Apollo
the thunderer "divining from the sieve" was a tool.
"Alexander, on the other hand,
preferred his native place, urging very truly that an enterprise like
theirs required congenial soil to give it a start,
in the shape of
'fat-heads' and simpletons; that was a fair description, he said, of the
Paphlagonians beyond Abonutichus;
they were mostly
superstitious and well-to-do; one had only to go there with someone to
play the
flute, the
tambourine, or the cymbals, set the proverbial mantic
sieve a-spinning, and there they would all be
gaping as if he were a god from heaven.
Socrates
Clouds do, when they
roll around.
Strepsiades
You'll stop at nothing! But tell
me, how?
Socrates
- Clouds fill up with lots of
water,
- then they're forced to move about,
- sagging soddenly with rain,
- then getting heavier perforce,
- collide with one another,
breaking
- up and making crashing sounds.
Strepsiades
- Who is it, though, that starts them moving?
- Isn't that the work of Zeus?
Socrates
Hardly. It's cosmic Vertigo.
(The circular
dance which made the world go around
and you dizzy-sick at your stomach was believed, like musical sounds
and bodily movements in dance or drunkenness from wine, to be the
real proof that the gods were in your presence. Charismatic speaking
has always been known to produce the same madness.)
Strepsiades
- What?
- Vertigo? I
never realized
- Zeus (Jehovah today or "Je zeus") is gone and
in his place this
- Vertigo's
become the king. (Frenzy or
epilepsy)
- Still you've not explained
- what makes the crashing of a thunder-clap.
Socrates
- Weren't you listening? I said that when
the
- clouds fill up with water, then
- collide with one another, they make
a
- crash because of their density.
Strepsiades
Who would fall for that? Come on
now.
Socrates
- I'll use your body to prove my case.
- Ever gorged yourself with soup at a
- festival,
then got a pain
- there in your belly, and suddenly it
- starts to make a rumbling noise?
-
- Should a wise man utter
vain knowledge, and fill his belly with the east
wind? Job 15:2
Strepsiades
- By Apollo, yes I have! It
- starts to make an awful fuss;
- just a bit of soup starts rumbling,
- making awful thunder-sounds,
- gently at first--bap bap bap
bap--then
- harder--boomba boomba boom--
- then I crap and really thunder--
- whamba wham--just like the clouds!
Or:
Yes, yes, by Apollo I suffer, I get colic, then the stew
sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a
terrific noise.
At first, it's but a little
gurgling pappax, pappax!
then it increases, papapappax! and when I take
my crap (to rhyme with clap),
why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!!
papapappax!!! just like the clouds.
Elihu speaking over his
silent elders said:
I too will have my
say; I too will tell what I know. Job 32:17
For I am
full of
words, and the spirit
within me compels me; Job 32:18
inside I am like
bottled-up
wine, like
new
wineskins ready to
burst. Job 32:19
I must speak and
find
relief; I must open my
lips and reply. Job 32:20
While dramatic
bombast and bawling or cloud-fluffy musical performance may put outrageous pride on display, the thinking or
rational mind will just fall flat on its face with embracement. This
is a consistent theme of the ancient writers. Even Paul said that the
identical performance in Corinth would just make them look mad -
insane!
Plato, in the Republic
warns:
"But the
contemporaries of our age negligently apply a few years of ardent youth,
burning
by turns with the fire of vice;
and when they have attained the
acumen of discerning a doubtful truth,
they immediately become
involved in extraneous
business, retire, and
say farewell to the schools of philosophy;
they sip the
frothy
must of juvenile wit
over the difficulties of philosophy,
and pour out the purified old
wine with economical
care."
Aristophanes knew the eternal battle: those who were
sexually or emotionally abnormal gradually took over the mediating
job from the common people (as at Delphi). Those who usurped
everyones acces to God presumed to stand between mankind and God --
hands waving with bombast so you don't forget. In time such
self-appointed usurpers are promoted from speaking for God to being God's replacement.
As the clouds received the credit rather the
creator, the abnormal musical performers were worshipped in place of
Zeus.
Aristophanes laughs for all of us at the common
comedy played upon those who, as Paul said and we paraphrase: "Fools
love to be fooled" especially if the price is high enough.
Ovid Metamorphoses 12.72.more (More)
- There is a spot
- convenient in the
center of the
world,
- between the land and sea
and the wide heavens,
- the meeting of the
threefold universe.
- From there is seen all
things that anywhere
- exist, although in distant
regions far;
-
- and there all sounds of
earth and space are heard.
- Fame is possessor of this chosen
place,
- and has her habitation in a
tower,
- which aids her view from
that exalted highs.
- And she has fixed there
numerous avenues,
-
- and openings, a thousand,
to her tower
- and no gates with closed
entrance, for the
house
- is open, night and day,
of sounding
brass,
- reechoing the tones of every voice.
- It must repeat
whatever it may hear;
-
- and there's no rest, and
silence in no part.
- There is no clamor; but the
murmuring
sound
- of subdued voices, such as
may arise
- from waves of a far sea,
which one may hear
- who listens at a distance;
or the sound
-
- which ends a
thunderclap, when Jupiter
- has clashed black clouds together.
- Fickle crowds
- are always in that hall,
that come and go,
- and myriad rumors--false
tales mixed with true--
- are circulated in
confusing
words.
-
- Some fill their
empty
ears with all this
talk,
- and some spread elsewhere
all that's told to them.
- The volume of
wild
fiction grows
apace,
- and each narrator adds to what he hears.
- Credulity is there and
rash Mistake,
-
- and empty Joy, and coward Fear alarmed
- by quick Sedition, and soft
Whisper--all
- of doubtful life. sees what
things are done
- in heaven and on the sea,
and on the earth.
- She spies all things in the
wide universe.
Kenneth Sublett
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