The Clouds

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This article is about the play by Aristophanes. For other uses, please see Cloud (disambiguation)
The Clouds

statue of Socrates
Written by Aristophanes
Chorus clouds
Characters Strepsiades
Phidippides
servant of Strepsiades
disciples of Socrates
Socrates
Just Discourse
Unjust Discourse
Pasias
Amynias
Setting before the houses of Strepsiades and Socrates
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The Clouds (Nephelae,Νεφέλαι) is an Athenian Old comedy written by the playwright Aristophanes that lampoons Socrates and his circle, and thus more generally some intellectual trends of late fifth-century Athens. The play placed badly in the competition at the City Dionysia festival, where the prize went to Aristophanes' older rival Cratinus with his Wine-Flask, while Amipsias took second with Connus. Clouds is nonetheless one of Aristophanes' most famous works because it offers a portrait of Socrates that is both highly critical and many decades earlier than our other sources, which belong largely to the 4th century, after his execution in 399. Many modern readers also find the play funny as a general irreverent satire of pretentious academia.

Aristophanes re-wrote the play after its initial failure, inserting a section of the parabasis in which the playwright himself (speaking through his chorus) chastizes the audience for their poor sense of humor. The play can thus be regarded as one of the earliest instances of self-referential literature. It has also been the subject of scholarly examination as an early instance of postmodernity[1].

Contents

[edit] The Plot

The play opens with a citizen of Athens, Strepsiades (whose name, loosely translated, means slippery, deceptive, twisty, or scheming[2]), bemoaning the addiction of his extravagant pretty-boy son Pheidippides, to horse-racing, and thus to buying expensive carts and horses, all of which has put Strepsiades deep in debt. Strepsiades recalls his own humble upbringing in the country and curses his marriage to an aristocratic city woman, whose social pretensions he believes are responsible for spoiling his son. But Strepsiades has now hit on what strikes him as a brilliant way to get out of his troubles, by forcing Pheidippides to enter Socrates' school and learn the unjust argument, which will allow to him to argue anything he wants successfully in court. When Pheidippides refuses to cooperate, Strepsiades is reduced to entering Socrates' school himself.

The audience is first introduced to Socrates' school, the "Thinkery" (Phrontisterion), by means of an anonymous slave or student, who answers the door when Strepsiades knocks. The place turns out to be populated by starving students and pedantic scoundrels, foremost among them Socrates' associate Chaerephon. Among its patently absurd "discoveries" are the distance a flea can jump (measured by fitting it with tiny wax booties), and the source of gnat's hum (found to emerge from its anus, which is described as resembling a trumpet). Eventually the great philosopher himself emerges, dangling in the air and spying out various celestial phenomena.

In a parody of contemporary initiation rituals (probably developed at greater length in the lost original version of the story), Socrates introduces Strepsiades to the Thinkery, and in particular to its patron goddesses, the Clouds (which make up the chorus of the play). The Clouds inspire all Socrates' fast talk, and appear at this point to be entirely on his side. In the course of this scene, Socrates mounts a systematic attack on contemporary religion beliefs, insisting that Zeus does not exist and that the universe is instead governed by a celestial vortex (dinos). The dim-witted Strepsiades confuses this to mean that the god Vortex has dethroned Zeus, as Zeus did Kronos.

{{quotation|

Strepsiades: But who is it that compels the clouds to behave this way? isn't it Zeus?
Socrates: Of course not; it's an aetherial vortex.
Strepsiades: Vortex? That's something I didn't know -- Zeus is no more, and Vortex is now king in his place" }

He later forces Strepsiades to enter his bed, flea-ridden like the rest of the Thinkery, in order to elicit solutions to common lawsuits (albeit ridiculous ones).

Socrates (to Strepsiades): Oh! the ignoramus! the barbarian! I greatly fear, old man, it will be necessary for me to have recourse to blows. Now, let me hear what you do when you are beaten

Strepsiades:I receive the blow,then wait a moment,take my witnesses and finally summon my assailant at law

The Eleven Comedies by Aristophanes Nephelae [1]

Socrates has to steal from the neighboring wrestling school in order to feed the students, and he later steals all of Strepsiades' clothes by the time he gives up on teaching him.

