Open up, open up, open the Thinkpot
and show me this Socrates at once;
I’m crazy to know more.
Come on, open up the door!
[As FIRST PUPIL opens the door the eccyclema203 is wheeled out to reveal a number of intent students in various contorted positions.]
Great Heracles, where did you dig up this menagerie?
FIRST PUPIL: Why the surprise? What do they seem like to you?
STREPSIADES: Like the Spartan prisoners of war from Pylos204. . . .
But those over there—why are they staring at the ground?
FIRST PUPIL: They’re investigating the nether sphere.
STREPSIADES: Oh, it’s bulbs they’re after! Don’t give it a thought.
[He turns to the other PUPILS.]
I know where there are lovely fat ones.
[He turns back to the FIRST PUPIL.]
And these here,
what are they all doing doubled up?
FIRST PUPIL: They’re trying to see what’s underneath hell.
STREPSIADES: With bottoms gazing at the heavens?
FIRST PUPIL: Yes, independently studying the stars.
[He turns to the other PUPILS.]
Inside with you—he mustn’t find you here.
STREPSIADES: Not yet, not yet, let them stay a little.
I have a small problem I’d like to share with them.
FIRST PUPIL: They’re not allowed to spend too long outside in the open air.
[The rest of the PUPILS are hustled inside; lying around outside the Thinkpot are piles of instruments and maps.]
STREPSIADES: Good Lord! What on earth are those?
FIRST PUPIL: Well, this here is for astronomy.
STREPSIADES: And that one?
FIRST PUPIL: For geometry.
STREPSIADES: And what’s this thing used for?
FIRST PUPIL: For measuring land.
STREPSIADES: You mean land for allotments?
FIRST PUPIL: No, just land in general.
STREPSIADES: My word, how clever! And democratic, too!
FIRST PUPIL: And see, here is a map of the entire world—
look, there’s Athens.
STREPSIADES: [gazing intently] Nonsense! I don’t believe it. I can’t see any jury sitting.205
FIRST PUPIL: Be that as it may ... here lies Attica—
there’s no doubt about it.
STREPSIADES: Then where are the people from my village—Cicynna?
FIRST PUPIL: Over there ... and here, as you see, is Euboea—
in a great long stretch.
STREPSIADES: Don’t I know it! We and Pericles206 did the stretching.... But where is Sparta?
FIRST PUPIL: Oh ... er? ... Right here.
STREPSIADES: Far too close! Think again! Get it away from us!
FIRST PUPIL: Can’t be done!
STREPSIADES: Zeus alive! You’ll regret it if you don’t. Good heavens, who’s that man hanging in a basket?
FIRST PUPIL: Him.
STREPSIADES: Who’s him?
FIRST PUPIL: Why, Socrates.
STREPSIADES: Hi, Socrates!
[turns to FIRST PUPIL]
Go on, shout to him for me.
FIRST PUPIL: Shout yourself. I don’t have time.
[FIRST PUPIL hurries back into the Thinkpot.]
STREPSIADES: Oh Socrates! My own little Socrakitten!
SOCRATES: Ephemeral thing! Do you address me?
STREPSIADES: Yes, and for a start, do tell me what you’re doing.
SOCRATES: I tread the air and scrutinize the sun.
STREPSIADES: Looking down on the gods from a basket?
Why not look up at them from the ground?
SOCRATES:
Because to glean accurate knowledge of the heavens
I have to suspend thought and meld my cerebral vibrations
with the homogenous air.
If I’d been down here and looked up there
I wouldn’t have discovered a thing.
The earth, you see, is forced to attract
the moisture of thought.
Watercress does the same.
STREPSIADES: You don’t say! The mind draws moisture into watercress? Oh Socrakitty, do come down to me at once and teach me all I’ve come to learn.
SOCRATES: [descending] So what have you come for?
STREPSIADES:
A yearning to learn how to speak.
I’m being harassed and stripped and plundered
by the most vulturine creditors.
SOCRATES: How did achieving bankruptcy manage to slip your mind?
STREPSIADES: A voracious equine cancer consumed me; so teach me one of your two Arguments: the one that lets you off a debt. I’ll pay cash down—I swear by the gods—whatever your fee.
SOCRATES: You’ll swear by the gods, will you?
Get this straight: the gods aren’t legal tender here.
STREPSIADES: So what do you swear by:
minted iron, like in Byzantium?
SOCRATES: Do you really want to know the real truth about the gods?
STREPSIADES: Absolutely! If that’s possible.
SOCRATES: And to converse with the Clouds—our very own deities?
STREPSIADES: Totally.
SOCRATES: Then seat yourself on this sacred couch.
STREPSIADES: Right! I’m sitting.
SOCRATES: Now take in your hands this wreath.
STREPSIADES: The wreath? Oh dear,
you’re not going to sacrifice me, Socrates, like Athamas?207
SOCRATES: Of course not!
We do this for all initiates.
