If Cloud Cuckoo Land Were Conquered by the Nazis…
If Cloud Cuckoo Land Were Conquered by the Nazis…

Summary/Abstract: In 1933 Polish poet Julian Tuwim used the plot of Aristophanes’ The Birds to talk about the dangers of Hitlerism. The play was staged under Aleksander Węgierko’s direction on 9th May 1933 at the Polski Theatre in Warsaw. In this article I describe how Tuwim used the structure and style of Old Comedy to talk about current problems. I try to show that the work under discussion offers a perfect example of how our receptivity changes regarding what is funny, what is frightening and what sounds serious to us. The Birds by Aristophanes, when read through the filter of burgeoning Nazism, become an extraordinary message. Reviewers of the performance lavishly praised the perfect translation of the Old Greek plot into a modern idiom. Tuwim was a kind of visionary. Although it seemed unlikely for him to predict where Adolf Hitler’s reign would actually lead, Tuwim in his paraphrase turned out to be much more serious than he really intended to. After the horrors of the Holocaust, we already know that Tuwim’s literary satire of what had primarily looked impossible is absolutely improper to be staged as comedy nowadays. Julian Tuwim’s paraphrase of The Birds is the only example I know of, in which someone made use of the structure of Old Attic Comedy in order to talk about the dangers of Hitlerism. The script of the play was never published. Only two copies have been preserved in the archives of the Theatre Museum in Warsaw.

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