Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres

1 Dikaiopolis on Modern Art

42 The material of the text is not dead, it is speaking, signifying . . . we can always hear voices.—Mikhail Bakhtin Therefore, one can say that any word exists for the speaker in three aspects: as a neutral word of a language, belonging to nobody; as an other’s word, which belongs to another person and is filled with echoes of the other’s utterance; and, finally, as my word, for since I am dealing with it in a particular situation, with a particular speech plan, it is already imbued with my expression.—Mikhail Bakhtin Interpretations of Acharnians often focus on the play’s political dimension. There is nothing surprising here. Indeed, the 425 production date—during the war with Sparta—together with the broad outline of the plot—an unpatriotic separate peace with Sparta—make a political reading of the play attractive, perhaps irresistible. At the same time, the play is acknowledged by all to contain an important intertextual component .1 Euripides’ Telephus is most prominent in this respect, as Dikaiopolis uses its language and plot to win over his adversaries and to bring about the peace with Sparta for which he longs.2 Euripidean tragedy as a whole is another important extra-generic feature of Acharnians, as the tragedian himself makes an appearance, along with a closet full of his tragic heroes (405–79). This intertextuality is not easily reconciled with a political reading of the play, however; the fusion is seldom attempted and the implications of intertextuality are not always elaborated beyond the cataloguing of allusions. Most common is the tacit assumption by 1 Dikaiopolis on Modern Art those advancing political interpretations of Acharnians that politics is primary and intertextuality aesthetic and epiphenomenal.3 Such a distinction cannot be maintained in good faith, however. There is no basis in Aristophanic comedy to justify a hierarchical relationship between stylistic and thematic elements, for when there is a multiplicity of styles, there are dialogical relationships between them, and in the presence of dialogical relations, there is no single interpretative register.4 As Bakhtin puts it, novelistic discourse is characterized by a “plenitude of . . . languages—all of which are equally capable of being ‘languages of truth’ but . . . all of which are equally relative, reified, and limited” (1981.366– 67). So also in Aristophanes, the political and literary discourses here juxtaposed exert a similar relativizing effect on one another, thus creating a critical impasse that can only be resolved arbitrarily. If we reject the exclusionary logic implied by the need to privilege some Aristophanic attitudes over others judged to be less central , Aristophanes’ ability to employ multiple discourses without assigning special authority to any comes into view, the result being a complex interaction by which the presence of one “voice” acts to destabilize the other. Thus the authority of the political dimension of Acharnians is not denied but limited, and thereby undermined, by the complex aesthetic affiliations of the text, just as an entirely aesthetic interpretation of the play would be undermined by its connections with contemporary political discussion and decision-making at Athens. A comprehensive interpretation of Acharnians, then, would be a major undertaking, for it would have to bring together the literary resonances of Acharnians’ intertextuality with the political issues engaged by the action of the play, seeking to integrate them at a higher interpretive level. Such a project is extremely complex, though I shall return to one aspect of it in Chapter 5 with an analysis of the way in which Aristophanes ’ polyvalent construction of the Telephus story (predominantly in Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae) displaces political considerations by devoting sustained attention to aesthetic and intertextual issues. In this chapter, my goals are more modest, as I concentrate on the opening monologue of Acharnians. The substance of this analysis, however, is crucial for my general point about the interaction of voices within Aristophanic comedy. The intertextual relationships self-consciously invoked by Dikaiopolis in the monologue open Acharnians to self-relativizing , discordant forces and thereby introduce irreducible elements of ambivalence into the play.5 It will be useful to have Dikaiopolis’ opening lines before us (1–19)6 : Dikaiopolis on Modern Art 43 44 Aristophanes and the Carnival of Genres ˜sa dØ d°dhgmai tØn §mautoË kard¤an,¥syhn d¢ baiã, pãnu d¢ baiã, t°ttara: ì d’ »dunÆyhn, cammakosiogãrgara. f°r’ ‡dv, t¤` d’ ¥syhn êjion xairhdÒnow;§gŸd’ §f’ ⁄ ge tÚ k°ar h...