Lysistrata

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Lysistrata (2008)
Aubrey Beardsley : Aristophanes' Lysistrata, illustration for Lysistrata from 1896

Lysistrata (in German almost all ancient Greek names are emphasized according to Latin stress rules; therefore Lysístrata; from ancient Greek Λυσιστράτη Lysistrátē , from λύσις lysis “dissolution” and στρατός stratós “army”, ie “army dissolver”) is one of the most well-known of the Greek comedy Poet Aristophanes . She was born by him in the spring of 411 BC. BC - in the twentieth year of the Peloponnesian War - performed at the Lenées . In the same year in Athens aristocrats overthrew the radical democratic government in a coup . Lysistrata is the third of Aristophanes' pacifist pieces that have war as their theme.

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The piece focuses on the struggle of some women against men as the cause of war and the suffering that goes with it. Carried by this knowledge, the women of Athens and Sparta conspire to enforce peace. Under the leadership of the heroine Lysistrata, they occupy the Acropolis and henceforth sexually deny each other their husbands. Lampito did the same in Sparta. After a few entanglements and relapses - love-mad women repeatedly try to leave the castle in the direction of the men, or the angry men try to storm the castle - the withdrawal of love actually leads to success.

Aftermath

Lysistrata is also the name of an operetta by Paul Lincke , from which the “Glowworm Idyll” in particular is well known. An asteroid discovered by the German astronomer Max Wolf in 1918 was named Lysistrata after the title character . Richard Mohaupt created a ballet of the same name in 1941, a ballet suite for the concert hall in 1946 and an arrangement of the ballet in 1957 under the title The Women's Strike of Athens . Alfred Stöger took up the subject in his 1947 film comedy Triumph der Liebe . In the early 1960s, the author Hans Kasper took up the Lysistrata motif for his award-winning radio play Walk David Help (hr / BR 1962). Lysistrata can be understood as a prototype of a recent literature denouncing war, cf. the 1935 play The Trojan War does not take place by Jean Giraudoux .

In January 1961, the broadcast of an adaptation of the comedy by Fritz Kortner under the title Die Sendung der Lysistrata was boycotted by Bayerischer Rundfunk on the grounds that the comedy violated the moral sentiments of the population. The CDU-governed federal states of North Rhine-Westphalia , Baden-Württemberg and Saarland had originally expressed concerns, but broadcast the program. Instead, the comedy was shown in cinemas in Bavaria . The background to this was the efforts of the Adenauer government at the time to arm the Federal Republic with nuclear weapons, something the director Kortner alluded to in his production.

In the slogan “ Make love, not war ” of the hippie movement, the theme of the piece was given a catchy, modern formulation in 1967.

In the science fiction novel Revolte auf Luna by Robert A. Heinlein , published in 1966, laser cannons are used to defend the moon . When the male service teams show a lack of willingness and reliability, this important task is taken over by women in the Lysistrata Corps , which was founded especially for this purpose .

Rolf Hochhuth's island comedy (original title: Lysistrate and NATO ) from 1974 relocates the plot to an unnamed island in the Aegean Sea on which the USA wants to build a missile base in the 1970s. The women of the island fear that this plan would make their homeland the target of Russian missiles in an emergency, and refuse - spurred on by MP Dr. Lysistrate Soulidis - their husbands because they want to sell their land. They lodge in the only inn on the island, fight back a "conquest" of their men and join some officers from the Greek Navy who have come to explore suitable locations for the missile base. In 1976 the work was filmed by Ludo Mich , all actors appeared naked.

In 1987 Lysistrata was interpreted by the comic artist Ralf König in the form of a comic of the same name. The template served as the basis for a persiflage riddled with anachronisms on gender roles and sexuality, war and pacifism, and also on theater and Greek comedy itself. The main focus of the plot is on the subject of homosexuality . The material was filmed in Spain in 2002 and was also released in German-speaking cinemas in 2004.

While earlier translations were very moderate and based on the language of Schiller and Goethe (see the fourth scene in the translation by Ludwig Seeger), the translation by classical philologist Niklas Holzberg from 2009 uses modern language and gives bluntly but scientifically correct, the often crude expression of the original.

A modern film adaptation called Chi-Raq was released in 2015. In the same year the short film Prologue based on the play was made .

In 1896, the English illustrator Aubrey Beardsley created a famous pornographic illustration suite of eight pictures.

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  • Aristophanes : Lysistrata . Comedy in 3 acts. German edited by. JJC thunder. Eight full-page black and white illustrations by Aubrey Beardsley. Private print Vienna 1913
  • Aristophanes: Lysistrates. Translated and edited by Niklas Holzberg . Reclam, Stuttgart 2009, ISBN 978-3-15-018664-0 .

literature

  • Wolfgang Dietrich : Lysistrata. In: Nigel J. Young (Ed.) The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace. Volume 2, Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-533468-5 , pp. 645-646.
  • Martin Holtermann: Aristophanes. D. Lysistrata. In: Christine Walde (Ed.): The reception of ancient literature. Kulturhistorisches Werklexikon (= Der Neue Pauly . Supplements. Volume 7). Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2010, ISBN 978-3-476-02034-5 , Sp. 107-119.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Publishing credits for the ballet suite. Retrieved May 24, 2016.
  2. ↑ Drewermann, Eugen : Depth Psychology and Exegesis 1 . The truth of forms. Dream, myth, fairy tale, saga and legend. dtv non-fiction book 30376, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-423-30376-X , © Walter-Verlag, Olten 1984, ISBN 3-530-16852-1 ; Pages 327 ff.
  3. ↑ Well something - (see cover picture) . In: Der Spiegel . No. 5 , 1961, pp. 50 ( Online - Jan. 25, 1961 ).
  4. ^ Robert A. Heinlein : The moon is a harsh mistress . Ed .: Berkeley Publishing Corporation. New York 1966, p. 239 ff .
  5. ^ Fourth scene in the translation by Ludwig Seeger (1845) . Zeno.org. Retrieved January 11, 2011.
  6. ↑ Helgard Haß: "Chi-Raq": Gripping new trailer for Spike Lee's modern "Lysistrata" adaptation with Samuel L. Jackson - Kino News. Film releases , November 26, 2015, accessed December 9, 2015 .
  7. ↑ Dirk Peitz: Netflix and Amazon: Stream by Numbers. Die Zeit , December 4, 2015, accessed on December 9, 2015 .