Democracy

And comedy

The Knights by Aristophanes, translated by Gilbert Murray, and Lanzarote by Michel Houellebecq, translated by Frank Wynne

It is a strange thing, democracy. When you think about it, it’s strange. The idea that one person might win over not only another — in what we might call frank, manly exchanges of views and opinion — but rather win over a lot of people. And then get them all to do his bidding — in voting, in advocating for his person or his cause, in deciding his way if they were on a jury and he arraigned before them. It’s odd, isn’t it? Our societies theoretically favour the individual. They privilege species of autonomy — autonomy in terms of personal judgement, in freedom of thought and conscience. But in practice, people like to get behind leaders of one sort or other.

Of course, our societies are not free: I could very easily, even unintentionally, include half a dozen things in this newsletter that would get me sent to prison in Tyranny Britain, the country I inhabit. But we do so like to pretend.

What the ancient Athenian system did, if we look to its writers, was to overrate and continually overdo public discussion of its democracy. Democracy as the keystone of the state — something unique and special and never repeated.

Authors like the Old Oligarch wrote manuals of politics which were satiric in their overpraising and overstating of democracy. It’s actively good that no one dresses differently, freeman or slave, so none can be told apart on the street. It’s good that the best men — i.e. the richest — have no more say than the scum who row the galleys that keep our naval power afloat and fighting. Of course, the Old Oligarch did not, in his heart of hearts, mean what he said. But he acknowledged democracy as a form, as a practice. He thought it was an immovable object, an inescapable fact.

What comedians like Aristophanes did, as well as send up democracy for the rabble-rousing sham it often was and is, was also to overstate democracy’s importance: its place at the core and heart of the state and its people.

This play, like so many of his others, look at democracy a little sideways.

What if, Aristophanes says elsewhere, there were a philosopher who was an opponent of the sacred democracy at the heart of the state: a strange man who said he was led by his personal star, his destiny, a group of cloud-gods who gave him his prophecies and horoscopes, and which sent him madly to derail the state, to sink the collective ship?

What if, in another play, the women wanted to rule the state (to stop the Peloponnesian War), and collectively hatched what they thought was the best plan to do this, the most effective thing any could think of — they refused, en masse, to sleep with their husbands. And got a little more than the bargained for in so doing.

All of these plays about democracy overstate what it is and how bizarre it can be. In The Knights, we have the same thing, taken to extremes.

Athens was then in the grip of the demagogues — evil bastards who roused the rabble and came from the rabble themselves. No refinement, no class, just invective and fighting words.

Such a man, if he is to be a true demagogue, must have low origins; he must be stupid; he must be cruel, too, and visit great harshness on the former elites and upon his enemies. This is what Aristophanes wrote, and the people may even have agreed, but the demagogues kept springing up on occasion, all the same.

In the play, two men who suffered badly under the new order are said to represent the old generals of the state. Once noble, now they have been brought low by the demagogue ruler.

They decide that the demagogue must be supplanted. How to do this, they wonder?

Perhaps a few drinks of wine will give us both the courage and the insight necessary to help us as we think.

Finally, they get it. They must find another leader for the people to follow. He must be like the man currently who has sway. Yet he must be more so. Where the old demagogue has low origins, this man must be despicable in his ancestry, foul in his trade. He must know how to speak fluently, but crudely — glib and so crude it is painful and grating to hear. And he must have terrible uncouth insults ready, at a moment’s notice, for anyone who crosses him. Only then might such a man defeat the cunning demagogue, and save the city from the rule of such people.

Readers looking for a precise and specific lesson in this play may look long and thoroughly. I doubt they’ll find one.

Democracy is not that interesting, after all. Nor is it so often susceptible to system-level change.

More likely, people looking for a message will see a political order which is transient and vulgar, where nothing important is actually discussed, and where the worst rise inexorably to the top, like scum floating lazily on stagnant water. And they’ll think that times change, but politics never does, and that democracy may be less important in deciding who wins in the affairs of men than the Greek authors thought and dreamt and imagined.

In Houellebecq’s Lanzarote – a slight novella, very funny, which reads very well and fast – we see the democratic world as the year ticked over into 2000. Philosophical questions include: what is the true nature of tourism? Are German lesbians good company abroad? Should we all join millenarian alien cults? And will the unnamed protagonist, despite his encountering a depressed policeman from Brussels, enjoy his holiday?

Such are the vital things that the citizens of the democratic world must wrestle with, must wrestle with most forcefully indeed.