Hetairikoi dialogoi
Hetairikoi dialogoi ( Greek Ἑταιρικοὶ διάλογοι ; " Hetarian talks") is the title of a collection of fifteen dialogical miniatures by Lucian of Samosata , probably written after AD 160.
The petty-bourgeois demi-world of Athens (hetaires, their lovers, rivals, quacks, sailors) appears in everyday dramas full of worries, sentimentality and comedy, their actors speak the Attic gutter language. The independent genre scenes revolve around the friend who has been lost to another woman; about the lover who might get married; a whole series of jealousies; about the Syrian sorceress who is supposed to make the object of desire fall in love; about the joys of homoeroticism; about the subtleties of the hetarian trade and the psychology of the clientele; about the alleged war heroes returning home; about the philosophy that makes love unhappy; the recovery of an unfaithful lover; or the poor sailor whom his beloved chases away because he only ever gives onions, cheese and herrings.
Although the Hetairikoi dialogoi are not dated, it can be concluded that they belong to the creative period after his Akme , in which Lukian said goodbye to the sophistic epideictic (genre of richly decorated celebratory and award speeches) and took up new literary forms tried. The pleasant short conversation full of humor and rough description of the milieu is an unmistakably unique style of Lukian. This small form, in which the Socratic dialogue and motifs of Menander's “New Comedy ” are combined , appears alongside the Hetairikoi dialogoi in the Theon dialogoi (“ Talks of the Gods ”), the Enalioi Dialogoi (“ Talks of the Sea Gods ”) and in Prometheus . It allows conciliatory criticism, both of the inconsistencies and grotesque aspects of the Greek world of gods, as well as of the all too understandable weaknesses of people. (In the late, however, already strongly menippeisch embossed Nekrikoi dialogoi , the "dead calls" is then struck a snappier tone.)
The first print was published in Florence in 1494, the first German translation is by Christoph Martin Wieland (he left the fifth dialogue untranslated because of the subject of homosexual love) from 1788. The “Hetaeric Talks” stand at the beginning of a literary tradition. Their motif, the conversation among prostitutes about the worries and hardships of their lives, was taken up by Pietro Aretino for his courtesan talks (published 1554–1556) and continues into modern times, for example in Heinrich Zilles Whore Conversations (published 1913).
Expenses (selection)
- Lukian: Conversations of the Gods, Sea Gods, Dead and Hetaera (= Universal Library 1133). Based on Christoph Martin Wieland, translated and edited by Otto Seel . Reclam, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-15-001133-7 .
- Lukian: Talks with hetaerae. Transferred from Carl Fischer . With 33 drawings by Bele Bachem . Emil Vollmer Verlag, Wiesbaden undated
literature
- Kindler's New Literature Lexicon . Volume 10: La - Ma. Kindler, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-463-43010-X , pp. 686-687.
- Konrat Ziegler , Walther Sontheimer (ed.): The little Pauly. Lexicon of antiquity. Volume 3: Iuppiter - Nasidienus. Deutscher Taschenbuch-Verlag, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-423-05963-X , Sp. 773-774. ISBN 3-423-05963-X .
