Page 11 - GALIET THESMOPHORIAS and Euphorias IV

Galiet & Galiet
the play? Traces. I think these lines not only hint to the importance of women in Aristophanian comedy and society in general, but they show tracks and traces to a matrilineal ancestry, the nomadic Amazons or Sauromatians. Indeed, this shows quite a sagacious Aristophanian Coup d’Etat! These arresting lines become a lush epiphany: the meta-theatricality of meaning within the play. Knowing how pervasive the phallic organ can be in Aristophanes’ old comedy, this mini-story is, paradoxically, equally charged with the fire of sexual-political innuendos. The sun has often been adulated as the most sublime symbol of patristic power2, i.e. Apollo, the God of Light, while the virginal moon has exalted the female spirit. By associating “the sun” with “vision”, Aristophanes endows his male citizens with omniscient power: vision is infinite, Aristotle said. Men become infinite by virtue of sight. Then, without a twitch, Aristophanes links “funnel” with “hearing”: funnel as vagina, hearing as the supreme attribute of womanhood.
Women become vessels and funnels for hearing, for obedience. However, as men as “seeing-vessels” are also “seen”, they become objects of vision as much as women as “hearing-vessels” are also “heard” become objects of being heard, the very transvestism of language as subversion tool: women ought to be heard and men seen for a while. Hence, the play becomes a meta-labyrinth that subverts classical notions of gender politics. Aristophanes’ trickery is superb. There is meaning hidden in meaning, a secret language being murmured between the lines: a didactic meta-theatrics of language resonating to us from the very depths of its undercurrent. Because we are not certain of what we hear or see, Aristophanes invites us to watch and hear confusing gender-role reversals along language role reversals. In his play, he invites men to become “funnels” 3⁄4 Agathon, Mnesilochus, Euripides have to experience the feminine 3⁄4 and women to become “eyes” 3⁄4 the assembly “watches for” the intruder. And if
2 The “day-time star” is associated with countless pagan and Christian religions. As examples, the solar cult of the Egyptian god, Amon-Re, and the Christian iconography of the rising sun symbolizing immortality and resurrection. In patriarchal societies, the sun is usually thought of as masculine (although the German language with its feminine die Sonne is an exception). The sun deity, with the exception of the Japanese sun Godess Amaterasu Omikami, is mostly masculine in patriarchal societies. Biedermann, Hans. Dictionary of Symbolism. Trans. James Hulbert. New York: A Meridian Book, Penguin Group, 1994.
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