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The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine

Page 1

by Jean La Fontaine




  The Complete Fables

  of Jean de La Fontaine

  The Complete Fables

  of

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Translated by

  Norman R. Shapiro

  Introduction by John Hollander

  Illustrations by David Schorr

  University of Illinois Press

  Urbana and Chicago

  Copyright © 2007 by Norman R. Shapiro

  All rights reserved

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 C P 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is printed on acid-free paper.

  One hundred fables originally appeared in Fifty Fables of La Fontaine copyright © 1985, 1988 by Norman R. Shapiro, published by the University of Illinois Press and in Fifty More Fables of La Fontaine copyright © 1998 by Norman R. Shapiro and published by the University of Illinois Press

  Sixty fables originally appeared in Once Again, La Fontaine copyright © 2000 by Norman R. Shapiro, published by Wesleyan University Press and reprinted by arrangement with Wesleyan University Press

  Illustrations copyright © 2000 by David Schorr

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  La Fontaine, Jean de, 1621–1695.

  [Fables. English]

  The complete fables of Jean de La Fontaine / translated by Norman R. Shapiro ; introduction by John Hollander ; illustrations by David Schorr.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN-10 0-252-03144-X (cloth: alk. paper)

  ISBN-13 978-0-252-03144-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

  ISBN-10 0-252-07381-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  ISBN-13 978-0-252-07381-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)

