2. My phrase “fowl cohort,” echoing one above, is not a misprint. The pun, not in the original, is my attempt to suggest something of the La Fontaine playfulness inherent in his typical coinage la dindonnière gent, of the original, roughly translatable as “turkeydom.”
3. One tends to think of the pseudoscientific work of the eighteenth-century physician Franz Mesmer—he of “animal magnetism” fame—as the beginnings of modern concern with hypnotism and such, though the ancients (and even the primitives) were well aware of the phenomenon of “fascination,” of which the fox’s ploy is a rudimentary example. It may have been suggested to La Fontaine by chapter VI (“De scientia brutorum”) of Thomas Willis’s treatise De Anima brutorum quae Hominis vitalis ac sensitiva est exercitationes duae (London, 1672), a lengthy passage of which is found in Regnier, 3:405–6.
4. The reference is, of course, to Harlequin (or Arlequin), the French descendant of the Italian Arlecchino, one of the stock characters of the commedia dell’arte, known for his improvisational talents, most often used to extricate his masters from a variety of entanglements, and usually not without a goodly dose of self-interest. Of his many incarnations in the French theater, under the same or other names, the most famous and well developed is Beaumarchais’s celebrated Figaro.
The Ape (XII, 19)
1. One wants to believe, certainly, that La Fontaine’s condemnation of plagiarists as worse even than wife-beaters is the pointed, very sardonic exaggeration of a man of letters. Be that as it may, translators, be it said, are plagiarists too, in a sense, albeit self-confessed and (generally) harmless.
The Scythian Philosopher (XII, 20)
1. The reference is to the old man from Corycia, in Virgil’s Georgics (IV, 127–33), who, “spacing herbs among his thickets, / And setting out white lilies, slender poppies, / And vervain, felt sure that his riches matched / The wealth of kings …” (See Virgil, Georgics, trans. Smith Palmer Bovie [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956], 90.)
The Elephant and Jupiter’s Ape (XII, 21)
1. See note 1 for IX, 3.
2. It is tempting to see here a wry suggestion on La Fontaine’s part—coming full circle toward the end of his collection and, indeed, of his life—that even the ant, arrogantly provident as he depicts her in his earliest fable, “The Cricket and the Ant” (I, 1), can run afoul of circumstances and need Jupiter’s help.
3. I have chosen to interpret La Fontaine’s final couplet with a rather more ironic twist than he perhaps intended: the elephant’s size will not deter divine concern even if it does not guarantee it either.
The English Fox (XII, 23)
1. Widow of the French ambassador to Constantinople and sister of the English ambassador to France, Madame Harvey (sometimes misspelled Hervay) arrived in Paris in 1683. It is said that she often tried to tempt La Fontaine to settle in England.
2. The English “prince” (i.e., king) in question was Charles II.
3. The amatory allusion is to Hortense Mancini, duchesse de Mazarin, and sister of La Fontaine’s protectress, the duchesse de Bouillon.
Daphnis and Alcimadura (XII, 24)
1. This idyll in the style of Greek pastoral poet Theocritus (ca. 315 to ca. 250, bce) is dedicated to a daughter of Madame de la Sablière (see IX, 20) and widow of a member of the parliament of Normandy. It is interpreted as a desire of the mother to see her daughter remarry, which she subsequently did. One of many truly enlightened women of her age, she appears as a thinly veiled character in Fontenelle’s philosophico-scientific Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes (1686).
2. See note 5 for I, 14.
3. Erebus, in Greek and Roman mythology, was the uninviting region between earth and Hades.
4. See The Odyssey, XI, 543, for the celebrated dispute between Ajax and Ulysses concerning the inheritance of Achilles’ armor (see note 2 for XI, 3).
5. See The Aeneid, VI, 450 ff., for Dido’s recriminations against an ungrateful, unloving Aeneas.
Philemon and Baucis (XII, 25)
1. Great-grandson of Henri IV, the duc de Vendôme (1654–1712) was an admirer and protector of La Fontaine, whom he frequently entertained, along with other artists and literati, at his chateau in Anet, built by Henri III for Diane de Poitiers. La Fontaine’s toadying praise, it must be said, not unique to this work, hardly does him credit.
