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Q: It’s so good to meet you (chuckles) in person, so to speak.
A: That is what I might call an example of the arrogance of
the living. You are forgetting William Faulkner, who said, "The past is never
dead. It's not even past." He wrote most persuasively about the past by
resurrecting the dead in his novels. We all do that, one way or another. You
must remember that the only advantage those who are alive at present have over
the dead is that they are alive and the dead are dead. That’s it.
Q: I wonder if you can confirm a story about you, not that
it has anything to do with the subject of our discussion, the role of comedy in
culture. It is said that you died from a falling roof tile that struck you on the
head. One of our commentators said your manner of death was ironically
appropriate, for a comic writer.
A: (nonplussed, a
vacant look)
Q: He was making a joke.
A: Ah, yes, I get it. And you want to know if the joke is
true?
Q: Yes.
A: Well, comedic jokes are always true. But how can I tell
you that the incident happened if I had been struck dead by a falling roof tile?
Besides, if you have done even minimal research on me – a quick glance at
Wickedpedia – you will know that little is known of me? I managed to keep
myself well hidden in the plays. Your age is obsessed with facts, but it is
important to understand that facts, provided they are all accounted for, are
vehicles that may lead to truth. But, in some instances, fiction serves the
same purpose, which is why we do not dismiss Shakespeare and Faulkner as
unimportant.
Q: It’s Wikipedia, by the way.
A: Not when you are punning.
Q: One of the purposes of this interview is to gather
comments from the real Aristophanes about the real world.
A: From what I know of your time and world, I’m not sure (very condescendingly) you
people understand either reality or your time in it. And being
introduced to your world is a frightening prospect for anyone but a comic
writer, provided he is allowed to ventilate his opinions. All comedy is what
the moderns call transgressive, and all comedians are at bottom contrarians.
Think of “the fool” in Shakespeare’s plays. A real take on your real world
would reduce Euripides to tears and make Socrates blush -- and, believe me, Socrates
was not given to blushing or Euripides to weeping.
Q: I should ask you, since you and other dramatists were the
journalists of your day, do you think, as a general rule, that journalists also
should be contrarians?
A: I do. So did Joseph Pulitzer and Henry Mencken.
Q: I’m guessing the tyrant Creon was cool to your plays in
which he was, some say, mercilessly caricatured.
A: In the Athenian republic of my day, it was understood
that comics, the Shakespearian “fools” of Greece, should be permitted to dress
down world saviors. After Sparta defeated Athens at the close of the Peloponnesian War, comic writers became considerably more
cautious – for obvious reasons. As you may have guessed from a close reading of
Lysistrata, I was in favor of what
Henry Kissinger might have called an Athenian “diplomatic entente,” rather than
a 26 year war with Sparta. Actually, Sparta’s peace terms were far less
draconian than the terms imposed by World War I’s victors on a humiliated
Germany. Sparta won the war, but Athens won the peace, nothing short of a
miracle. Old Comedy became a more politically genteel New Comedy after the war,
and the New Comedy was less wearing on the nerves of tyrants the world over.
Your situation is similar. You have in your country the same fixation with
world saviors – naturally, all of them Americans. In a regime of authoritarians
-- or, worse, experts -- comedy is rarely tolerated, because comedy is an attempt
to readjust proper proportions. When things are out of shape, the comic is the
person who whacks them, by means of his comedy, back into shape. It is impossible to imagine in Russia, for
instance, a roast of Putin. When I was approached on the street by one of
Creon’s lackeys who demanded, “Don’t you take anything seriously?” I responded, as any good comic should, “Of
course, I take comedy seriously.” After Athens’ defeat by Sparta at the
decisive Battle of Aegospotami, such responses became less advisable and comic
wit suffered grievous indignities. Fortunately, I lived to see the revival of
Athens after its crushing defeat by the Spartan General Lysander in 405 BC.
Creon wanted a war to the finish with Sparta – and he got one.
Q: Naturally we care
more about our present than your past, despite what has been
said by Faulkner. But what riches can you bring to our reality?
A: The French, who
can be amusing if you catch them in a non-political mood, say – a poor translation
– “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” You are now in the
process of scourging your comedians. It will not be long before you hoist them on
a cross. Here is some advice worth something: comedy is the canary in the cultural mineshaft. And a poisonous
culture will repress comedy first, and everyone else later, simply bury them
under mounds of humorless, pretentious group-think. Just before the Hungarian
revolt, a worker slated by Karl Marx as the future owner of the means of production
was asked to comment on his condition under the Marxist-Leninist dispensation. “They
pretend to pay us,” he said, “and we pretend to work.” That man understood the proper
use of comedy.
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