本期作为Aristophanes喜剧Clouds的读书复盘，我想把具有一定阅读指导意义的Stephen Halliwell 译本中的全书intro和Clouds的intro部分内容进行整理，从喜剧的孕育源头、戏剧形式（Parabasis)并以Clouds 为例谈谈新认识。

上周Carrie提醒我从戏剧的形式再做进一步解读，在这一部分略读时只隐约留了个印象，之后再细读全书Intro 的Satire and Seriousness 部分发现从这一角度理解的确可行。下面做一一解读。

要理解Aristophanes的喜剧，还得先从整个Old Comedy 的起源和发展特点来理解它的体裁特征。

The plays of Aristophanes contain such frank and often extreme satirical elements precisely because they belong to a special genre of festival entertainment.

Athenian democracy had allowed comic drama to develop, however riskily, as a festively 'protected' oppotunity for scurrility without responsibility.

Old comedy enjoyed a peculiar freedom to break the taboos and contravene the norms which obtained in the social world at large, a freedom which expresses itself in obscenity as well as (and often at the same time as) satire.

What is so telling about this side of comedy is the 'irresponsibility' of its licence to ridicule, to lampoon, and to vilify.

Unlike the personal abusiveness which undoubtedly played a part in the rivalries of political life, comedy was not usually constrained by the posibility of legal reprisals, nor by the pressures involved in the persuading an audience to take a practical decision (other than the judges' voting of a prize to the best comedy) on a particular occasion.

a type and degree of liberty (of speech and thought) which was not avaliable in other contexts of public life.

Aristophanes作品 ( 旧喜剧）中反禁忌反传统直白而甚至极端的大胆讽刺艺术元素都来源于节日娱乐（Dionysiac Festivity) 对它的允许和保护。这一前提允许创作者随意取材而没有责任作出解释，没有被报复的担忧，更没有引导大众舆论的压力。它直接表现为雅典其他社会生活所没有的高度自由园地。

其中，在这一“自由乐园”的形成中，有两个因素至关重要：

One, the subliterary 'folk' roots of this variety of comic satire in old traditions of popular revelry; the other, the flourishing of Old Comedy during the period when Athenian democracy was actually most buoyant and prosperous (as well as confidently 'imperialist'), and therefore most comfortable about allowing elements of its world to be occasionally exposed to ridicule.

1、各种形式的喜剧讽刺是雅典人民狂欢作乐的民俗传统

2、旧喜剧发展于雅典民主最繁荣强盛期

问题：那么在这样一种创作氛围中，喜剧作家会怎么融合与分配喜剧作品中的戏谑嘲讽与严肃思想呢？我们又如何去理解？

这里就提喜剧中的一个重要部分——Parabasis, 作为戏剧全场唯一与情节脱轨的部分，它最有可能直接表达或显露了作家的观点和倾向。

然而译者Stephen Halliwell是这么写的：

But it is naive to suppose that any such passage offers us the direct or authentic voice of the poet himself. The parabasis, though always standing outside the progress of the dramatic action, is nonetheless a full part of the comic performance. Its elaborate formality(rhythmical, musical, and choreograhic), discussed in the previous section, provides a highly stylized routine which is a theatrical event in its own right. Moreover, the 'voice' of the poet in which the parabasis is sometimes delivered is a conventional fiction, an oppotunity for comedy to ape and burlesque the postures of public discourse which were familiar to Athenian audiences from the political Assembly, the adversarial contests of the law-courts, and other democratic institutions.

1、Parabasis 作为喜剧表演的一部分，不能抹掉它的喜剧效果而直接归类为作家个人观点。它与精心安排的节奏韵律，音乐和舞蹈融合一起构建喜剧高度非写实的一个部分。

2、Parabasis 中的演讲有时只是模仿和戏谑一些对于雅典民众非常熟悉的公众演讲

例子：

译者以 Acharnians 阿卡奈人为例：Aristophanes 在其中说到各盟国的代表带着贡品匆匆赶来雅典就是为了见到Aristophanes;另外，更荒唐的是，波斯国王对诗人在雅典战争中作出的努力发表评论，而且，在这场剧中，主人公签订了一个秘密和平条约。

In short, there is nothing authoritative about anything said in the poet's name in a parabasis, since the poet's voice is part of not a detached commentary on, the theatrically artificial and inflated world of the play.