2. The apparent conflation of Greek mythology (Prometheus’s liver-plucking vultures) and Old Testament lore (the “son of Japhet”), seems an intentional generalization of human woe. The metaphorical transformation into human miseries of Prometheus’s punishment for stealing fire from the heavens as a gift to Man is emphasized by the “cross-cultural” allusion. (Unless, of course, it was a simple negligence.)
3. Of the three Fates, Clotho, it will be recalled, was the one who spun out the thread of life. See note 1 for V, 6.
4. Roman goddess of agriculture. See note 1 for IV, 21.
5. Zeuxis (fifth to fourth century bce) and Apelles (fourth century bce) were celebrated Greek painters. The latter, from the court of Macedon, was especially famous for a portrait of Alexander holding a thunderbolt, now lost, like the rest of his works.
6. One of the Muses, Clio’s special domain was history (see note 4 for I, 14).
The Matron of Ephesus (XII, 26)
1. This work—obviously, by its length and dramatis personae, much more a tale than a fable, properly speaking—figures, in fact, in most editions of La Fontaine’s Contes et nouvelles en vers. It was originally published in 1682 and dates from at least a year earlier. Its inclusion in Book XII of the Fables, published in 1693, is incongruous, to say the least. Be that as it may, the story, taken from Petronius’s Satyricon (cxi–cxii), was a favorite of many authors, both pre– and post–La Fontaine. (The poet himself would seem to have been inspired by it years before, at least obliquely, in “La Jeune Veuve” [VI, 21], itself also more a conte than a fable, albeit a short one.) The present translation appears also in La Fontaine’s Bawdy: Of Libertines, Louts, and Lechers. The tale is not included in the Regnier edition of the Fables.
2. La Fontaine’s reference, mildly deformed in my version, is to the family from which the pretentious Madame de Sotenville proudly claims descent in Molière’s comedy Georges Dandin (see note 1 for IX, 9).
Belphegor (XII, 27)
1. La Fontaine takes his version of this tale from Machiavelli and it is treated subsequently by a number of others (see Gohin, 2:381). Like “Philemon and Baucis” (XII, 25) and “The Matron of Ephesus” (XII, 26), preceding, and “The Daughters of Mineas” (XII, 28) following, it is hardly a fable in any but the most general sense, and is, properly speaking, a conte. Compared with the earlier fables for which he is generally known, these later works show the breadth and variety of his inspiration over his long creative life. (We have to suppose that the French schoolchildren often required to memorize fables of “Le bon Jean” might well balk at these.)
The Daughters of Mineas (XII, 28)
1. For a discussion of La Fontaine’s debts to Ovid, Boccaccio, and others, see Gohin, 2:384.
2. The arts protected by Pallas, the Latin Minerva, are those household skills of sewing, embroidery, and the like.
3. Bacchus, the Greek Dionysos, was the fruit of Jove’s seduction of Semele (daughter of Cadmus, king of Thebes, and Harmonia, daughter of Venus), who would be consumed by Jove’s fire when she requested to be allowed to gaze on him in all his glory as proof of his identity. The celebration in Bacchus’s honor was, no doubt, in thanks for wine, his gift to Man.
4. Roman goddess of agriculture. See note 1 for IV, 21.
5. We can forgive La Fontaine for his classical periphrases: the reference to Phoebus (Apollo), driver of the chariot of the dawn, is more in keeping with the subject than a prosaic “it is growing late.” But I would like to feel that he declaims such pomposities with at least a little wry humor.
6. Hymen, son of Apollo, was the Greek and Roman god of marriage. He was generally represen
ted as a handsome adolescent (which cynics might see as a realization, at least unconscious, of that institution’s decline with one’s advancing age).
7. See note 1 of V, 6. Atropos was, of course, the most fearsome of the trio of Fates, being the one who snipped the thread that her sisters had spun and measured out.
APPENDIXES
The Sun and the Frogs (appendix, I)
1. Gohin (2:387) indicates that the Latin fable in question, “Sol et Ranae,” by one P. Commire, had many French imitators besides La Fontaine. The present version allegorizes Louis XIV’s—the Sun King’s—hostilities against the Dutch.
