THE BOOK WAS DRENCHED - OUDL Home

xlvi General Introduction
another in breathless abundance. He is never at a loss what to invent
next; indeed, he hardly ever has time fully to exploit the humorous
possibilities of one motif before he is occupied with another. A mind
of this sort has no use for consistency, and that stodgy virtue may best
be cultivated by the lesser talents, who need all the virtues they can
get. An Aristophanes should not degrade himself by pretending to be
an ordinary mortal.
It is from this point of view that we must approach him if we would
avoid misunderstanding him. His brilliant insouciance makes him a
lovable rogue, and we must not forget that Plato adored him. He has
naturally been misunderstood, grossly and variously. He has a lot to
say about himself, but hardly a word of it can be taken seriously. This
would be an easy deduction from the quality of his mind, but he repeatedly
proves it by his actions, for he blandly denies doing what he
plainly and frequently does. His views on political and social questions
have been eagerly and ponderously analysed, but this is mostly a waste
of time and energy. He hated Cleon, so much is clear, but when he
came to put his hate into a comedy it stifled his wit, and the result was
The Knights, one of his poorest plays. It is safe to say that whenever
his wit is functioning properly we have no hope of discovering what
his real feelings were.
He has often been called unfair, but this righteous and foolish accusation
results from an inadequate appreciation of the quality of his intellect.
Fairness is nothing but a kind of static consistency, and Aristophanes
had no taste for consistency of any sort. He treats everyone
precisely as his fancy dictates, and it is absurd to expect him to do
otherwise. The unique quality of his wit lies in the very fact that it is
not fettered by any ethical standards. It is entirely pure, and we should
be grateful that it is. We have the right to censure him only when his
wit fails as wit, whether because his eminently ethical hatred of some
demagogue has choked it, or because he himself has aimed ineptly, as
he sometimes did.
Brilliance, however, was not his only gift, and his heart was as sensitive
as his mind was keen. The soft side of his personality expresses itself
in his lyrics, and here he astounds and delights us, at one moment with
idyllic songs of the countryside, at another with lines of infinite tenderness
and sympathy, particularly towards old men. Often in the midst of
a lyric passage of great warmth and beauty something will touch off his
wit, and a sentence that has begun in a gentle and sympathetic spirit
will end with a devastating personal jibe or an uproarious bit of obscenity.
The two sides of the poet's nature are not really separable; he
call be both witty and lyrical, almost at one and the same moment. This
strange and perfect blend of characteristics apparently so incompatible