有了这个作者可以在真真假假，戏谑严肃中随意切换的背景条件，我们再回到 云Clouds 一剧中来看它带给我们的许多理解困境（ambiguity)

Aritophanes 在云的Parabasis 中直白地写道：

It was because i believed you sophisticated spectators And took this comedy to be the cleverest of all my plays That i deemed it right for you to be the first to savour a work  That caused me so much effort. Yet i left the theatre defeated

Nor do I try to cheat you by staging the same stuff agian and again, but i always display my cleverness by bringing you new forms of humour Not two of which are the same- and they're so sophisticated.

Aristophanes在这里强调 Clouds 是他最聪明而且新颖的作品，因此对于观众的筛选也是相当严格的（这也正说明剧本高能吧...）

come on a quest in search of such clever spectators

but if it's me and my comic inventions which give you delight, You'll always be thought to have high standars of judgement.

那么作为现代观众的我们，我们又是否能拨开作者营造的sphere of ambiguity成为一个clever spectators?

在思考中，我们讨论其中一个核心的问题是：Aristophanes 是否在 Clouds 中攻击了苏格拉底？Aristophanes是否在他的创作中偏袒了哪一方？

从内容上看，Clouds的人物思想冲突都是复杂而不连贯的，这是造成ambiguity的重要一点，主要体现在：

1、Intellectuals of Thinking Institute 与 Immoral 的不连贯 （前者追求清苦的禁欲生活；后者追求放纵享乐——warm baths,drinking parties,sexual indulgence；另外前者从未提到应如何教授青年的问题）

2、Strepsiades 与 Moral 的不一致   （前者的最初动机是出于不道德的野心【不还债】；前者在承认欺骗债主的错误后马上又去放火损害他人财产；前者丝毫不承认自己自私地把儿子送去学习言辞操纵术的责任，反而责怪苏格拉底）

3、Pheidippides 的人物矛盾           （当Strepsiades 叫儿子和他一起去攻击学校时,'I‘m not prepared to wrong [or 'do injustice to'] my former teacher', states Pheidippides 【just moments after advocating beating up his own parents】——as though, preposterously, he still had a traditional sense of right and wrong!）

4、代表传统道德的Chorus并不支持Strepsiades     ( But far more tellingly, the chorus itself, despite revealing their 'true' and previously disguised identity as defenders of traditional piety, do not utter a word of guidance or encouragement to Strepsiades.）

If there are many elements in Clouds which mock the pretensions of intellectuals( including the abstruseness and pointless of abstract forms of speculative thought), there are at least as many passages which mock Strepsiades' utter dimwittedness and lack of sophistication. It is this factor which produces the play's recurrent ambiguity  in relation to the two main characters and to the opposing extremes of airy intellectualism and crass obtuseness which they embody. In short, the comic dynamic of Clouds cannot be aligned one sidelly 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.

小结思考

因此，Clouds 并没有给我们呈现任何一个被批判的一体连贯的形象，也没有任何明确证据表明Aristophanes 对哪一方的偏袒。我想，在自由的创作氛围中，作者更像是以社会蕴存的思想为底料，以想象事物的任何发展可能性和对立面为辅料，现实与想象融合，展现万花筒似的各种人物思想、动机以及作者个人的思考，以人物自身的矛盾嘲讽自身。是否真实反射社会大概并不重要，它本身就是一种民主文化形式的体现, 也包含了希腊当时可能存在的思想氛围，而Clouds 就是Aristophanes 在寻找一种【聪明，新颖】的创作可能性时的产物，即使并不成功。

All humour tends to some extent towards the dissolution of sense, and the characteristic modes of Old Comedy do so to an exceptional degree. Aristophanes' theatrical strength lies in his multifarious talent for manipulating images and ideas into surprising yet satisfying scenarios. But anyone who looks to him for clear or deep insights into Athenian society is likely to be ultimately disappointed.