STREPSIADES: And what does it do for me?
SOCRATES:
In speaking you’ll become as smooth as a salesman,
voluble as a rattle, insidious as pollen.
Now don’t move.
STREPSIADES: [He sees SOCRATES taking a handful of flour from a bag.]
No, by Zeus, you won’t fool me:
pollenized by sprinkled flour!
[SOCRATES takes up a wand and priestlike begins to incant.]208
SOCRATES:
Let the dotard hold his tongue
And listen to my orison.
O Lord and King, unmeasured Air
Who holds the earth up everywhere,
And you the sparkling atmosphere,
And Clouds, you holy goddesses
Of lightning’s thunderous prodigies:
Arouse yourselves on high, appear
To the contemplator here.
STREPSIADES: [hurriedly throwing a cloak over his head]
Not yet, not yet until I’m cloaked
And keep myself from being soaked.
To think I left the house with not
Even a cap on! What a clot!
SOCRATES: Come, you gorgeous Clouds, appear. Show yourselves to this fellow here. Whether you’re lolling on Olympus now On pinnacles in drifts of snow, Or whether you set the nymphs in motion Among the flowers of Father Ocean, Or whether the waters of the Nile are sucked By you in vessels golden-cupped, Or if by Lake Maeotis you Dwell above in steeps of snow, Accept this offering of mine And let these rituals be benign.
CHORUS: [from a distance]
Clouds ever-floating, come:
Let us flow on high and show
our dewy-glistening shapes
Over the deep and hissing boom
of our father the Sea,
Over mountain pyramids
coiffed in trees,
With visions of faraway views, and over
The earth we drench with water for crops,
And the blessed rivers swirling and rushing,
And the crashing main throwing down its thunder,
And the wide-awake eyes of ubiquitous air
bright with sight
And the gaze of its rays.
So let us dismantle
the rain-sodden haze
That droops on our deathless contours, and peer
<
br /> Down on the earth with an eye
that brings it all near.
SOCRATES:
Oh holy Clouds,
you have hearkened to my summons and come!
[turning to STREPSIADES]
I hope you noticed the way the thunder
rumbled in concert with their voices.
STREPSIADES: Yes, I as well am full of respect for your eminent band And honor your claps of thunder by breaking wind.
SOCRATES: No need to be rude, nor should you copy those second-rate comics, So keep your mouth shut: There’s a swarming mass of singing goddesses coming.
CHORUS: [nearer]
Rain-laden maidens,
Come, let us visit the glittering land of Pallas
To see the country of Cecrops,209 as well as
See its magnificent men: a land that adopts
Unutterable rites, and where the aspirants
File into the temple, its gates thrown open
During the mystic all-hallowed feasts210
When offerings are made to the gods in the heaven
In towering temples full of their busts,
Where godly processions for the sainted ones happen
Amid beautifully garlanded festive victims
At all times and when spring comes
With the grace of Bacchus
Choruses melodiously compete—
To the full-toned burdens of the flute.
STREPSIADES:
In the name of Zeus, Socrates, tell me
Who are these females
Mouthing this sanctified hymn?
They’re surely not, are they,
Some sort of feminine heroes?
SOCRATES:
No, not a bit of it—heavenly clouds,
the layabout’s goddesses:
Those purveyors of judgment and brainy acumen,
Dialectics and fanciful circumlocution
In a palaver of thrust and parry.
STREPSIADES:
So this is the reason my spirit went soaring
at the sound of their voice
And gives me a craving to go splitting hairs,
And babble about the wonders of smoke,
And muster a premise to counter a premise,
And puncture a thought with the point of a thought.
So if I can I’m craving to see them—
right up close.
SOCRATES: Then take a look towards Mount Parnes.
I see them there silently descending.
STREPSIADES: Where? Tell me, where?
[The CLOUDS enter, quietly filing into their choral positions.]
SOCRATES: They’re moving in over there, the total throng,
infiltrating bushes and gaps
and sidling along.
STREPSIADES: I don’t get it. I don’t see them.
SOCRATES: There by the ingress.
STREPSIADES: Ah, now I almost see them!
SOCRATES: Of course you do, unless your eyes are pumpkins.
STREPSIADES: Praised be Zeus! Now I see them.
They penetrate everything.
SOCRATES: And you never realized they were goddesses,
still less believed it.
STREPSIADES: Good heavens, no! I thought they were mist
and dew and smoke.
SOCRATES: Of course you didn’t. You had no inkling that they feed a whole tribe of sophists, genius doctors, long-haired-indolent-onyx-ringed-loafers,211 tune-twisting songsters for circular dances: excitable men they maintain in their laziness because they are the music makers of these very Clouds.
STREPSIADES:
So that’s why they concoct verses like:
“damp bedraggled braceleted and zooming clouds,”
and “hairy hundred-headed Typhus,” and
“galloping gales,” and “airy airiness,”
and “crooked-clawed fowls swimming on high,”
and “wet rainy damp-laden clouds.”
