Author: Aristophanes
Release Date: March, 2005 [EBook #7700] [Yes,
we are more than one year ahead of schedule] [This
file was first posted on May 18, 2003]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** Start of the project gutenberg
EBOOK Lysistrata ***
Produced by Ted Garvin and the Distributed Processing
Team.
Translated from the Greek of
Illustrations by Norman Lindsay [to be added to the
next edition]
Lysistrata is the greatest work by Aristophanes.
This blank and rash statement is made that it may
be rejected. But first let it be understood that
I do not mean it is a better written work than the
Birds or the Frogs, or that (to descend
to the scale of values that will be naturally imputed
to me) it has any more appeal to the collectors of
“curious literature” than the Ecclesiazusae
or the Thesmophoriazusae. On the mere
grounds of taste I can see an at least equally good
case made out for the Birds. That brightly
plumaged fantasy has an aerial wit and colour all
its own. But there are certain works in which
a man finds himself at an angle of vision where there
is an especially felicitous union of the aesthetic
and emotional elements which constitute the basic
qualities of his uniqueness. We recognize these
works as being welded into a strange unity, as having
a homogeneous texture of ecstasy over them that surpasses
any aesthetic surface of harmonic colour, though that
harmony also is understood by the deeper welling of
imagery from the core of creative exaltation.
And I think that this occurs in Lysistrata.
The intellectual and spiritual tendrils of the poem
are more truly interwoven, the operation of their
centres more nearly unified; and so the work goes deeper
into life. It is his greatest play because of
this, because it holds an intimate perfume of femininity
and gives the finest sense of the charm of a cluster
of girls, the sweet sense of their chatter, and the
contact of their bodies, that is to be found before
Shakespeare, because that mocking gaiety we call Aristophanies
reaches here its most positive acclamation of life,
vitalizing sex with a deep delight, a rare happiness
of the spirit.
Indeed it is precisely for these reasons that it is
not considered Aristophanes’ greatest
play.
