MODERN FABULISTS: LESSING, YRIARTE, KRILOF.
'Great thoughts, great feelings, come to them
Like instincts, unawares.'
R. M. MILNES.
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, born January 22, 1729, at Kamenz, died
February 15, 1781, aged fifty-two years, was a distinguished German
scholar, poet and dramatist. As a fabulist, Lessing is noted for
epigrammatic point rather than humour, though he is by no means lacking
in the latter characteristic. He is perhaps the most original writer
of fables amongst the moderns. Sagacious, wise, witty, his apologues
(1759) have nothing superfluous about them. They are nearly all brief,
pithy, and very much to the point. In these respects they follow the
Æsopian model more than those of any other modern writer. The following
are good examples of his style:
'_Æsop and the Ass._--"The next time you write a fable about me," said
the donkey to Æsop, "make me say something wise and sensible."
'"Something sensible from you!" exclaimed Æsop; "what would the world
think? People would call you the sage, and me the donkey!"
'_The Shepherd and the Nightingale._--"Sing to me, dearest
nightingale," said a shepherd to the silent songstress one beautiful
spring evening.
'"Alas!" said the nightingale, "the frogs make so much noise that I
have no inclination to sing. Do you not hear them?"
'"Undoubtedly I hear them," replied the shepherd, "but it is owing to
your silence."
'_Solomon's Ghost._--A venerable old man, despite his years and the
heat of the day, was ploughing his field with his own hand, and sowing
the grain in the willing earth, in anticipation of the harvest it would
produce.
'Suddenly, beneath the deep shadow of a spreading oak, a divine
apparition stood before him! The old man was seized with affright.
'"I am Solomon," said the phantom encouragingly, "what dost thou here,
old friend?"
'"If thou art Solomon," said the owner of the field, "how canst thou
ask? In my youth I learnt from the ant to be industrious and to
accumulate wealth. That which I then learnt I now practise."
'"Thou hast learnt but half of thy lesson," pursued the spirit. "Go
once more to the ant, and she will teach thee to rest in the winter of
thy existence, and enjoy what thou hast earned."'
Don Tomas de Yriarte, or Iriarte, a Spanish fabulist of the eighteenth
century, born at Teneriffe in 1750, is held in much esteem by cultured
readers in Spain. His 'Fabulas Literarias,' or Literary Fables (1782),
sixty-seven in all, and mostly original, were written with a view to
inculcating literary truths. In other words, their object was to praise
or censure literary work according to its supposed deserts. Their
moral or application is therefore limited in scope; they do not touch
human nature as a whole, and being thus restricted in their range,
they are deficient in general interest and value. Obviously, however,
it is possible to give a wider application to the truths enforced in
the apologues, and this is sometimes done by omitting the special
moral supplied by the writer. Yriarte's versification is graceful and
sprightly, 'combining the exquisite simplicity of the old Spanish
romances and songs with the true spirit of Æsopian fable;'[62] some
of them are composed in the redondilla measure much affected by the
lyrical poets of Spain, and please by their style quite as much as by
their intrinsic merits. Yriarte died in 1791. We select the piece which
follows to illustrate his skill as a fabulist:
'_The Two Thrushes._
'A sage old thrush was once discipling
His grandson thrush, a hair-brained stripling,
In the purveying art. He knew,
He said, where vines in plenty grew,
Whose fruit delicious when he'd come
He might attack _ad libitum_.
"Ha!" said the young one, "where's this vine?
Let's see this fruit you think so fine."
"Come then, my child, your fortune's great; you
Can't conceive what feasts await you!"
He said, and gliding through the air
They reached a vine, and halted there.
Soon as the grapes the youngster spied,
"Is this the fruit you praise?" he cried;
"Why, an old bird, sir, as you are,
Should judge, I think, more wisely far
Than to admire, or hold as good,
Such half-grown, small, and worthless food.
Come, see a fruit which I possess
In yonder garden; you'll confess,
When you behold it, that it is
Bigger and better far than this."
"I'll go," he said; "but ere I see
This fruit of yours, whate'er it be,
I'm sure it is not worth a stone
Or grape-skin from my vines alone."
They reached the spot the thrushlet named,
And he triumphantly exclaimed:
"Show me the fruit to equal mine!
A size so great, a shape so fine;
What luxury, however rare,
Can e'en your grapes with this compare?"
The old bird stared, as well he might,
For lo! a pumpkin met his sight.
Now, that a thrush should take this fancy
Without much marvelling I can see;
But it is truly monstrous when
Men, who are held as learned men,
All books, whatever they be, despise
Unless of largest bulk and size.
A book is great, if good at all;
If bad, it cannot be too small.'
Ivan Andreivitch Krilof, or Krilov, the Russian, who was born in
Moscow, February 2, 1768, O.S., and died in St. Petersburg on November
9, 1844, aged seventy-six years, was one of the greatest original
fabulists of modern times. One writer (an Englishman) goes so far as to
claim for him the position of 'the crowned King of the fabulists of all
languages.' His published fables amount altogether to two hundred and
two, of which thirty-five only are borrowed, the rest being original.