  1. Fables, French—Translations into English.

  I. Shapiro, Norman R. II. Schorr, David. III. Title.

  PQ1811.E3S45 2007

  841'.4—dc22 2007005144

  Contents

  Translator’s Preface

  Introduction by John Hollander

  • The Fables •

  For Monseigneur le Dauphin

  BOOK I

  The Cricket and the Ant

  The Crow and the Fox

  The Frog Who Would Grow as Big as the Ox

  The Two Mules

  The Wolf and the Hound

  The Heifer, the Goat, and the Lamb in Consort with the Lion

  The Beggar’s Sack

  The Swallow and the Little Birds

  The City Rat and the Country Rat

  The Wolf and the Lamb

  The Man and His Image

  The Dragon with Many Heads and the Dragon with Many Tails

  The Thieves and the Ass

  Simonides Saved by the Gods

  Death and the Wretched Man & Death and the Woodsman

  The Middle-aged Man and His Two Mistresses

  The Fox and the Stork

  The Child and the Schoolmaster

  The Cock and the Pearl

  The Hornets and the Honeybees

  The Oak and the Reed

  BOOK II

  Against Those with Too Difficult Tastes

  The Rats in Council Assembled

  The Wolf Pleading against the Fox before the Ape

  The Two Bulls and a Frog

  The Bat and the Two Weasels

  The Bird Wounded by an Arrow

  The Mastiff Bitch and Her Friend

  The Eagle and the Dung Beetle

  The Lion and the Gnat

  The Ass with a Load of Sponges and the Ass with a Load of Salt

  The Lion and the Rat & The Dove and the Ant

  The Astrologer Who Happens to Fall into a Well

  The Hare and the Frogs

  The Cock and the Fox

  The Crow Who Wanted to Imitate the Eagle

  The Peacock Who Complained to Juno

  The Cat Metamorphosed into a Woman

  The Lion and the Ass out Hunting

  The Will Explained by Aesop

  BOOK III

  The Miller, His Son, and the Ass

  The Limbs and the Stomach

  The Wolf Turned Shepherd

  The Frogs Who Ask for a King

  The Fox and the Goat

  The Eagle, the Wild Sow, and the Cat

  The Drunkard and His Wife

  Gout and the Spider

  The Wolf and the Stork

  The Lion Brought Down by Man

  The Fox and the Grapes

  The Swan and the Cook

  The Wolf and the Ewes

  The Lion Grown Old

  Philomela and Procne

  The Drowned Wife

  The Weasel in the Larder

  The Cat and an Old Rat

  BOOK IV

  The Lion in Love

  The Shepherd and the Sea

  The Fly and the Ant

  The Gardener and His Lord

  The Ass and the Pup

  The War between the Rats and the Weasels

  The Ape and the Dolphin

  The Man with the Wooden Idol

  The Jay Dressed in the Peacock’s Feathers

  The Camel and the Floating Sticks

  The Frog and the Rat

  The Tribute Sent by the Animals to Alexander

  The Horse Who Sought Revenge on the Stag

  The Fox and the Bust

  The Wolf, the She-goat, and the Kid & The Wolf, the Mother, and the Child

  A Reflection from Socrates

  The Old Man and His Sons

  The Oracle and the Infidel

  The Miser Who Lost His Treasure

  The Master’s Eye

  The Lark, Her Little Ones, and the Farmer Who Owns the Field

  BOOK V

  The Woodsman and Mercury

  The Earthen Pot and the Iron Pot

  The Little Fish and the Fisherman

  The Hare and His Ears

  The Fox Who Lost His Tail

  The Old Woman and the Two Servants

  The Satyr and the Passerby

  The Horse and the Wolf

  The Ploughman and His Sons

  The Mountain in Labor

  Dame Fortune and the Child

  The Doctors

  The Hen with the Golden Eggs

  The Ass with a Load of Holy Relics

  The Deer and the Vine

  The Snake and the File

  The Hare and the Partridge

  The Eagle and the Owl

  The Lion Going Off to War

  The Bear and the Two Companions

  The Ass Dressed in the Lion’s Skin

  BOOK VI

  The Shepherd and the Lion & The Lion and the Hunter

  Phoebus and Boreas

  Jupiter and the Farmer

  The Cockerel, the Cat, and the Little Mouse

  The Fox, the Ape, and the Animals

  The Mule Who Boasted of His Family Tree

  The Old Man and the Ass

  The Stag Who Sees Himself in the Water

  The Hare and the Tortoise

  The Ass and His Masters

  The Sun and the Frogs

  The Peasant and the Snake

  The Sick Lion and the Fox

  The Bird-catcher, the Hawk, and the Lark

  The Horse and the Ass

  The Dog Who Drops His Prey for Its Reflection

  The Wagoner Stuck in the Mud

  The Charlatan

  Discord

  The Young Widow

  Epilogue

  BOOK VII

  For Madame de Montespan

  The Animals Ill with the Plague

  The Man Who Married a Shrew

  The Rat Who Withdrew f
rom the World

  The Heron & The Damsel

  The Wishes

  King Lion’s Court

  The Vultures and the Pigeons

  The Coach and the Fly

  The Milkmaid and the Milk Jug

  The Curé and the Corpse

  The Man Who Runs after Fortune and The Man Who Waits for Her in His Bed

  The Two Cocks

  The Ingratitude and Injustice of Men toward Fortune

  The Fortune-tellers

  The Cat, the Weasel, and the Little Rabbit

  The Snake’s Head and Tail

  An Animal in the Moon

  BOOK VIII

  Death and the Dying Man

  The Cobbler and the Financier

  The Lion, the Wolf, and the Fox

  The Power of Fables

  The Man and the Flea

  Women and Secrets

  The Dog Who Carries His Master’s Dinner around His Neck

  The Joker and the Fish

  The Rat and the Oyster

  The Bear and the Garden-lover

  The Two Friends

  The Hog, the Goat, and the Sheep

  Tircis and Amaranth

  The Lioness’s Funeral

  The Rat and the Elephant

  The Horoscope

  The Ass and the Dog

  The Pasha and the Merchant

  The Value of Knowledge

  Jupiter and the Thunderbolts

  The Falcon and the Capon

  The Cat and the Rat

  The Torrent and the Rivulet

  Breeding

  The Two Dogs and the Dead Ass

  Democritus and the Abderitans

  The Wolf and the Hunter

  BOOK IX

  The Faithless Trustee

  The Two Pigeons

  The Ape and the Leopard

  The Acorn and the Pumpkin

  The Schoolboy, the Pedant, and the Owner of a Garden

  The Sculptor and the Statue of Jupiter

  The Mouse Metamorphosed into a Maiden

  The Madman Who Sells Wisdom

  The Oyster and the Adversaries

  The Wolf and the Scrawny Dog

  All in Moderation

  The Taper

  Jupiter and the Traveler

  The Cat and the Fox

  The Husband, the Wife, and the Thief

  The Treasure and the Two Men

  The Monkey and the Cat

  The Kite and the Nightingale

  The Shepherd and His Flock

  Discourse [for Madame de la Sablière]

