Cloud-cuckoo-land: From Aristophanes to Margaret Thatcher and Radiohead
"The ANC is a typical terrorist organisation… Anyone who thinks it is going to run the government in South Africa is living in cloud-cuckoo land." (Margaret Tatcher, 1987)
In Aristophanes' 5th century B.C. comedy Birds, Peisthetaerus (a human whose name can be roughly translated as "Trustyfriend" or "Mr. Trusting") and his friend, Euelpides ("Goodhope" or "Mr. Hopeful") convince the king of the birds and his followers to help them build an ideal city juxtaposed between heaven and earth. The two Athenians plan to intercept all of the sacrifices rising from the earth to the gods on Olympus, thereby starving the gods into cooperating with them. They appropriately dub the new city "Nephelokokkygia", (from "nephos," meaning "cloud," and "kokkyx", the native European cuckoo [formed by onomatopoeia from the bird’s call]) and successfully win the negotiations with the starving gods.
In the early 19th c., German philosophers Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche used the German version of this word (Wolkenkuckucksheim) in their writings. Toward the end of the same century, "Cloud-Cuckoo-Land" made its way into English to describe a realm of fantasy or whimsical place or situation.
The phrase has been used by famous and infamous politicians including Margaret Thatcher, Newt Gingrich, U.S. Vice President Henry A. Wallace (during Franklin Roosevelt's third term) and Adolf Hitler.
English rock band Radiohead refers to cloud cuckoo land in the song "Like Spinning Plates" ("Amnesiac" album).
Posted September 5, 2013
Filed Under: Blog