This volume presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Birds, based on a critical revision of Nan Dunbar’s text (Oxford 1995), my Italian translation of the play, a comprehensive introduction to both author and play (pp. 115-163) and a general interpretive essay on Birds (pp. 7-114). The Greek differs in fifteen places from Dunbar’s text. In most cases, my critical choices reject some conjectural emendations which do not appear to be convincingly supported by evidence or argument. I argue, for example (pp. 139-140), that in v. 586 Dunbar’s correction (se; Krovnon, se; Zh'na, se; Gh'n instead of se; bivon, se; de; gh'n, se; Krovnon unanimously witnessed by mss.) is most unnecessary, as the paradosis is formally and linguistically sound whereas the conjecture deeply alters the semantic structure of the passage, which receives on the contrary strong support by the text’s consistent use of the thematic isotopy of birds as food. This is one of the several places in which I try to show how a sophisticated and painstaking literary-critic evaluation can lead to a deeper philological understanding of textual problems, whenever formal and linguistic factors in themselves do not prompt for doubtless intervention. The introductory essay centres on the protagonist Pisetairos and, more specifically, on the nature of the relationship between individual and society as they are conceptualized in the play. The essay is divided into three parts: in the first Pisetairos is characterized as a comic hero; the various paragraph explore his main distinctive features on which such a characterization can be based, starting from the most fundamental ones: the frustration of libidic impulses and the consequent creative comeback; comic heorism is ultimately based on the strength of desire, which allies itself with imagination to create a solution to its problems. Further, this first part focuses on the interchangeability of individuals and groups as subjects of dialectic struggles: even though the reality principle would prohibit this, in comedy a single subject like the comic hero can acquire the status of a plural, superindividual I thanks to the opposition to a collectivity which is itself reduced to an individual, as happens in the struggle of the protagonist with Athens, whose collective reality is flattened, in its characterization through comic language, to that of an individual figure. The second part of the essay explores the possibility of using an economic metaphor as a key to the interpretation of the play. The struggle between the hero and its adversaries can be modeled as a situation of permanent economic transaction where the values of good and evil are not intrinsic but depend on the direction of the flow of goods. The various paragraphs show that Pisetairos’ role as a comic hero is fulfilled by his manipulation of his existential balance in such a way as to achieve the greatest possible reduction of losses while at the same time increasing, lawfully or unlawfully, his gains. The most significant example of the numerous strategies employed to this end is the one by which the hero manages to reproduce, in his relationship with the chorus of birds, an inverted and revengeful version of same situation of which he felt himself to be a victim in his struggle with the city: just as the city demands of its citizens vital and concrete resources in return for abstract acknowledgements and honour, Pisetairos manages his own transformation from loser-citizen to winner-hero after having imposed on the birds the same dynamic, with himself in the exploitative position: the birds are asked to provide concrete and material resources and are paid back with an impalpable timhv. The third part of the essay is entirely devoted to an analysis of the chorus, in order to highlight a number of features which had gone virtually unnoticed in the previous literature on the play. The central idea is the symbolic identification of the Birds with the most of common conceptualizations of time (time as the yearly run of the seasons; time as the gift of prophecy or of all-round control over the future; time as the bird’s living roots in the unattainable past of cosmogony; time as speed and simultaneity); the main point of my analysis is to show that their ‘magical’ charm and their dramatic relevance in the play are ultimately based upon a complex semiotization of birds as a vivid symbolic equivalent of life as fulfilled expectation, as a magically effective means of perpetuous reward and satisfaction.

Aristofane. Gli uccelli

GRILLI, ALESSANDRO
2006-01-01

Abstract

This volume presents the Greek text of Aristophanes’ Birds, based on a critical revision of Nan Dunbar’s text (Oxford 1995), my Italian translation of the play, a comprehensive introduction to both author and play (pp. 115-163) and a general interpretive essay on Birds (pp. 7-114). The Greek differs in fifteen places from Dunbar’s text. In most cases, my critical choices reject some conjectural emendations which do not appear to be convincingly supported by evidence or argument. I argue, for example (pp. 139-140), that in v. 586 Dunbar’s correction (se; Krovnon, se; Zh'na, se; Gh'n instead of se; bivon, se; de; gh'n, se; Krovnon unanimously witnessed by mss.) is most unnecessary, as the paradosis is formally and linguistically sound whereas the conjecture deeply alters the semantic structure of the passage, which receives on the contrary strong support by the text’s consistent use of the thematic isotopy of birds as food. This is one of the several places in which I try to show how a sophisticated and painstaking literary-critic evaluation can lead to a deeper philological understanding of textual problems, whenever formal and linguistic factors in themselves do not prompt for doubtless intervention. The introductory essay centres on the protagonist Pisetairos and, more specifically, on the nature of the relationship between individual and society as they are conceptualized in the play. The essay is divided into three parts: in the first Pisetairos is characterized as a comic hero; the various paragraph explore his main distinctive features on which such a characterization can be based, starting from the most fundamental ones: the frustration of libidic impulses and the consequent creative comeback; comic heorism is ultimately based on the strength of desire, which allies itself with imagination to create a solution to its problems. Further, this first part focuses on the interchangeability of individuals and groups as subjects of dialectic struggles: even though the reality principle would prohibit this, in comedy a single subject like the comic hero can acquire the status of a plural, superindividual I thanks to the opposition to a collectivity which is itself reduced to an individual, as happens in the struggle of the protagonist with Athens, whose collective reality is flattened, in its characterization through comic language, to that of an individual figure. The second part of the essay explores the possibility of using an economic metaphor as a key to the interpretation of the play. The struggle between the hero and its adversaries can be modeled as a situation of permanent economic transaction where the values of good and evil are not intrinsic but depend on the direction of the flow of goods. The various paragraphs show that Pisetairos’ role as a comic hero is fulfilled by his manipulation of his existential balance in such a way as to achieve the greatest possible reduction of losses while at the same time increasing, lawfully or unlawfully, his gains. The most significant example of the numerous strategies employed to this end is the one by which the hero manages to reproduce, in his relationship with the chorus of birds, an inverted and revengeful version of same situation of which he felt himself to be a victim in his struggle with the city: just as the city demands of its citizens vital and concrete resources in return for abstract acknowledgements and honour, Pisetairos manages his own transformation from loser-citizen to winner-hero after having imposed on the birds the same dynamic, with himself in the exploitative position: the birds are asked to provide concrete and material resources and are paid back with an impalpable timhv. The third part of the essay is entirely devoted to an analysis of the chorus, in order to highlight a number of features which had gone virtually unnoticed in the previous literature on the play. The central idea is the symbolic identification of the Birds with the most of common conceptualizations of time (time as the yearly run of the seasons; time as the gift of prophecy or of all-round control over the future; time as the bird’s living roots in the unattainable past of cosmogony; time as speed and simultaneity); the main point of my analysis is to show that their ‘magical’ charm and their dramatic relevance in the play are ultimately based upon a complex semiotization of birds as a vivid symbolic equivalent of life as fulfilled expectation, as a magically effective means of perpetuous reward and satisfaction.
2006
Grilli, Alessandro
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11568/101730
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