In Electra (Drama2) the gayness of the bacchanalian
rite to the vine is the setting for Orestes’ murder of Aegisthus
(Clytemnestra’s paramour). Comedy turns to tragedy in one flash of the blade.
The Dionysian origins of tragedy – the animal side of Man’s nature – are
contained in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy.
The later comedies of Aristophanes often make quite a nice point of
animal allegories; there’s The Frogs and
The Birds, both very contemporary satires of Athenian exploits. The
Birds is a pretty frivolous piece imagining a city of birds in the sky that
might be intended as an ideal polis. In one scene, the birds speak to the
audience, advising them to award the play the top prize or get crapped on!
The Frogs is a more serious comedy. The god
Dionysus – representing the city Dionysia, where the annual theatre festival
was held – goes down to the underworld to try to get the recently dead
Euripides to “save the city (Athens) from itself.” There is a frog chorus
(they’d all croaked) and, amidst various escapades, Euripides gets into a
“flyting” (poetic) contest with Aeschylus.
Written during
the war with Sparta, it has been described as a “creative criticism” of war, fusing
comedy to literary criticism. All in all, comedy can get pretty serious, and
tragedy has its share of riotous revelry and the animal, instinctive side of
human nature.
What seems
apparent is that both are products of an active society of freeborne psyche
(narrative content, as I was saying of Detroit in Drama 3). The other
thing is, why is it the ancient Greeks seemed to have such an affinity for
animals? Obviously partly because they were rustic and had donkeys (and hunts),
but also animals for them had freeborne psyches; they had poetic, playful
manners as opposed to a competitive order a la Atten-bore.
The connection of comedy to tragedy is the very opposite of a modern
sterile order. When the hygiene lie is exposed, the tragedy of animal psyche and
physical substance (physiology) is let loose on the plains again. This is the
American lifecycle of action, of animal and human physique as against the
weakness of pure order, of the inhuman dollar.
The tragedy will expose, not just intensive beef lots, but the illusion
of order in the universe of scientific facts (DNA, CERN, AI). The illusion is
highly convincing because it is factual, but ambiguous or non-existent with
regard to primordial rhythm, the action of physique.
DNA, like CERN, represents order and hygiene as distinct from the body,
or physical substance (which is dirt and cleanliness). Order and hygiene are
almost the same thing when it comes to the illusion of fact (sun,
electromagnetism, relativity).
In a world of order and hygiene, the sexual symbolism of the body is
reduced to pornography. This is the theme of Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie’s Lost
Girls, and that whole thing is somewhat reminiscent of Greek comedy. In
those days, politicians had already gotten the reputation for being piss
artists: Aristophanes’ scabrous The Knights (awarded
first prize at Lenea, 424 BC) is fairly typical
Panaetius To
Paphlagon 322
Admit it! You have the gift of bullshit! Bullshit, the single protector of orators and politicians! .. Ah, but now I feel much better. Indicating the sausage seller. Now I know there’s someone who’s a better crook than you. Better in chicanery, more bold, a better rip off merchant!..
..Sausage Seller
I’d go over to the butcher’s and I’d make them look up into the sky, saying, “look, guys, spring’s here..” and the moment they raised their heads up I’d nip around and steal their sausage!.. And I’d never get caught ‘cause the moment someone saw me.. I’d shove the meat between my legs and swear black and blue that I’d done nothing.. One day a politician saw me and said, “No doubt about it. This boy will rule the city one day!”
Demosthenes
That politician was a prophet. Still, he saw what you did, you told lies and took meat up your bum!
Whereas Aristophanes was up against warrior-statesman Cleon of Athens,
we are up against an entire parallel universe of “facts” that clinically
represent the earth become sterile and inert – fantasies of the parallel
system. Our universe of lies is convincing, complicated and competitive, but
has no physical substance (proportion, style) or psyche (narrative content).
The simplest of ditties has more meaning in the symbolic power of sunrise over
a rustic setting.
The absolute world of the small plot of land where the fertile strength
of the earth is far from clinical and nothing is sterile or inert. Cash’s ditty
has the integrity of absolute power (see Motown Hyborian Bridge 47).
It’s nothing to do with competition or complexity or being convinced by the
powers that be. There is a sense of style (physical substance) and narrative
content (psyche). This is actually what we are as human beings.
The modern illusion is to deny that simplicity for the sake of a
complex charade of “facts” that are hygienic fictions. Whether it’s the
perspective illusion of CERN (the vanishing point of technique, see “speed” Pictorial
43), or the order of DNA that ignores physical substance (proportion), or
the “smart” hygiene-machines of AI.
Absolute power is another dawn rising over a humble dwelling on the
hillside overlooking a valley, the horse nosing around in the paddock; no
competition, no complexity, no need of being convinced that what you see is
factual since it has meaning and symbolic power (see Happy Trails)
The Coach House, a local landmark - just add a hoss
