Cloud cuckoo land is a state of absurdity,
over-optimistic fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of speculative fiction that involves supernatural or Magic (supernatural), magical elements, often including Fictional universe, imaginary places and Legendary creature, creatures.
The genre's roots lie in oral traditions, ...
or an unrealistically
idealistic
Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical realism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality is entir ...
state of mind where everything appears to be perfect. Someone who is said to "live in cloud cuckoo land" is a person who thinks that completely impossible things might happen, rather than understanding how things really are. It also hints that the person referred to is
naive, unaware of realities or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.
In the modern world, a "cloud cuckoo lander" is defined as someone who is seen as "crazy" or "strange" by most average people. Cloud cuckoo landers often do or say things that seemingly only make sense to themselves; they also display cleverness at times in ways no one else would think of.
Cockaigne, the land of plenty in medieval myth, can be considered the predecessor to the modern-day cloud cuckoo land, which is depicted as a realm that could be seen as an escape from the complexities of real life. 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
Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving play ...
, a Greek playwright, wrote and directed a comedy, ''
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 () or Cloud Cuckoo Land (), thereby gaining control over all communications between men and gods.
The German philosopher
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( ; ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the Phenomenon, phenomenal world as ...
used the word (German ) in his publication ''
On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason
''On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason'' () is an elaboration on the classical principle of sufficient reason, written by German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer as his doctoral dissertation in 1813. The principle of sufficie ...
'' in 1813, as well as later in his main work ''
The World as Will and Representation
''The World as Will and Representation'' (''WWR''; , ''WWV''), sometimes translated as ''The World as Will and Idea'', is the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The first edition was published in late 1818, with the date ...
'' 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
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philology, classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche bec ...
refers to the term in his essay "On Truth and Lying in a Nonmoral Sense".
In 1923 the Viennese satirist and critic
Karl Kraus published (Cloudcuckooland), an adaptation of ''The Birds'' by Aristophanes.
Uses in politics
Author
Edward Crankshaw used the term when discussing the
Deák-Andrássy Plan of 1867 in his 1963 book ''The Fall of the
House of Habsburg
The House of Habsburg (; ), also known as the House of Austria, was one of the most powerful Dynasty, dynasties in the history of Europe and Western civilization. They were best known for their inbreeding and for ruling vast realms throughout ...
'' (Chapter 13, "The Iron Ring of Fate").
The phrase has been used by British and American politicians as well as writers.
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
used this phrase in the 1980s: "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."
Bernard Ingham, Thatcher's spokesman, who, when asked if the ANC might overthrow the government of South Africa by force, replied: "It is cloud-cuckoo land for anyone to believe that could be done".
MP Ann Widdecombe
Ann Noreen Widdecombe (born 4 October 1947) is a British politician and television personality who has been Reform UK's Immigration and Justice spokesperson since 2023. Originally a member of the Conservative Party, she was Member of Parliame ...
used the phrase in a debate on
drug prohibition with a representative of
Transform Drug Policy Foundation
Transform Drug Policy Foundation (Transform) is a registered non-profit charity based in the United Kingdom working in drug policy reform. As an independent think tank, Transform works to promote public health, social justice and human rights t ...
: "it is cloud cuckoo land to suggest that
eople who don't currently use heroin would not start using it if it became legal.
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy Gingrich (; né McPherson; born June 17, 1943) is an American politician and author who served as the List of speakers of the United States House of Representatives, 50th speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1 ...
referred to
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II (born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who was the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the first African American president in American history. O ...
's claim that
algae
Algae ( , ; : alga ) is an informal term for any organisms of a large and diverse group of photosynthesis, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants, and includes species from multiple distinct clades. Such organisms range from unicellular ...
could be
used as a fuel source as cloud cuckoo land.
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace (October 7, 1888 – November 18, 1965) was the 33rd vice president of the United States, serving from 1941 to 1945, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He served as the 11th U.S. secretary of agriculture and the 10th U.S ...
, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture (later
U.S. Vice President in
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. He is the longest-serving U.S. president, and the only one to have served ...
's third term) used the term to describe the unrealistically inflated value of
stock
Stocks (also capital stock, or sometimes interchangeably, shares) consist of all the Share (finance), shares by which ownership of a corporation or company is divided. A single share of the stock means fractional ownership of the corporatio ...
s on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
just before the
crash of 1929 that signaled the onset of the
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...
. In his 1936 book, ''Whose Constitution? An Inquiry into the General Welfare'', Wallace describes a cartoon in a popular weekly magazine which "pictured an airplane in an endurance flight refueling in mid-air, and made fun of the old fashioned economist down below who was saying it couldn't be done. The economic aeroplane was to keep on gaining elevation indefinitely, with the millennium just around a cloud" (p. 75). Wallace wrote that Wall Street's practice of lending money to Europe after World War I "to pay interest on the
ar reparationsdebts she owed us and to buy the products we wanted to sell her ... was the international refueling device that for 12 years kept our economic aeroplane above the towering peaks of our credit structure and the massive wall of our tariff, in Cloud-Cuckoo Land."
