Fables of La Fontaine — Preface

[7] Franche-Comté, which he subdued in 1668. PREFACE.

The indulgence with which some of my fables have been received[1] has induced me to hope that this present collection may meet with the same favour.

At the same time I must admit that one of the masters of our eloquence[2] has disapproved of the plan of rendering these fables in verse, since he believes that their chief ornament consists in having none; and that, moreover, the restraints of poetry, added to the severity of our language, would frequently embarrass me, and deprive most of these narratives of that brevity which may be styled the very soul of the art of story-telling, since without it a tale necessarily becomes tame and languid.

This opinion could only have been expressed by a man of exquisite taste, and I will merely ask of him that he will in some degree relax it, and will admit that the Lacedemonian graces are not so entirely opposed to the French language, that it is impossible to make them accord.

After all, I have but followed the example, I will not say of the ancients, which would not affect me in this case, but that of the moderns.

In every age, amongst every poetical people, Parnassus has deemed this species of composition its own.

Æsop's fables had scarcely seen the light, when Socrates[3] thought proper to dress them in the livery of the Muses; and what Plato says on this subject is so pleasant, that I cannot refrain from making it one of the ornaments of this Preface.

He says, then, that Socrates having been condemned to death, his punishment was respited on account of the occurrence of certain fêtes.

Cébès went to see him on the day of his death, and Socrates then told him that the gods had several times warned him by dreams that he should devote himself to music before he died.

He did not at first understand the signification of these dreams; for, as music does not improve a man's moral nature, of what use could it be to him?

[4] It was evident, however, that there was some mystery involved, for the gods never ceased to give him the same warning, and it had come to him again on the occasion of one of the fêtes to which I have above alluded.

At length, after having deeply reflected on what it might be that Heaven intended him to do, he concluded that as music and poetry are so closely allied, it probably meant him to turn his attention to the latter.

There can be no good poetry without harmony; but to good poetry fiction is also equally necessary, and Socrates only knew how to tell the truth.

At length, however, he discovered a compromise;

selecting such fables as those of Æsop, which always contain something of truth in them, he employed the last moments of his life in rendering them into verse.

Socrates is not the only one who has regarded fables and poetry as sisters.

Phædrus has also declared that he held this opinion, and by the excellence of his work we are able to judge of that of the philosopher.

After Phædrus, Avienus treated the same subject in the same way; finally, the moderns have also followed their example, and we find instances of this not only amongst foreign nations, but in our own.

It is true, that when our own countrymen devoted their attention to this species of composition, the French language was so different from what it now is, that we may regard them in this case as foreigners.

This has not deterred me from my enterprise.

On the contrary, I have flattered myself with the hope that, if I did not pursue this career with success, I should at least earn the credit of having opened the road.

It may possibly happen that my labours will induce others to continue the work; and, indeed, there is no reason why this species of composition should be exhausted until there shall remain no fresh fables to put in verse.

I have selected the best; that is to say, those which seem to me to be so; but, in addition to the fact that I may have erred in my selection, it will be by no means a difficult thing for others to give a different rendering even to those which I have selected; and if their renderings should be briefer than mine, they will doubtless be more approved.

In any case, some praise will always be due to me, either because my rashness has had a happy result, and that I have not departed too far from the right path, or, at least, because I shall have instigated others to do better.

I think that I have sufficiently justified my design.

As regards the execution, I shall leave the public to be the judge.

There will not be found in my renderings the elegance and extreme brevity which are the charms of Phædrus, for these qualities are beyond my powers; and that being the case, I have thought it right to give more ornament to my work than he has done.

I do not blame him for having restricted himself in length, for the Latin language enabled him to be brief; and, indeed, if we take the trouble to examine closely, we shall find in this author all the genuine characteristics and genius of Terence.

The simplicity of these great men is magnificent; but, not possessing the powers of language of these authors, I cannot attain their heights.

I have striven, therefore, to compensate in some degree for my failings in this respect, and I have done this with all the more boldness because Quintilian has said that one can never deviate too much in narrative.

It is not necessary in this place to prove whether this be true or not;

it is sufficient that Quintilian has made the statement.

[5] I have also considered that, as these fables are already known to all the world, I should have done nothing if I had not rendered them in some degree new, by clothing them with certain fresh characteristics.

I have endeavoured to meet the wants of the day, which are novelty and gaiety; and by gaiety I do not mean merely that which excites laughter, but a certain charm, an agreeable air, which may be given to every species of subject, even the most serious.

It is not, however, by the outward form which I have given it that the value of my work should be alone judged, but by the quality of the matter of which it is composed, and by its utility.

For what is there that is worthy of praise in the productions of the mind which is not to be found in the apologue?

There is something so grand in this species of composition, that many of the ancients have attributed the greater part of these fables to Socrates; selecting as their author that individual amongst mortals who was most directly in communication with the gods.

I am rather surprised that they have not maintained that these fables descended direct from heaven,[6] or that they have not attributed their guardianship to some one special deity, as they have done in the case of poetry and eloquence.

And what I say is not altogether without foundation, since, if I may venture to speak of that which is most sacred in our eyes in the same breath with the errors of the ancients, we find that Truth has spoken to men in parables; and is the parable anything else than a fable?

that is to say, a feigned example of some truth, which has by so much the more force and effect as it is the more common and familiar?

It is for these reasons that Plato, having banished Homer from his Republic, has given a very honourable place in it to Æsop.