The Rats’ League (appendix, II)
1. This fable too would refer to Louis XIV’s problems with the Dutch as a coda to the Thirty Years’ War, ending with the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648. The mouse represents Holland; the cat, Louis; and “all the rats about” (line 15), Spain, Denmark, and the Empire.
2. See note 2 for XII, 5.
Notes on Illustrations
David Schorr
Fables are always evolving. La Fontaine retells Aesop, Ovid, Sendebar, and others, and all are translated and retranslated. The images that often enrich these tales also change through the centuries.
For the first French fables I illustrated—Norman Shapiro’s The Fabulists French—I chose to do woodcuts, in order to recall traditions of early book illustration. I first painted the images in Japanese brush ink (sumie) on the wood before cutting. When the next projects came along—two of Shapiro’s early collections of La Fontaine—I did the illustrations directly as sumie drawings on paper. Because both volumes were bilingual, with French and English on facing pages, and because most fables involve two or more antagonists, I split the illustrations onto facing pages so opponents could confront each other across the gutter of the book, placing, for example, La Fontaine’s celebrated hare on the right and his tortoise on the left.
This complete collection of the fables revives a number of my illustrations but, for reasons of design, they are each confined to one page. So, rather than wield a knife and gouge, or a bamboo-handled brush, I take my computer as my easel, and I evoke the magic of Photoshop to combine two or more characters into a single-page illustration.
I was curious, of course, to see which of my more than one hundred La Fontaine illustrations would be chosen for this volume of the Complete Fables. Over the years, while working on these illustrations, the spirit of La Fontaine always inspired, but the shadow of his many illustrators often presented a weighty challenge. If I had to choose the work of a favorite predecessor, to which I thought I could never measure up, it would probably be Gustave Doré’s 1880 image for “The Rats in Council Assembled.” So it was especially gratifying to have my version of that same subject singled out, much too extravagantly, by our editor, Dr. Willis Regier, as “a masterpiece.”
My deep gratitude goes, as ever, to my collaborator, Norman Shapiro, without whom the utter fun of humanizing animals would never have come my way.
TITLE
From “The Fox and the Bust”
Like many of my illustrations I use this as an occasion to emulate a hero from the history of art and illustration. If I could be magically granted the chance to be one of my heroes, I might choose Tiepolo if asked for a painter, but if asked for a sculptor there would be no doubt I would choose to be Jean-Antoine Houdon, though I would have been about a hundred years too late to have La Fontaine sit for me.
BOOK VI
From “The Sun and the Wind”
This is the only one of these illustrations to have existed in woodcut form, done originally for The Fabulists French, an anthology translated by Norman Shapiro (University of Illinois Press: 1992). Though it might have been unconscious at the time, with fifteen years of hindsight, I can see that the figure stripping clearly remembers Egon Schiele’s many self-portraits with arms raised and armpit hair rampant.
BOOK VIII
From “The Rat and the Oysters”
The characters in this fable allowed me to pay homage simultaneously not only to two of my favorite illustrators, John Tenniel and Ernest H. Shepard, but specifically to particularly loved images. The oysters (with feet!) are borrowed from Tenniel’s illustration for Tweedledee’s recitation of “The Walrus and the Carpenter” in Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll; the wayfarer, is based on the Sea Rat in chapter 9, “Wayfarers All,” of The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (London: Methuen & Company, 1931).
BOOK X
From “The Fishes and the Cormorant”
This nature morte of fish skeletons is an homage to the painter Hyman Bloom.
BOOK XI
From “The Dream of the Man from the Mogol Land”
After finishing this illustration, I found it troublingly familiar. Albeit unconsciously, the source must certainly be Aubrey Beardsley’s cover for Ali Baba.
BOOK XII
From “The Treasure-hoarder and the Ape”
My source for the image of the ape counting money is a shot at the end of the train-wreck sequence in the film The Greatest Show on Earth (Cecil B. DeMille: 1952).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
From “The Man Who Runs after Fortune and the Man Who Waits for Her in His Bed”
The city to which the man who runs after fortune looks is an homage to Maxfield Parrish. It is a reworking of the architecture in an illustration that has always been a particular favorite of mine because it touches the geography of my life. A bearded artist standing in front of a walled, domed city looks down at a boy and asks, “You haven’t been to Rome, have you?” from The Golden Age by Kenneth Grahame (London and New York: John Lane: The Bodley Head, 1900).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
For the vast bibliography of secondary works relating to La Fontaine, I mention here, as in my previous volumes, only those book-length studies in English:
Biard, Jean Dominique. The Style of La Fontaine’s “Fables” (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966).