Paul Krugman
Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American New Keynesian economics, New Keynesian economist who is the Distinguished Professor of Economics at the CUNY Graduate Center, Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He ...
used the phrase referring to inadequate German economic politics toward failing members of the European Union: "Basically, it seems that even as the euro approaches a critical juncture, senior German officials are living in Wolkenkuckucksheim—cloud-cuckoo land." (June 9, 2012). Yuri N. Maltsev, an Austrian economist and economic historian, uses the term to describe the lack of promised results in the communist states in his foreword to a 1920 essay by
Ludwig von Mises
Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises (; ; September 29, 1881 – October 10, 1973) was an Austrian-American political economist and philosopher of the Austrian school. Mises wrote and lectured extensively on the social contributions of classical l ...
: "Today, the disastrous consequences of enforcing the utopia on the unfortunate populations of the communist states are clear even to their leaders. As Mises predicted, despite the cloud-cuckoo lands of their fancy, roasted pigeons failed to fly into the mouths of the comrades."
Other uses
The phrase has been used in poetry, music, film, and by writers. ''Cloudcuckooland'', a poetry collection by
Simon Armitage.
''Cloudcuckooland'', the first album by
the Lightning Seeds
The Lightning Seeds (also known as Lightning Seeds) are an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1989 by Ian Broudie (vocals, guitar, producer), formerly of the bands Big in Japan (band), Big in Japan, Care (band), Care, and Ori ...
, released in 1990. In 2002, electronic music producer
Sasha released a track called "Cloud Cuckoo" on his album
Airdrawndagger.
Radiohead
Radiohead are an English rock band formed in Abingdon-on-Thames, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, in 1985. The band members are Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, piano, keyboards); brothers Jonny Greenwood (guitar, keyboards, other instruments) and Colin Gre ...
uses the term in the lyrics of their song "
Like Spinning Plates". Publisher and editor
Gary Groth
Gary Groth (born September 18, 1954) is an American comic book editor, publisher and critic. He is editor-in-chief of ''The Comics Journal'', a co-founder of Fantagraphics Books, and founder of the Harvey Awards.
Early life
Groth is the son ...
uses the term in the title of his review
of
Scott McCloud
Scott McCloud (born Scott McLeod; June 10, 1960) is an American cartoonist and comics theorist. His non-fiction books about comics, ''Understanding Comics'' (1993), '' Reinventing Comics'' (2000), and '' Making Comics'' (2006), are made in comic ...
's book
Reinventing Comics.
Cloud Cuckoo Land has been used as a stand-in for
Hollywood
Hollywood usually refers to:
* Hollywood, Los Angeles, a neighborhood in California
* Hollywood, a metonym for the cinema of the United States
Hollywood may also refer to:
Places United States
* Hollywood District (disambiguation)
* Hollywood ...
as in
Stella Gibbons's ''
Cold Comfort Farm''. Dorothy Sayers, in the Author’s Note to her novel ''Gaudy'' ''Night'' (1936), explains that the story, while set in Oxford, is entirely fictitious, concluding that “...the novelist’s only native country is Cloud-Cuckooland, where they do but jest, poison in jest: no offense in the world.” (The final words are a reference to ''Hamlet'', Act 3, Scene 2.)
Cloud Cuckooland is the name of the eighth world found in the video game ''
Banjo-Tooie''.
Cloud Cuckoo Land is the name of a realm hidden inside a cloud featured in ''
The Lego Movie
''The Lego Movie'' is a 2014 animated adventure comedy film written and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. Based on the Lego line of construction toys, the film stars the voices of Chris Pratt, Will Ferrell, Elizabeth Banks, Will ...
''. An iconoclastic, mixed-genre world where there are no rules or unhappy things, and serves as a hidden base for the rebel protagonists and the councils of the Master Builder. It is destroyed by Lord Business's army and falls into pieces before drowning in a giant Lego ocean.
''Cloud Cuckoo Land'' is the title of a 1925 novel by Scottish novelist and poet
Naomi Mitchison
Naomi Mary Margaret Mitchison, Baroness Mitchison (; 1 November 1897 – 11 January 1999) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist and poet. Often called a doyenne of Scottish literature, she wrote more than 90 books of historical an ...
.
''Cloud Cuckoo Land'' is the title of a 2002 novel by American novelist Lisa Borders.
''
Cloud Cuckoo Land'' is the name of a September 2021 novel by
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It recognizes distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life, published during ...
winning author
Anthony Doerr.
See also
References
External links
* {{Wiktionary-inline, cloud-cuckoo-land
Ancient Greece
Phrases
Mythical utopias
Aristophanes
Magic realism
Optimism