They are in rhymed verse in the Russian, and an English translation,
also in verse, and with a close adherence to the text in the original,
has been made by Mr. J. Henry Harrison.[63] An excellent prose
translation, with a life of Krilof, by the late Mr. W. R. S. Ralston,
M.A., was published in 1868.[64]
Krilof is characterized by rich common sense and sound judgment, a
rare vein of satire and an excellent humour. He indeed brims over
with sarcastic humour. A kind of rugged directness of language, well
calculated to undermine the shams and abuses at which he aimed, also
distinguishes his apologues. He deserves to be better known in this
country.
Krilof was a journalist, and wrote a number of dramas, both in tragedy
and comedy, before turning his attention to fables. It is on these
latter that his claim to distinction rests. He rose to high eminence
in his native country, where his name is a household word; he was
patronized by royalty, and beloved by the common people, and at his
death a monument to his memory was erected in the Summer Garden at St.
Petersburg.
The following translation of Krilof's beautiful fable of _The Leaves
and the Roots_ is from a brilliant article in _Fraser's Magazine_ for
February, 1839:
''Twas on a sunny summer day,
Exulting in the flickering shade
They cast athwart the greensward glade,
The leaves, a fluttering host,
Thus 'gan their worth to boast,
And to each other say:
"Is it not we
That deck the tree--
Its stem and branches all array
In verdant pomp and vigorous grace?
Deprived of us, how altered were their case!
Is it not we who form the grateful screen
Of foliage and luxuriant green,
Welcome to traveller and to swain?
Yes! we may be deeméd vain,
But we it is whose charms invite
Youths and maidens to the grove;
And we it is, too, who at night
Shelter in her retired alcove
The songstress of the woods, whose strain
Wafts music over dale and plain!
In us the zephyrs most rejoice:
Our emerald beauty to caress,
On silken wings they fondly press!"
"Most true; but yet
You ought not to forget
We too exist," replied a voice
That issued from the earth;
"We sure possess some little worth."
"And who are ye? where do ye grow?"
"Buried are we here below,
Deep in the ground. 'Tis we who nourish
The stem and you, and make you flourish:
For understand, we are the roots
From whom the tree itself upshoots:
'Tis we by whom you thrive--
From whom your beauty ye derive;
Unlike to you, we are not fair,
Nor dwell we in the upper air;
Yet do we not, like you, decay--
Winter tears us not away.
Ye fall, yet still remains the tree;
But should it chance that _we_
Once cease to live, adieu
Both to the tree, fair leaves, and you!"'
As an example of his ironical humour we give a prose translation, by
Mr. Ralston, of his fable _The Geese_:
'A peasant, with a long rod in his hand, was driving some geese to
a town where they were to be sold; and, to tell the truth, he did
not treat them over-politely. In hopes of making a good bargain, he
was hastening on so as not to lose the market-day (and when gain is
concerned, geese and men alike are apt to suffer). I do not blame the
peasant; but the geese talked about him in a different spirit, and,
whenever they met any passers-by, abused him to them in such terms as
these:
'"Is it possible to find any geese more unfortunate than we are? This
moujik[65] harasses us so terribly, and chases us about just as if we
were common geese. The ignoramus does not know that he ought to pay us
reverence, seeing that we are the noble descendants of those geese to
whom Rome was once indebted for her salvation, and in whose honour even
feast-days were specially appointed there."
'"And do you want to have honour paid you on that account?" a passer-by
asked them.
'"Why, our ancestors----"
'"I know that--I have read all about it; but I want to know this: of
what use have you been yourselves?"
'"Why, our ancestors saved Rome!"
'"Quite so; but what have you done?"
'"We? Nothing."
'"Then, what merit is there in you? Let your ancestors rest in
peace--they justly received honourable reward; but you, my friends, are
only fit to be roasted!"'
Krilof concludes: 'It would be easy to make this fable still more
intelligible; but I am afraid of irritating the geese.'
A story, rather than a fable, is _The Man with Three Wives_, and
the moral underlying it is in the author's peculiar vein. This is
translated from the original by Mr. J. H. Harrison:
'A certain vanquisher of women's hearts,
While still his first wife was alive and well,
Married a second, and a third. They tell
The king the scandal of such shameless arts,
And, as his majesty abhorred all vice,
Given himself to self-denial,
He gave the order in a trice
To bring the bigamist to trial,
And such a punishment invent, that none
Should evermore dare do what he had done.
"And if the punishment to me should seem too small,
Around their table will I hang the judges all."
This to the judges seemed no joke:
The cold sweat ran along each spine.
Three days and nights they sit, but can't divine
What punishment will best such lawless license choke.
Thousands of punishments there are; but then,
As all men of experience know,
They cannot keep from evil evil men.
This time kind Providence did help them though,
And when the culprit came before the court,
This was his sentence short:
To give him back his three wives all together.
The people wondered much at this decision,
And thought the judges' lives hung by a feather;
But three days had not passed before
The bigamist, behind his door,
Himself hung to a peg with great precision:
And then the sentence wrought on all great fear,
And much the morals of the kingdom steadied,
For from that time its annalists are clear
That no man in it more has three wives wedded.'
FOOTNOTES:
[62] Bouterwick's 'History of Spanish Literature,' book iii., chap. iii.
[63] London: Remington and Co., 1883.
[64] London: Strahan and Co., 1868. A second edition appeared the year
following.
[65] Peasant.