clouds intro

A是个多产的写手

前四个里头的剧都是A写的

1. 时间：Lenaia 424 剧名 the success of KNIGHTS,

2.时间in 427 剧名very first play BANQUETERS ,

3 时间(the first performance in 423)剧名the Failure of Clouds

4  时间(ALL in late 420s )剧名WASPS and  PEACE

Intro 开头告知读者，clouds came third out of three（waspas, peace, clouds）, then A 同学might have revised the Clouds due to the so-called failure)

顺道提醒读者如果只是因为首演失败revised clouds解释不了下面三个问题

5 REVISED 的原因不足以解释其三部共通的特质

a>chorus are supposed to be a NEW Sokartic deities( to be the guardians of traditional morality)

b>central character’s failure

c>most important of all, the curious relationship between this central character and the figure of Sokrates

6紧接着说明Two notorious references to clouds in Plato's  Aplolgy

First reference:划重点（此处P和S是有着怎样的渊源噢！S 你负责其the existence of animosity + prosecution）the orthodox view is that Plato represents S  as making Clouds itself partly to blame for the existence of animosity towards him and for his eventual prosecution

CAN THAT BE RIGHT?

Second reference: P makes S uses Clouds to illustrate the kind of image that many Athenians had of him, he does so in a way which separates comic from the damaging social forces of animus and malice

里面有个背景需要交代下 S’s false reputation

S first mention of Clouds in the Apology occurs(he has had a false reputation for two types of interests:

a>esoteric and perhaps”metaphysical” questions ;

b>making the weaker argument into the stronger )

有意思的是S says its impossible to name those who have spread these slanders unless one of them happens to be a comic poet.

直接指向A同学的CLOUDS (the UNMISTAKABLE ALLUSION to A and CLOUDS is immediately followed)

总之，S draws a strong contrast “CLOUDS itself is not part of the serious social force of animus and malice”

7 three large problems with P’ perspective on Clouds in the Apology

First, it is questionable whether S’ total denial of interest in speculative forms of philosophical enquiry is the whole truth about him.  佐证之一在P的PHAEDO书里表面S admits he was interested in when young(in P’s phaedo)

Secondly, the references in the Apology pick out only certain headline themes of Clouds

Thirdly, The apology itself does not explain why the application(corrupting the young / how he has deleterious effect, they fall back on cliches used against ALL philosophers) to S should have led to such an exceptional resentment ,let alone to the prosecution.

第三点在P的apology 不足以解释其CLICHES如是针对所有哲学家，为啥单单S获得如此“殊荣”的prosecution

8所以结论是如下两句话，一没法断定P’s apology 二也无法说明CLOUDS，他们对于S的 condemnation OR execution 负责

it remains highly dubious, therefore, whether P’s apology should be read as ascribing to Clouds a genuinely influential role in arousing hostility towards the historical S.

it is intrinsically implausible that a play was not received by the judges on that occasion, could been a significant causal element in the process that led to the condemnation and execution of S.

9 此处呢，插入个编外话，就是这个词 ambiguous,第一次出现应该在第六页INTRO中，如下

P’s intent does not supply an adequate basis on which to assess the comedy’s ambiguous relationship to the domain represented by S.

大致告诉读者，P的意图不完全能解释出以S为首的intellectual和剧中的ambiguous relationship

插这个是因为后面又提及another layer to that ambiguity在intro最后部分有提

10终于在intro的第7页开始剧透clouds

Clouds 难懂有其原因：the plot of Clouds begins from the realm of perceptions of “philosophers”. But it does not provide its audience with a fixed relationship to such perceptions.

Clouds 包括了有主角例如：STREP等 （Strepsiades, the naïve bumpkin, and S, the lofty head of the thinking institute）

这些人物其实在P的书里有提及：Clouds exploits some of the popular stereotypes of “the philosopher” to which Plato’s Apology itself refers.

