The Etymologies of Comedy Segal, Erich Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies; Spring 1973; 14, 1; ProQuest pg. 75 The Etymologies of Comedy Erich Segal HI would strongly advise you, Mr Worthing, to try and acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over." OSCAR W]LDE, The Importance of Being Earnest S INCB putative parents are so often the cause of comic confusion, it seems appropriate that the very word comedy can lay claim to no fewer than three separate fathers. Some have merely poetic value and are no more legitimate than Falstaff's relation to Hal. And yet by the same token, since they are the cause that is wit, if not wis­ dom, they should not be summarily dismissed. Let us weigh the claims serially, if not seriously. Comedy was born at night. At least this is the conclusion of some long-ago scholars who derived KWP.cr8ta from Kwp.a sleep and c/JS~ song. The ancients believed essential truths were evident in their very speech, that words could both denote and describe. Nomen omen, as the Romans rhymed it.1 Hence certain Byzantine scholars discovered KWJ.La in comedy and pronounced the genre a creature of night.2 No one disputes the second verbal element. We are indeed dealing with a kind of song which figuratively and often literally ends harmoniously on the tonic chord. But KWfLa is linguistically impossible, although there are still some whimsical minds that allow a filigree of fancy to outweigh a philology of fact and give some credence to this deri­ vation.a But since comic spirit traditionally disregards reality, we too 1 The "Helen Ode" of Aeschylus' Agamemnon (lines 681ft") best illustrates the ancients' belief in this principle. There the chorus puns on €A£tV in speculating how Helen came to be named "with such thorough etymology" ~c Tel 1Tav ~T'T/TQP.WC. So completely destructive, she proved to be iMvac. £Aav8poc, iM1T'TOAtC (line 689), "Hell for ships. hell for men. hell for cities." This linguistic phenomenon is treated at length in Plato's Craty/us; see also W. B. Stanford. Greek Metaphor (Oxford 1936) 115, and William D. Woodhead, Etymolo­ givng in Greek Literature from Homer to Philo Judaeus (Toronto 1928). I See G. Kaibel, Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Berlin 1899), who cites the author of II£p~ rfjc Kwp.cp8Lac, 14; schol. in Dion. Thrax 14; and Tzetz. Proleg. in Lycoph. 34, and []£pl at"q,opiic 1TOtTJTWV 35 and 38. a All comatose conjectures are definitively dispelled by H. Frisk, Griechisches etymolo­ gisches Worterbuch II (Heidelberg 1970) 61-62. 75 76 THE ETYMOLOGIES OF COMEDY can acknowledge that even if KWJ.La is not true, it is at least beautiful. What then would a Nightsong be? Perchance a dream. On several occasions Freud equated the psychodynamics of dream and comedy. In fact, he once referred to his essay on comedy as the 'twin brother' to his essay on dreams.' These mental actions have many important features in common, among which, punning word-play, the relaxa­ tion of inhibition liberating 'primary process thinking', and not least important, a temporary return to childhood.5 In both dream and comedy, the impossible wish comes true. In each case the aim is pleasure, and the joy comes with no loss of energy or pang of conscience-the expense of spirit borne free. Plato des­ cribes the dream process as one in which, as reason slumbers, "un­ lawful pleasures are awakened." Schattenfreude, so to speak. In dreams, says Plato, the animalistic and 'uncivilized' aspect of man, 'TO ••• 87Jptw8EC 'TE Kal a:yptov, 'kicks up its heels', CKLP'Tij. (Republic 571 c). This is the dance of comedy, indeed the very antic advocated by Wrong Logic in Aristophanes' Clouds (1078):6 X ~ ~,J. I I 1\ I r ~ , , I pw rn ~VCEtJ CKtp'Ta, YEl\a, VOJLLc"E JL7JOEV aLCXpov Indulge your lusting, kick your heels, laugh up-remember- nothing's shameful! Plato censures what Aristophanes celebrates, but both recognize the characteristic action of both comedy and dream as CKtp'TaW, 'frisky kicking up'. And KWJLa is a rare word with rare connotations, whenever it ap- 'Cf the fifteenth of Freud's Introductory Lectures (1907), trans!' Joan Riviere, in A General Introduction to PsychoanalYSiS (New York 1952) 248. 6 Freud's Interpretation of Dreams was published in 1900. A more recent psychoanalytic restatement of the dream-process may be found in Louis Breger, "Function of Dreams," Journal of Abnormal Psychology 72, mon.supp!. to no.5 (1967). On the gratification of un con­ scious impulses in dreams, see 5iT. Especially apposite is Breger's relation of sleep to childhood (19fT): "Sleep is a unique state; it is probably the single most 'infantile' activity we engage in. That is, it persists from infancy with very little change ... throughout life while other basic activities undergo tremendous modifications ... [Sleep] manifests itself the same in the adult as in the infant. The comfortable warm bed, the relative lack of stimulus input, the lack of motor output, or, indeed, any interchange with the external environment, all of these factors recreate a state present in earliest infancy and contribute to 'regression'." I In his edition of the Clouds (Oxford 1968), K. J. Dover argues that q,vu,c, usually translated 'nature', here means simply 'sexual desire' (227, on line 1075). ERICH SEGAL 77 pears instead of the more common mrvoc.7 It can have an erotic sense of