The parabase is an element of the Attic comedy and thus the drama. The parabase refers to a moment when the chorus comes out of its role, ie acts outside the drama, and directs itself directly to the audience. Usually, the parabase can be found in the post-play of the play, and consisted in the ancient Greek comedy mostly of seven parts.
The term is derived from the Greek parabis, which can be translated with danebentreten or digression. Accordingly, the translation of the word makes it clear what the fundamental principle is: namely the digression from the actual action [to turn to the audience].
The unmasked choir was directed to the audience, and the poet’s voice was raised. His intentions were pronounced, the gods lauded, institutions and unwelcome adversaries attacked, criticized and ridiculed. In the course of time, the parabase moved from the end of the comedy to the middle and took place after the first epeisodion, a part with spoken dialogues.
The seven parts of the parabase
1. Commation: a sung, lyric introduction of the following.
2. Parabase: The main part, which consisted of dancer rhythms, was a speech by the chorus.
3. Pnigos, also Makron: longer meaning (Bonmot), written in anapaetic hypermeters. The pnigos had to be carried in one breath.
4. Ode to the gods. The religious song was presented by the first half-choir.
5. Epirrhema of the first leader. Includes teats of the audience and consisted of four-lineers who were trochaean tetrameters.
6. Antode, counterpart to the previous ode, certainly the second part of the Ode. It was presented by the second half-choir.
7. Antepirrhema, counterpart to the epirrhema. Was taken over by the choir leader of the second half-choir, otherwise similar to the epirrhema.
Short overview: background, meaning and function
The parabase is an element from the ancient comedy. Originally it was settled at the end of a work, but was moved to the center in the course of time. Aristophanes, a Greek poet, saw in his oldest works two such digressions.
As a result, the parabase is in many places in the middle or at the end, but basically has no absolute place in the piece, but is used where the action makes such an interruption possible or seems appropriate.
This element probably came from the conclusion of some of the pagans, the spectators being provocatively attacked, mocked, or humorously provoked by the walkers.
It is likely that the parabase will increase by 400% Was suppressed from the comedy when Spartan rulers suppressed such free forms of criticism.
In the German play-back of the nineteenth century there are some isolated imitations of this form of interruption. For example, they exist in Friedrich Rückert’s Napoleon (1816-1818). Nevertheless, the parabase is not again an essential part of comedy.
Considering rhetorical aspects, this form of interruption is an apostrophe. The apostrophe is a change from the original recipient (recipient) to an absent recipient. The stage choir, therefore, turns to a new opposite.
Note: But even if the whole thing disappeared from the stage, the concept remained to us. Thus the fact that a stage figure speaks to the audience and violates the rules of dramatic communication is still referred to as a parabase.