接下来说主角STREP，他原本期望去学校学会两样事情，一是natural philosophy/science 二是（cynically amoral）rhetoric （intro里英文Strepsiades’ expectations of the school comprise two main elements: natural philosophy/science and (cynically amoral) rhetoric (94–9). ）

HOWEVER学会第二件事情属于he hopes to harness to his own immoral ends (cheating his creditors)

去了学校才发现，他入坑了。

Once he is introduced to the thinking institute and to S, Strep is confronted with a new religion, forced to undergo a ritual of self-scrutiny and mental exercises.

所以最终的结果就是这样，无论是丈夫（his quasi-morganatic marriage 贵贱通婚）还是父亲亦或是去thinking institute 最终STREP turns into a Failed comic protagonist.

一负债累累二儿子rebounds against Strep’s plan三能力有限 be incapable of learning anything

在INTRO第8页下描述中

A misfit as both husband and father; reduced to the desperation of a self-deceiving hope of never paying back a single obol of his debts; and repeatedly shown to be incapable of learning anything

在INTRO第10页上描述中

He is precipitated from his original financial difficulties, via a miserable failure to influence his son’s behaviour (119–25), into gradual humiliation at the hands of the intellectuals in whose special powers he believes. （在PLAY里126，888都有体现）

再此过程中，译者将STREP与A的其他角色进行比较，原文句子如此描述Strep differs from other protagonists in his ethical character as well as his sociological profile.强调STREP的a unique protagonist

Strep is a victim, not a controller, of events.

与STREP进行比较的A的其他PLAYS人物

Dikaiopolis in Acharnians/Trygaios in Peace/Peisetairos in Birds/Philokleon in Wasps

另外于主角Step’s Strep’s attitude to S school is a paradoxical mixture of ignorance and admiration(from the outset)

所谓IGNORANCE和ADMIRATION

无知体现在一不知RIGHT NAME二无法GRASP sci and tech points,具体如下

a> Srep does not know the right name for the inhabitants of the school

b> later in the play, he will show an even grosser failure to grasp a variety of scientific and technical points.

崇敬体现于Rhetorical expertise的习得，可以助他his own immoral ends accomplished(cheating his creditors)

His faith in intellectuals will remain undiminished.

People like S also posses a Rhetorical expertise which could guarantee you success.

所以才有了对于S神一般的描述S treats a formula encapsulating the amoral versatility of rhetorical technique (turning the weaker argument into the stronger) as a sure recipe for achieving his own immoral ends(112-18).最爱的其中一句英文在此

在INTRO第10页有提及On neither occasion, significantly, does Sokrates offer to satisfy Strepsiades’ desires.

His mounting impatience at this experience twice breaks out expressly: first at 655–7, and again at 738–9, On neither occasion, significantly, does Sokrates offer to satisfy Strepsiades’ desires.

至于主角的儿子PHEID , he draws attention to a contradiction within his father’s position between the idea of the philosopher-intellectuals as both pursuing abstruse ideas and as possessors of a key to practical success. But this contradiction is important for the play as a whole

最后关于为啥吸引主角来SCHOOL的原因以及他错信了UNINTELLECTUAL MAN

The comic paradox of Strepsiades’ attitudes is that they represent a gullible trust placed in intellectuals by a supremely unintellectual man.

The very clichés picked out by Plato as characterizing popular prejudice against philosophers (p. 6 above) are the basis of Strepsiades’ attraction to Sokrates’ school.

疑问在此：Cliches 是P所PICKED OUT 出来的，而这些都是针对philosophers 从而吸引了STREP来到 S的 SCHOOL

感觉剧情有点绕？

还有一句我也没读大懂

When Strepsiades voices his expectations of the Thinking Institute at 94–9, therefore, at least some members of the audience are likely to have seen him as ludicrous precisely in virtue of his ignorant reliance on some of the clichés used, as we saw Plato attesting (Apology 23d), against philosophers in general—except that Strepsiades, to reiterate the crucial point, is supposedly pro, not contra, Sokrates’ school.