Birberick, Anne L. ed. Refiguring La Fontaine: Tercentenary Essays (Charlottesville, Va.: Rockwood Press, 1996).
Danner, Richard. Patterns of Irony in the “Fables” of La Fontaine (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985).
Guiton, Margaret. La Fontaine, Poet and Counterpoet (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1961).
Hamel, Frank. Jean de La Fontaine (London: Stanley Paul, 1911; rpt., Port Washington, N.Y: Kennikat Press, 1970).
King, Ethel M. Jean de La Fontaine (Brooklyn: Gaus, 1970).
Mackey, Agnes Ethel. La Fontaine and His Friends (New York: Braziller, 1973).
Rubin, David Lee. A Pact with Silence: Art and Thought in the Fables of Jean de La Fontaine (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991).
Slater, Maya. The Craft of La Fontaine (London: Athlone Press; Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh-Dickinson University Press, 2001).
Sutherland, Monica. La Fontaine (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953; rpt., London: Jonathan Cape, 1974).
Sweetser, Marie-Odile. La Fontaine (Boston: Twayne, 1987).
Vincent, Michael. Figures of the Text: Reading and Writing in La Fontaine (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamin, 1992).
Wadsworth, Philip. Young La Fontaine (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1952).
The following, while devoted primarily to La Fontaine’s less generally well-known Contes (1665–74), contains stylistic observations applicable as well to his Fables:
Lapp, John Clarke. The Esthetics of Negligence: La Fontaine’s “Contes” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title was intentionally removed from the eBook. Please use the search function on your eReading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Abderitans: and Democritus; stupidity of, (VIII, 26)
Acheron, (VI, 19), (VII, 1)
Achilles: armor of, (XII, 24); death of, (XI, 3)
aco
rn and the pumpkin
Adonis (La Fontaine)
adventurers and the wondrous writ
adversaries and the oyster
Aeneas and Dido, (XII, 24)
Aesculapius, (VIII, 16)
Aesop: and the explanation of the will; homeland of, (II, 20); tales of; ugliness of, (XI, 7)
Aesopian tradition
against those with too difficult tastes
agriculture, goddess of, (IV, 21), (VIII, 4), (IX, 11), (X, 1), (XII, 25), (XII, 28)
Ajax and Ulysses, (XI, 3), (XII, 24)
Alcimadura and Daphnis
Alecto of the Furies, (III, 7)
Alexander’s tribute from the animals
allusions, (I, 21)
Amaltheia the she-goat, (XII, 4)
Amaranth and Tircis
animal in the moon
animals: and the fox and the ape; ill with the plague; intelligence of, (IX, 20); tribute to Alexander
ant: and the cricket; and the dove; and the fly, (IV, 3), (IV, 3); and the grasshopper
ape: and the dolphin; and the fox and the animals; judgment against the fox and the wolf; and the leopard; and the lion and the two asses; and the miser; and the treasure-hoarder; who took a human wife
Apelles and Zeuxis, (XII, 25)
Apollo: daughter of, (XII, 1); as driver of dawn’s chariot, (XII, 28); son of, (XII, 28)
Arachne and Minerva, (X, 6)
arbiter, the hospitaller, and the hermit
Arcadia (Sidney)
Arcadian mounts, (VI, 19), (VIII, 17)
Archilochus
Areopagus, (II, 20)
Arion saved by a dolphin, (IV, 7)
aristocrat and the merchant, the shepherd, and the prince
Aristophanes: The Thesmophoriazusae, (I, 21)
Aristotle: Rhetoric, (XII, 13)
arts of household skills, (XII, 28)
ass(es): and the dog; dressed in lion’s skin; and his masters; and the horse; and the lion and the ape; and the lion go hunting; with a load of holy relics; load of sponges vs. load of salt; and the miller and his son; and the old man; and the pup; skin of, (VIII, 4); and the thieves
The Complete Fables of Jean de La Fontaine Page 43