For these performances they get to be rewarded
by guzzling gargantuan fillets of mullet
and the bird flesh of thrushes.212
SOCRATES: But thanks to these clouds, don’t they deserve it?
STREPSIADES:
Well, tell me this:
if these are really clouds
why do they look like ordinary women
When we know they are not?
SOCRATES: Then what exactly are they?
STREPSIADES:
I hardly know.
Real clouds look like scatterings of fleece,
not like women at all, but these have noses.
SOCRATES: No matter, I have a few questions to ask.
STREPSIADES: Fire away!
SOCRATES: Have you ever looked up and seen a cloud
like a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, or a bull?
STREPSIADES: I certainly have. What of it?
SOCRATES:
Clouds can change themselves into whatever they want.
Thus if they see a long-haired oaf,
one of those hirsute creatures, say like Xenophantus’ son,
they make fun of his fetishes
by turning themselves into centaurs.
STREPSIADES: And if they look down and see an embezzler like Simon,213
what do they do?
SOCRATES: They expose him at once and turn into wolves.
STREPSIADES:
Ah, that must be why the other day
when they saw Cleonymus, the deserter,
they turned into deer.
SOCRATES: Then when they caught sight of Cleisthenes214 just now,
as you saw, they turned into women.
STREPSIADES: Greetings, mighty ladies:
If ever you’ve done a celestial favor, do one now
and let out a roar—oh please, you lordly queens!
CHORUS LEADER:
Greetings, old man, born aeons ago,
tracker of abstruse verbosity;
And you, high priest of flimsiest twaddle,
please tell us, will you,
What we can do for you whom we rank higher
than any other contemporary pie-in-the-skyer,
Except for Prodicus‡—so wise and so clever—
Yes, you who swagger through these alleys
with your slyly sideways-glancing sallies,
Po-faced and shoeless, who, keeping us well,
puts up with hell.
STREPSIADES: Great Mother Earth, what a delivery!
How awesome and holy and fabulous!
SOCRATES: Naturally! These are the only genuine goddesses.
The rest are frauds.
STREPSIADES: By the Earth, you don’t mean to say
that Zeus is not an Olympian god?
SOCRATES: What do you mean “Zeus”? Stop gibbering.
Zeus doesn’t exist.
STREPSIADES: What d’you mean? Who makes it rain?
Go no further till you answer me that.
SOCRATES:
Why these, of course,
and I’ll give you indisputable proof.
Have you ever seen rain without clouds?
Otherwise Zeus would have to produce the rain himself
when the clouds are not at home.
STREPSIADES:
Apollo be praised!
How cleverly you’ve grafted this
onto what you said before!
And I always thought that rain
was Zeus pissing through a sieve. . . .
But who’s the one, do tell me,
who makes the thunder and makes me shiver?
SOCRATES: [pointing to the CLOUDS]
These make the thunder, by wobbling around.
STREPSIADES: Come on, you genius, how?
SOCRATES:
When they’re swollen and sopping with water
they have to wander away
and they start barging into one another,
and being so swollen they burst and crash.
/> STREPSIADES: But who makes them go wandering away?
Isn’t that Zeus?
SOCRATES: Not a bit of it! Centrifugal pressure. Spin.
STREPSIADES:
Centrifugal pressure? I never thought of that.
So it’s no more Zeus! Centrifugal pressure reigns.
But you’ve still got to tell me
who produces the clap of thunder.
SOCRATES:
Weren’t you listening?
When the clouds are sodden with water, as I told you,
and barge into one another, they explode.
STREPSIADES: Get on with you! Who’d ever believe it?
SOCRATES:
Learn from your own experience.
Have you ever filled your tummy with soup
at the Panathenaeic Festival,
then felt a sudden rumble and upheaval?
STREPSIADES:
Yes, by Apollo, yes.
There’s an awful shudder just like thunder
and that swill of soup goes careering round and round
and growling . . . mildly at first: pappax pappax;
then putting on the pressure: papapappax;
and then I shit like thunder: papapappax—
the way those Clouds do.
SOCRATES:
Consider next the fart you let off
from such a tiny tummy.
Doesn’t it follow that the limitless empyrean
would blast a mighty clap?
STREPSIADES:
So that’s why the words are so similar: clap and crap!
Ah, but the bolt of lightning—explain that:
blazing and burning up as it strikes,
incinerating everyone around.
It’s perfectly obvious
that that’s what Zeus propels against all perjurers.
SOCRATES:
You clot with Old-timers’ disease,215 you absolute ninny!
If he’s a perjurer-striker, why hasn’t he stricken
Simon or Cleonymus or Theorus, those assiduous
perjurers?
Instead he strikes his own temple
and Sunium the headland off Athens
as well as the mighty oaks. What is he up to?
The oak tree is hardly a perjurer.216
STREPSIADES: I don’t know. You have a point. . . .
All right, what is the thunderbolt?