Cloud cuckoo land

Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to an unrealistically idealistic state where everything is perfect. ("You're living in Cloud-cuckoo-land.") It hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief. The reference is to the play, The Birds by the Athenian playwright Aristophanes, in which Pisthetairos (which can be translated to mean "Mr. Trusting") and Euelpides (which can be translated to mean "Mr. Hopeful") with the help of Tereus, tired of the Earth and Olympus, decide to erect a perfect city between the clouds, to be named Cloud-Cuckoo-Land (Νεφελοκοκκυγία or Nephelokokkygia).

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, as well as later in his main work The World as Will and Representation and in other places. Here, he gave it the figurative sense by reproaching other philosophers for only talking about Cloud-cuckoo-land.

Uses in popular culture

 * U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Henry A. Wallace (later Vice President in Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term) used the term to describe the unrealistically inflated value of stocks on the New York stock exchange just prior to the crash of 1929 that signaled the onset of the Great Depression. 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 [war reparations] debts she owed us and to buy the products we wanted to sell her &hellip; 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" (p. 77).


 * It is commonly thought that Margaret Thatcher famously used this phrase in the 1980s. "Anyone who thinks the ANC will form the government of South Africa is living in cloud cuckoo-land" However, it was actually a misquotation of her spokesman, Bernard Ingham.


 * British MP Anne Widdecombe used the phrase in a debate on drug prohibition with a representative of Transform Drug Policy Foundation: "...it is cloud cuckoo land to suggest that [people who don't currently use heroin would not start using it if it became legal]".


 * On their 1985 album Virgins & Philistines, The Colourfield used the phrase prominently in the track "Faint Hearts," and four years later the UK pop-rock group The Lightning Seeds named their 1989 debut album Cloudcuckooland.


 * In the song "Like Spinning Plates" by the English rock band Radiohead, lead singer Thom Yorke sings, "I'm living in Cloud cuckoo land."


 * Poet Simon Armitage entitled his 1997 collection "Cloudcuckooland".


 * Also an indie band from Korea is named Cloud Cuckoo Land.


 * The phrase also appears in the poem "90 North" by American poet Randall Jarrell.


 * In the video game "Banjo-Tooie" there is a level called "Cloud Cuckooland".


 * A song "Cloud Cuckooland" was released by the English antique-beat band The Real Tuesday Weld.


 * Cloud Cuckoo Land is mentioned in the song Brave New World on the Public Image Ltd album 9.


 * Cloud Cuckoo is the title of track 4 on Airdrawndagger, an album by Welsh artist Sasha (DJ).


 * In the 1999 film Notting Hill, Julia Roberts' character Anna Scott is discussing a film she is shooting with her fellow actor/co-lead (played by Sam West - imdb). He (who is referred to in the script as "let's call him James") says, "We are living in cloud cuckoo land" to refer to the wildly optimistic idea that the film will finish shooting that day to allow Julia Roberts' character to make it to LA for another film.  http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Notting-Hill.html


 * In P.B. Kerr's Children of The Lamp Series, Layla Gaunt's focus word is NEPHELOKOKKYGIA.


 * Camille Paglia compares Washington, DC to Cloud Cuckoo Land in an August 12, 2009 Salon.com article entitled "Obama's healthcare horror".