意思是STREP本应该支持而非反对SCHOOL？里面仍然提及到了P的APOLOGY

所以我不懂的地方可能在于 P的作品如何影响到剧情里STREP对于SCHOOL的态度

11 As the play develops, we are given a picture of the Thinking Institute as housing at least five types of intellectual/philosophical enquiry （五个类型非常有意思，具体请看INTRO的11页，很丰富的分类）

who are the sophists??请看12页的注解16

12 此处说明下A希望spectators

1〉能做到不要联系至某个特定THINKER身上not to take the comic portrait literal-mindedly as corresponding to any specific thinker or thinkers

First,

Whatever else Aristophanes wishes his audience to infer about Sokrates and his school, he must expect them to have at least a rudimentary awareness of the diversity of ideas and interests associated with the inhabitants of the phrontistêrion at various points in the play, and not to take the comic portrait literal-mindedly as corresponding to any specific thinker or thinkers.18

2〉希望能超越主角理解至他理解不了的the hearer can understand what the protagonist himself misunderstands:

Secondly,

if spectators did not possess some ability to recognize the play’s manipulation and mixing of different intellectual types, they would be in precisely the same position of ignorance as Strepsiades himself, and would accordingly be unable to appreciate the comedy of his ineptitude and mental incompetence.

剧情里头的例证就是所谓的梗在此：the symbolic nature of maps (206–17); Sokrates’ materialist ‘theory of mind’ (227–36); meteorological causation (369–411); or the nature of poetic metres (638–56).

A完全是写给能所谓看懂的观众看，可惜第一次公演失败！证明a希望的观众貌似没有做到后面提及的cleverness

In short, the comic dynamic of Clouds cannot be aligned one-sidedly with the satire or mockery of just one of these extremes: it depends on its audience’s ability to savour the interlocking absurdities of both.

13 Before that, however, I need to say something about the play’s set-piece debate (the first ‘agon’, 949–1104) between the personified ‘arguments’ Moral and Immoral, since it is this which, for many critics, forms the climax of the work’s satire of Sokrates’ school as a place which harbours deeply dangerous and subversive ways of thinking.

接下里分析AGON 包括了feature of the agon/ the first agon of clouds

One highly pertinent feature of the AGON of Clouds is the disparity it creates between the persona of Immoral and the general depiction of Sokrates and his pupils.

This disparity highlights an underlying comic contradiction in the play as a whole:

But there is a further, and equally fundamental, observation to be made about the AGON.

It also connects the values at stake less to the thought-world of intellectuals than to the state of Athenian society in general.这句是反映出来当下政治讥讽剧情外的雅典社会现状么？

下面是例子

This is evident near the start, when Immoral happily agrees to show himself to the audience: ‘. . . the bigger the crowd | The more I’ll argue you into the ground,’ he asserts (891–2), thereby pro- claiming himself some sort of populist. When he goes on to claim that his novel arguments will bring him success, Moral retorts by blaming the prevalence of such things on ‘these idiots sitting in front of us here’ (897–8), that is, the audience itself (whom Immoral immediately woos as ‘clever’, 899) as notionally representative of Athenian democratic culture and its supposed susceptibility to corrupt rhetorical techniques. This is underscored by Moral’s later exclamation about the madness of ‘the city | That nurtures you | To drip poison into the minds of the young’ (926–8).

The first agon of Clouds, then, puts its contemporary audience in a paradoxical position 这段我没有全贴（intro的15页）这里的POINT是不支持无论是哪方。。。IMMORAL’s side OR MORAL’s side

But if that is right, it forms a parallel to the earlier parts of the play, where spectators need to be able to relish from both sides, as it were, the polarized contrast between the abstruse intellectual and the obtuse rustic. Standard interpretations of Clouds as an anti-intellectual critique of ‘new’ thinkers founder on the basic ambiguity of the play’s comic perspective.

the polarized contrast between the abstruse intellectual and the obtuse rustic.终于出现了我读intro时第二爱的另外一句英文在此。

Abstruse=abstract use

Obtuse= obstacle use

感觉分析时候别忘记了主角的婚姻背景

14 A希望观众能做到的是后面INTRO所提及的cleverness &newness

Aristophanes wishes to be thought a clever or skilful poet (520) and Clouds to be thought the ‘cleverest’ of his comedies (522).

