The care and the business of women

With all my talk of imaginative fiction and my modern book choices, it may come as a surprise to you that my next choice of literature was Aristophanes's Lysistrata. As background, I became obsessed last year with finding a really good list of essential literature. While the Great Books of the Western World list isn't modern or very diverse (there's no Asian or Latin American literature, for one thing), it's a good start, and it's full of philosophers and playwrights and mathematicians that I want to read up on. Aristophanes among them.

I've already read Aristophanes's The Clouds, which was a really good satire of philosophy and education in Greek culture. This book is no less insightful or amusing, though it's hurt somewhat by the 1950's translation. (I read a 1990's translation of The Clouds, in the Great Books' 2nd Edition.) The translator tries to get the feel of the piece by putting everything into the proper rhythm and rhyme scheme. It feels pretty good reading it, but I'm picking up a lot less information because of the obscure word choices, and a lack of footnotes on who some of these deities are.

Ahem. I can only criticize this so much because it's so interesting. (Focusing less on the language lets me focus more on the ideas, anyway.) I can see this as a pretty epic musical, though I don't know if this would be accompanied by music in the ancient days. In terms of actual content? Lysistrata is a quirky character with a unique idea about peace; the play is staged in one place, so it works well technically (unlike this play version of Narnia I'm reading, which has something like four elaborate scene changes); and the ending is classic Greek comedy. (Good raunchy bits, too, despite the abstinence.) Oh, might I mention one thing? Aristophanes has no qualms with changing history in fiction. I can't understand why modern storytellers have issues with this -- they always want to return the world to its status quo. What is fantasy for if not to change the world? Sorry, but kill historical accuracy: Valkyrie would have been so much better if they made a new ending.