Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/13

Rh look the numerous passages which directly contravene it. Indeed he himself collect and puts forward at the very outset of his work a number of passages in which "the birds and men are blended together in their signification" (p. 10), and others, again, in which the Gods are confounded with both. "Indeed," (he says), "to complete the confusion, the birds themselves, in whom the fundamental characteristics of the Athenian manners and constitution are satirized, have also such excellent and praiseworthy qualities, that in many of these they are evidently brought forward as models for the Athenians, &c." (p. 11.)

To an ordinary mind the simplest way of solving the difficulties would have been the abandonment of the theory. When the work of a great artist presents to you only "intricate confusion," the natural inference is, that you have chosen a false point of view. But your learned German is not so easily moved from his standpunkt. Hear how Prof. Süvern disposes of these manifest objections:

"No wonder then that this intricate confusion has thrown a veil over the fundamental ideas of the poem, and has led to the opinion, that the author had merely in view a general satire on mankind, on the notions and relations of man, though with a special reference to the Athenian people. We shall now however be led astray by it, if we reflect on the one hand, that such confusion is quite appropriate and congenial to the roguish humour of comic poetry, which conceals its aim in the play of a perpetually shifting irony, and thereby makes a stronger impression upon those who see through it; and on the other, that we can easily distinguish what belongs to each of the three divisions, as a party implicated in the undertaking, from that which is extraneous to it; as for example in reference to the men, what belongs to them as one of those parties, and what to them as men; and in reference to the birds, what properly belongs to them as parties in the action, what in virtue of the masks given to them, and what as they compose the chorus. We must also take with us, that the confusion which we observe would naturally proceed from the object of the comedy; it being necessary, at the period at which ’The Birds’ was brought out, that this object should be to a certain degree concealed. Whilst at the same time, with respect to the several parties engaged in the action, without impairing their fundamental diversity, it admitted 1—2