用何种方式呢 in what way?

He claims to shun (avoid) the trite(unoriginal) routines of comic vulgarity(inelegance) and offers constant dramatic inventiveness, originality, and sophistication (537–48).

Furthermore, his work appeals to, and calls for, spectators who are themselves sophisticated and clever (521, 526–7, 535, cf. 575).

15 parabasis of clouds

读完感觉界定了啥是new thinking

It ironically highlights the fact that Clouds itself is a rather intellectualizing comedy, a work which makes intricate, knowing use, for its own purposes, of philosophical, scientific, and other intellectual ideas and motifs, and which is accordingly locked into a comically incestuous relationship with the materials of ‘new’ thinking.

16

In addition A 是在寻找对的观众----失败的原因在这self-evident

In addition, it is a play which, as Aristophanes insists, came looking for—but had trouble finding—a clever audience (535), spectators with the knowledge and sophistication to appreciate how cleverly the poet was manipulating his themes and to laugh at the rustic dimwittedness of Strepsiades himself. Hence, as I have emphasized, the ambiguity which underlies the play’s relationship to the sphere of modern intellectualism from which it extracts its comic materials.

17 the play’s ending

S 和他的followers有没有被烧死？ 答案是没有

STREP甚至去乞求HERMES的庇护来放火烧，CRITICS大题小做了TORCHES

But there is one remaining problem to address, and that is the play’s ending.

Strepsiades complains to the chorus, but is told by them that the situation is his own fault, the result of his wicked desires (1452–62).

he admits the charge (1462–4)—but decides, nonetheless, on revenge against Sokrates’ school (1464–6).

When Pheidippides refuses to help his father, Strepsiades prays to Hermes(宙斯和迈亚的儿子，12主神之一，赫尔墨斯) for advice and purports (in what is probably framed as ludicrous self-deception) to receive sanction（approval） for setting fire to the Thinking Institute (1478–85), which he proceeds to do with the help of his slaves.

18

Critics often claim that the end of Clouds shows Sokrates and his disciples (followers)being ‘burned to death’ inside the building. Neither the text nor the conventions of comedy support that reading.

解释原因为啥CRITICS小题大做了TORCHES

The ‘fire’ will have been a kind of pantomime fiction; it is essentially no different in kind—though critics often conveniently overlook this—from the precipitate and crazy comic aggression of the old men at Lysistrata 269–70 or the similar belligerence of the women at Women at the Thesmophoria 726–7.

In any case, Clouds 1508 clearly suggests that the philosophers escape from the house and are chased off by an angry Strepsiades

Making sense of the end of Clouds is not so straightforward.

In any case, Strepsiades has been an abject failure and a specimen of naive stupidity throughout the play

In terms of its dramatic impact, moreover, it is also important that Strepsiades’ action receives no support from others (his slaves apart). He is a comic loner.

Clouds, by contrast, ends in Strepsiades’ failure, which finds an expressive outlet in, but is not cancelled out by, his wild act of arson.

19A 为啥REVISED的原因猜测再此

If it is true, as the ancient commentators reported, that the ending of Clouds was one of the parts which was changed in the (unfinished) second version, it is reasonable to infer that Aristophanes was trying to rescue some dramatic control for Strepsiades, belatedly converting him from a passive failure into at least a frenetically energetic agent. But by doing so, the playwright arguably exposes the dramatic ‘deficit’ involved in seeking one-sided closure for a work which has depended so heavily on the counterbalancing of opposite comic extremes.