  The Two Rats, the Fox, and the Egg

  BOOK X

  The Man and the Snake

  The Turtle and the Two Ducks

  The Fishes and the Cormorant

  The Money-burier and His Friend

  The Wolf and the Shepherds

  The Spider and the Swallow

  The Partridge and the Cocks

  The Dog Who Had His Ears Cut Short

  The Shepherd and the King

  The Fishes and the Shepherd Who Plays the Flute

  The Two Parrots, the King, and His Son

  The Lioness and the She-bear

  The Two Adventurers and the Wondrous Writ

  Discourse [for Monsieur le duc de la Rochefoucauld]

  The Merchant, the Aristocrat, the Shepherd, and the Prince

  BOOK XI

  The Lion

  The Gods Wishing to Instruct a Son of Jupiter

  The Farmer, the Hound, and the Fox

  The Dream of the Man from the Mogol Land

  The Lion, the Ape, and the Two Asses

  The Wolf and the Fox

  The Peasant from the Danube

  The Old Man and the Three Young Men

  The Mice and the Screech Owl

  Epilogue

  BOOK XII

  The Companions of Ulysses

  The Cat and the Two Sparrows

  The Treasure-hoarder and the Ape

  The Two Goats

  For Monseigneur le duc de Bourgogne

  The Old Cat and the Young Mouse

  The Sick Stag

  The Bat, the Bush, and the Duck

  The Quarrel of the Dogs and Cats and of the Cats and Mice

  The Wolf and the Fox

  The Crayfish and Her Daughter

  The Eagle and the Magpie

  The Kite, the King, and the Fowler

  The Fox, the Flies, and the Hedgehog

  Love and Folly

  The Crow, the Gazelle, the Tortoise, and the Rat

  The Forest and the Woodsman

  The Fox, the Wolf, and the Horse

  The Fox and the Young Turkey Cocks

  The Ape

  The Scythian Philosopher

  The Elephant and Jupiter’s Ape

  A Fool and a Wise Man

  The English Fox

  Daphnis and Alcimadura

  Philemon and Baucis

  The Matron of Ephesus

  Belphegor

  The Daughters of Mineas

  The Arbiter, the Hospitaler, and the Hermit

  APPENDIXES

  The Sun and the Frogs

  The Rats’ League

  Notes

  Notes on Illustrations

  Bibliography

  Index

  For Evelyn

  Translator’s Preface

  I am a self-confessed La Fontaine addict. Unlike other addictions, this one is quite harmless. It even has an upside. My translations can help introduce those with limited or no French to the genius of the genial fabulist; and even, perhaps—though doubtful—improve the behavior of a reader or two. (“Doubtful,” because, though I myself have translated many hundreds of fables over the years, despite all their edifying content I am still as flawed a human being as I was when I began. And anyway, it is unlikely that La Fontaine’s intent for his little moral tales was truly as didactic as his first six books would have us believe. Their artistry far transcends their morality.)

  But it has a definite downside too, by definition. La Fontaine’s oeuvre, after all, like any author’s, is finite. When, in 1988, I brought out my collection Fifty Fables of La Fontaine, even though I had no conscious intention at the time of doing another, the possibility of continuing to feed my happy addiction was always there. It surfaced with Fifty More Fables in 1998; and again, with Once Again, La Fontaine, a couple of years later. After each backsliding, though, I dutifully resolved that I would reform.

