传记阿里斯托芬

诗人的传记

希腊著名喜剧作家阿里斯托芬的文学活动长达四十年之久。在这段时间里，他的笔锋犀利地讽刺了一些著名人物、政治潮流和社会弱点。在已知的40部真正出自他的天才之作的戏剧中，有11部留给了后人。但这些很容易证明，就智慧、幽默、发明和语言运用技巧而言，阿里斯托芬从来没有被超越过。我们对这位诗人的生平所知甚少。甚至连他的出生地都不确定。然而，他的家庭显然很富有，因为诗人的教育显然是最好的之一。在政治上，他以一种冲动的本性全力支持贵族的和平党。古典评论家把阿里斯托芬的作品分为三个时期。第一阶段大约结束于公元前421年，包括他丢失的两部戏剧和现存的五部戏剧。 For some reason Aristophanes' first three plays were brought out under the name of one of his actors. They included the two lost plays, The Banqueters and The Babylonians, and the prize-winning Acharnians. The Knights, which won first prize in 424 B.C., was brought out under the author's own name. It contained a sharp attack on the demagogue, Cleon, and, because no actor was willing to incur the enmity of so powerful a person, Aristophanes had to play the part of Cleon himself. The Clouds (423 B.C.) contains the famous dialogue scene between the Just and the Unjust argument. The Wasps (422 B.C.) ridiculed the regular courts of justice. The Peace (421 B.C.) was written in the interests of the recently concluded peace between Athens and Sparta. During the seven years that passed before Aristophanes exhibited another play, a law had been passed to check political satire. In the second group, beginning with The Birds (414 B.C.) he turned to social satire and ridiculed the fondness of the Athenians for litigation. Lysistrata (411 B.C.) represents a woman's efforts to bring about peace, while Thesmophoriazusae of the same year contains an attack on Euripides. The Frogs, which started the third period in 405 B.C., was devoted to literary and dramatic criticism. Ecclesiazusae (Women in Parliament) was a satire on current communistic ideas. The local character of the plays of the first period had by the third period given way to a cosmopolitanism that marks Aristophanes as the transition-link between what is termed "Old Comedy" and the "Middle" and "New Comedy" of Greece.