Upon learning this, Strepsiades tells his son what he has learned and encourages him to study under Socrates as well. Pheidippides arrives at the Thinkery, and two figures stage a debate (apparently modelled on a cock fight) designed to demonstrate the superiority of the new versus the old style of learning. One goes by the name Kreittôn (Right, Correct, Stronger), and the other goes by the name Êttôn (Wrong, Incorrect, Weaker). These names are a direct reference to Protagoras's statement that a good rhetorician was able to make the weaker argument seem the stronger; a statement seen as one of the key beliefs of the sophists. As the debate gets set up, the audience learns that there are two types of logic taught at the Thinkery. One is the traditional, philosophical education, and the other is the new, sophistic, rhetorical education. Right Logic explains that Pheidippides ought to study the traditional way as it is more moral and manly. Wrong Logic refutes him, using some very twisty logic that winds up (in true Greek comedic fashion), insulting the entire audience in attendance.

Pheidippides agrees to study the new logic at the Thinkery. Shortly afterward, Strepsiades learns that the Clouds actually exist to teach mortals a lesson in humility. They have in fact been masquerading as goddesses of philosophy to reveal the airy and pretentious nature of academic learning and sophistic rhetoric: "We are," proclaims their leader,

Shining tempters formed of air, symbols of desire;
And so we act, beckoning, alluring foolish men
Through their dishonest dreams of gain to overwhelming
Ruin. There, schooled by suffering, they learn at last
To fear the gods.

Dejected, Strepsiades goes to speak to his son and asks him what he has learned. Pheidippides has found a loophole that will let them escape from their debts, but in the process he has imbibed new and revolutionary ideas that cause him to lose all respect for his father. The boy calmly proceeds to demonstrate the philosophical principles that show how it is morally acceptable for a son to beat his father. Strepsiades takes this in stride, but when Phedippides also begins to speak of beating his mother, the old man finally becomes fed up with the new-fangled learning of Socrates and, after consulting with a statue of Apollo, he seizes a torch, climbs on to the rafters of the Phrontisterion, and sets it on fire. The play's final scene depicts a vicious beating and thrashing of Socrates, and his bedraggled students, while they comically choke on smoke and ash.

[edit] Reception

Despite its brilliance as a work of comic drama, which is today almost universally agreed upon, The Clouds had an ambivalent reputation already in antiquity. According to Plato in his Apology -- written well after Socrates' death in 399, and intended to show that the Athenians had made a terrible mistake in putting him to death -- the play stirred up considerable popular resent against Socrates, and thus contributed directly to his execution. This is very difficult to believe. Socrates, first of all, was a well-known public figure, and related fragments of other late-5th century comedies show that Aristophanes' play trades on contemporary prejudices against him rather than than creating them. In addition, the play was a failure, and was thus unlikely to have been restaged again and again, while high-level literacy of the sort that would be required to read a text such as Clouds, was restricted in this period to a tiny segment of the population. Although the play may have loomed large among the scanty literary sources about Socrates available to the early 4th-century readers to whom the Apology is directed, therefore, it probably had little or no impact in its time. The remarks by Plato's Socrates about its immediate influence are thus to be taken no more seriously than the even more patently unlikely insistence in the Symposium that Socrates and Aristophanes amiably drank together and talked as friends. None of this means that Socrates in the 420s was the greedy charlatan interested in physical phenomena that Aristophanes presents him as. But the play deserves to be taken seriously as our best contemporary source of at least what he appeared to be to his fellow-citizens.

[edit] Critical Editions

The standard critical edition of the Greek text of Clouds (with commentary) is:

[edit] Translations

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-176459338.html
  2. ^ url=http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides2/Clouds.html#Characters

[edit] External links

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Surviving plays by Aristophanes