Book Review – The Clouds by Aristophanes

This was my first taste of Greek comedy writing, and this was a shocking read. While comedy in the classical sense means a story with a good ending (as opposed to a tragedy with a negative ending), and about two pages in, you’re greeted with a fart joke – one of many you’ll encounter. At the very least we realize that civilization may advance but people remain people throughout the centuries.

I did not like Aristophanes’ writing or his plotting. It took a while to get to the point he was at to start to make his point. The crass and vulgar jokes were a slog to get through. Now, considering that this is probably one of the earliest comedies to make these jokes, and the tropes were not even tropes yet, some deference should be given. There was some clever jokes even though they weren’t my style of comedy that did get a laugh. I was reading the William Arrowsmith translation and what he did, as he says in the introduction and notes, is provides stand ins in the English that the Greek had. So what sounded like Vaudeville slapstick and humor was a product of translation but also a good decision to give the reader of the solo-English text a taste of what was being done in the Greek.

A friend evaluates a book on whether or not it accomplished the goal it set out to accomplish. In that, I see what Aristophanes was trying to do. I’m not learned enough to know if he was being serious or parodying the response to the claims of the dangers of Socrates and the new philosophy and Sophistry arising in Greece. So, I see the point and sadly the humor got in the way for me. 3,000 years of distance, I’m going to take the blame for this as I don’t think people will be reading my jokes 3,000 years from now.