  So much for resolutions. I went on, in my all-too-human frailty, to complete the remaining fourscore a couple of years ago, blithely ignoring the fact that the supply would thereby dry up. (And, to the best of my knowledge, there are no treatment centers to deal with La Fontaine addiction.) There are, to be sure, other competent, attractive, even thoroughly engaging French fable writers—scores and scores of them, in fact, over the centuries. And I have dealt with many. But there is only one La Fontaine. I can, of course, hope that researchers may eventually discover a trove of as yet unknown La Fontaine fables. But even that unlikely serendipity would be only a temporary solution at best. And so my “collaboration” with him, while an ongoing joy, is tempered by the knowledge that it now exists in retrospect and not in anticipation. I am both enriched by the past and saddened by its finality.

  That confessed, what I present here is the integral fruit of that benignly compelling collaboration with this dean of French fabulists: translations—versions? re-creations?—of his complete Fables, in the sweep of their twelve books extending over his entire literary life, from 1668 to 1694; developing from the child-friendly and uncomplicated minidramas of the earliest, through narratives of greater philosophical and literary complexity—hardly children’s fare; and even unto the lengthy but never ponderous works in the late books. Some of these latter are not, in fact, “fables” at all, but rather contes—tales in the style of his often licentious Contes et nouvelles en vers. But who am I to argue? Included with the fables since their first publication (by either La Fontaine
or his publisher), they are traditionally part of the corpus; and for the sake of truth in advertising I include them in the announced completeness of the present collection. I hope readers will be as undaunted by “Philemon and Baucis,” “The Daughters of Mineas,” and the several others, as by “Maître Corbeau, sur un arbre perché …” and his quite different ilk, which are much more readily committed to the memory of generations of French school children. They will be rewarded with a view of La Fontaine’s narrative talent that literary histories often fail to mention but that shows many of the same qualities that make him unique.

  A few words are in order concerning my own philosophy as a translator, especially of verse, and, more especially, of La Fontaine’s. Without embarking on a screed-like discussion of the “rhyme-and-meter versus free-verse” controversy between “formalists” and “literalists,” which will never lose steam among Translation Studies adepts, I would say only that for me—and individual taste is crucial here—to render formal (i.e., rhymed and metered) verse into anything but similar English is tantamount to artistic sacrilege. If the “message” is all the reader wants, a prose (or prosy) rendition is fine. The Lambs’ Tales from Shakespeare, I might point out hyperbolically, does serve a valuable purpose, after all. But the message is only part of a poet’s artifact. If he or she clothes it in rhymed and metered verse, to do less is to betray at least part of its essence and to become the proverbial translator-cum-traitor, all other things being equal. Granted, no translation will ever “reproduce” the original exactly, but why should it? That is not the translator’s purpose. What he or she aims to do is to create a self-contained, self-standing work, one that has an almost mystical connection with the original, but a work that, ostensibly independent, transmits, to whatever degree it can, its music as well as its message. Or, in the words of Seamus Heaney, “the tone” as well as “the tune.” A translator tries to do this without sacrificing either to the other. The product must be seamless, and, not calling attention to itself except by choice, must sound as unforced and, indeed, inevitable, as the text that spawned it.

  In translating La Fontaine, the preceding observations are especially pertinent. His free-and-easy vers libres (i.e., freeish, not free, verse, in seventeenth-century usage), for all their liberty—their run-on lines, their natural speech rhythms, their inner rhymes and melodic repetitions—are no less set against an underlying metrical grid that constrains and intensifies that freedom. To render them into a rhymeless, meterless English would be rather like turning Shakespeare’s blank verse iambics into French rhymed octosyllabic couplets, or Dante’s terza rima into sprightly limericks. It’s safe to say that something would be lost… La Fontaine’s vehicle is as much a part of his organic whole as are his subjects and his style. He is always there, at the reader’s elbow, watching, with a complicitous wink and nod, the reaction to a bit of stylistic liberty, an unexpected archaism, an egregious rhyme, a sudden change of meter or line length for dramatic impact. Even, at times, the introduction of a one- or two-syllable word to function as an entire line. To ignore such bits of (deceptively?) casual-sounding inspiration would, for me at least, be unthinkable.

 

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