Cloud cuckoo land

For the album by the Lightning Seeds, see Cloudcuckooland (album).

Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to a state of absurdly over-optimistic fantasy or an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that things that are completely impossible might happen, rather than understanding how things really are.[1] It also hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.

Cockaigne, the land of plenty in medieval myth, can be referred to as the modern day cloud cuckoo land. It was an imaginary place of extreme luxury and ease where physical comforts and pleasures were always immediately at hand and where the harshness of medieval peasant life did not exist.

Literary sources

Aristophanes, a Greek playwright, wrote and directed a drama The Birds, first performed in 414 BC, in which Pisthetaerus, a middle-aged Athenian persuades the world's birds to create a new city in the sky to be named Cloud Cuckoo Land[2] (Νεφελοκοκκυγία, Nephelokokkygia), thereby gaining control over all communications between men and gods.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used the word (German Wolkenkuckucksheim) in his publication On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason in 1813,[3] as well as later in his main work The World as Will and Representation[4] and in other places. Here, he gave it its figurative sense by reproaching other philosophers for only talking about Cloud-cuckoo-land.

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche refers to the term in his essay "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense."

Author Edward Crankshaw used the term when discussing the Deak-Andrassy Plan of 1867 in his 1963 book The Fall of the House of Habsburg (Chapter 13, "The Iron Ring of Fate").

Uses in politics

Other uses

References

  1. "Cloud Cuckoo land". Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  2. "listing of Cloud Cuckoo Land". Dictionary.reference.com. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  3. On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason § 34, p. 133.
  4. The World as Will and Representation Vol. I, Part 4, § 53, p. 352.
  5. "Nelson Mandela: From 'terrorist' to tea with the Queen". The Independent. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  6. "Cameron: we got it wrong on apartheid". The Guardian. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  7. "Frost over the world - Drugs debate - 27 Mar 09 - Part 4". You Tube. Retrieved 2012-03-15.
  8. "Gingrich mocks Obama's algae energy comments as 'Cloud Cuckoo Land'". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  9. "Wolkenkuckucksheim". The New York Times. Retrieved 2012-07-09.
  10. "Pakistani Panel Rejects Fraud Accusations in 2013 Prime Minister Vote". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-07-23.
  11. "Pakistan Commission Finds No Manipulation in 2013 Election". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2015-07-23.

External links

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