letting go, not merely nodding otl In Iliad 14.359, for example, Hypnos, the Sleep god himself, declares that he has covered Zeus with an especially soft slumber,/uxAaKov KWfLa. This is, of course, just after Zeus and Hera have made love.s The sense of indulgence and release adds a kind of metalinguistic validity to the alleged etymology of comedy. Indeed, what they lacked in philological acumen, the Byzantine scholars seemed to have made up in psychological intuition. Several of them argued that KWfLa begat comedy because of the un­ inhibiting nature of the nocturnal mentality: this 'special time', Katp6c, is especially ripe for comedy.9 As Korte explains, "KwfLa, der Schlaf [spielt] eine ziemliche Rolle, weil die Landleute ihre Spottlieder angeblich nur nachts zur Schlafenzeit in der Stadt vor­ zutragen wagten. "10 Furthermore, dreams are often likened to comedy by the very characters who enact them: haec nihilo esse mihi videntur setius quam somnia. (Plautus, Menaechmi 1047) I have had a dream ... The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report what my dream was. I will get Peter Quince to write a ballet of this dream. (Shakespeare, Midsummer Night's Dream IV.ii.207if) Last but not least there is eros. Like comedy, night is instinctively sensual. In Shelley's Ode it can actually seduce the daylight: "kiss her until she be wearied out." Moreover, only at night would Cupid visit Psyche, and according to the nocturna visio recounted by Apuleius (Metamorphoses 6.24), the child of their union was ... Voluptas. So much for the truth in the false etymology KWfLa. 7 Cf. Hippocrates' emphatic distinction between V'TTVOC and KW/La, Epidem. 3.6 Ka'TEtXE 8~ ij 'T~ KWlLa cWExlc, o?JX V7rvw8EC, "continuous coma, not to be confused with sleep." See also the comment made by Hesych. s.v. KW/La: V7TVOC A7J8w87Jc, Ka'Taq,opa. V7rvOV pa8loc "leth­ argic sleep, an attack of deep sleep." 8 lLa.AaK~V KWILft. is also the 'soft sleep' which dispels sexual longing at Od. 18.201. In Sappho 2.8 (Lobel/Page), the poetess bids Aphrodite enter her grove, promising a KWILft. (trance?) induced by what emanates from the foliage. For further discussion of this word's peculiari' ties, see Denys Page, Sappho and Alcaeus (Oxford 1955) 37. 9 See Kaibel, op.cit. (supra n.2): IIEpl riic KW/LqJ8lac 14; schol. in Dion. Thrax 14; Etym. Magn. 16; Tzetz. Proleg. in Lycoph. lines 11-12,34. 10 RE 11 (1921) 1216 S.V. KOMODIE. 78 THE ETYMOLOGIES OF COMEDY The first genealogy proposes a time, the second a place. Many scholars have called comedy a 'country song', deriving its first element from KWf''IJ, village. Aristotle gives credence to this derivation (Poetics 1448a35ff), and its validity has been argued in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and to a lesser extent even in our own day.ll Why country song? Aristotle's conjecture is provocative: the 'comedians', ot KWf'~80l, were originally a group of roisterers who had to take to the hamlets with their singing after being kicked out of the city proper (Poetics 1448a38). Either their subject matter or their behavior-or both-offended the urbanites. Aristotle does not indicate whether he believes this happened but once or regularly, on every festive occasion, but we need not hunt after historical truth here. For KWf''IJ is related to comedy because the country has always stood vividly in man's imagination as a place of greater freedom.12 In Plato's fretful description quoted above, dreams bring out 'uncivilized' fantasies, and the term aypotov may be more literally rendered as 'rustic'P Elsewhere, Plato makes KWf'TJ the antithesis of ?rOAtC (Laws 626c) and a passage in Thucydides (1.5) suggests that the significant distinction was that the ?rOAtC was walled and the KWf'TJ wide open. The myth survives in latter-day fables of farmers' daughters and is certainly ingrained in the mind of one noted Danish prince (III.ii.119-23): Hamlet: Lady, shall I lie in your lap? Ophelia: No, my lord. Hamlet: I mean, my head on your lap? Ophelia: Ay, my lord. Hamlet: Do you think I meant country matters? 11 According to Diom. Ars grammat. 3.9.2., the Roman polymath Varro held this view. Other ancient supporters are cited by Kaibel, op.cit. (supra n.2) 6, 11 and 14. The mediaeval and Renaissance opinions are discussed by A. Philip McMahon, "Seven Questions on Aris­ totelian Definitions of Tragedy and Comedy," HSCP 40 (1929) 97-198. Dante is among the many who, even without direct Aristotelian influence, trace comedy's relation to KdJp:q. And recently, Albin Lesky has conceded that the notion of KWP-TJ has" einen wahren Kern: in Geschichte der griechischen Literatur2 (Bern 1963) 219. 11 The Latin rus, 'country', may be akin to Avestan ravo, 'wideness', as in ravas-cariit, (what moves in the open', as well as Greek EVPOC, 'wide', 'far-reaching' and Gothic rums 'cf. German Raum and English room). Thus we find the persistent connotation of 'unbounded expanse' and 'free range'. Cf. A. Walde and J. B. Hofmann, Lateinisches etymologisches Worterbuch'II (Heidelberg 1965) 454. 18 Cf. Theophrastlls' definition of aypo,Kla, Char. 4.4. Perhaps the most striking trait of this 'boor' is his literal tendency to "expose too much of himself": KaL &.vafJEfJ>'wdvoc avw 'tou yova'toe Ka6"avov, we'tE 'tel: yvp-vel: av.rou inrEp.palvEc6a,. ERICH SEGAL 79 Indeed, the persistent association between license and