He maintains that infants suck in fables with their mothers' milk, and recommends nurses to teach them to them, since it is impossible that children should be accustomed at too early an age to the accents of wisdom and virtue.

If we would not have to endure the pain of correcting our habits, we should take care to render them good whilst as yet they are neither good nor bad.

And what better aids can we have in this work than fables?

Tell a child that Crassus, when he waged war against the Parthians, entered their country without considering how he should be able to get out of it again, and that this was the cause of the destruction of himself and his whole army, and how great an effort will the infant have to make to remember the fact!

But tell the same child that the fox and the he-goat descended to the bottom of a well for the purpose of quenching their thirst, and that the fox got out of it by making use of the shoulders and horns of his companion as a ladder, but that the goat remained there in consequence of not having had so much foresight, and that, consequently, we should always consider what is likely to be the result of what we do,--tell a child these two stories, I say, and which will make the most impression on his mind?

Is it not certain that he will cling to the latter version as more conformable and less disproportioned than the other to the tenderness of his brain?

It is useless for you to reply that the ideas of childhood are in themselves sufficiently infantine, without filling them with a heap of fresh trifles.

These trifles, as you may please to call them, are only trifles in appearance; in reality, they are full of solid sense.

And as by the definition of the point, the line, the surface, and the other well-known elements of form, we obtain a knowledge which enables us to measure not only the earth but the universe, in the same manner, by the aid of the truths involved in fables, we finally become enabled to form correct opinions of what is right and what is wrong, and to take a foremost place in the ranks of life.

The fables which are included in this collection are not merely moral, but are, to a certain extent, an encyclopædia of the qualities and characteristics of animals, and, consequently, of our own; since we men are, in fact, but a summary of all that is good and bad in the lower ranks of creatures.

When Prometheus determined upon creating man, he took the dominant characteristic of each beast, and of these various characteristics composed the human species.

It follows, therefore, that in these fables, in which beasts play so great a part, we may each of us find some feature which we may recognise as our own.

The old may find in them a confirmation of their experiences, and the young may learn from them that which they ought to know.

As the latter are but strangers in the world, they are as yet unacquainted with its inhabitants; they are even unacquainted with themselves.

They ought not to be left in this ignorance, but should be instructed as to the qualities of the lion, the fox, and so forth, and as to the why and the wherefore a man is sometimes compared to the said lion and fox.

To effect this instruction is the object of these fables.

I have already overstepped the ordinary limits of a Preface, but I have still a few remarks to make on the principles on which the present work has been constructed.

The fable proper is composed of two parts, of which one may be termed the body, and the other the soul.

The body is the subject-matter of the fable, and the soul is the moral.

Aristotle will admit none but animals into the domain of fabledom, and rigorously excludes from it both men and plants.

This rule, however, cannot be strictly necessary, since neither Æsop, Phædrus, nor any of the fabulists[7] have observed it; but, on the other hand, a moral is to a fable an indispensable adjunct, and if I have in any instances omitted it, it is only in those cases in which it could not be gracefully introduced, or in which it was so obvious that the reader could deduce it for himself.

The great rule in France is to value only that which pleases, and I have thought it no crime, therefore, to cancel ancient customs when they would not harmonise with modern ones.

In Æsop's time the fable was first related as a simple story, and then supplemented by a moral which was distinct in itself.

Next Phædrus came, who was so far from complying with this rule, that he sometimes transposed the moral from the end to the commencement.

For my own part, I have never failed to follow Æsop's rule, except when it was necessary to observe a no less important one laid down by Horace, to the effect that no writer should obstinately struggle against the natural bent of his mind or the capabilities of his subject.

A man, he asserts, who wishes to succeed will never pursue such a course, but will at once abandon a subject when he finds that he cannot mould it into a creditable shape: "Et quæ Desperat tractata intescere posse, relinquit."

[8] It only remains to speak of the life of Æsop, whose biography by Planudes is almost universally regarded as fabulous.

It is supposed that this writer formed the design of attributing a character and adventures to his hero which should bear some resemblance to his fables.

This criticism, at first glance, appeared to me sufficiently specious, but I have since found that it has no solid basis.

It is partly founded on what took place between Xantus and Æsop, and the quantities of nonsense there contrasted.

To which I reply, Who is the sage to whom such things have not happened?

The whole of the life even of Socrates was not serious; and what confirms me in my favourable opinion is, that the character which Planudes gives to Æsop is similar to that which Plutarch gives him in his Banquet of the Seven Wise Men--that is, the character of a keen and all-observant man.

It may be objected, I know, that the Banquet of the Seven Wise Men is in itself a fiction; and I admit that it is possible to be doubtful about everything.

For my own part, I cannot well see why Plutarch should have desired to deceive posterity on this subject, when he has professed to be truthful on every other, and to give to each of his personages his real character.

But however this may be, I would ask, Shall I be less likely to be believed if I endorse another man's falsehoods than if I invented some of my own?

I might certainly fabricate a tissue of conjectures, and entitle them the "Life of Æsop;" but whatever air of genuineness it might wear, no one could rely upon such a work, and, if he must put up with fiction, the reader would always prefer that of Planudes to mine.

[1] Before the year 1668, when the present collection of fables was first published.

Fontaine had already published a few separately, and others had circulated in manuscript.

[2] Patru, a celebrated lawyer, a member of the French Academy, and one of La Fontaine's friends, who made a strange mistake in trying to divert him from a species of composition which has immortalised him.

[3] These fables had long been known when Socrates came into the world, and the Father of Philosophy only took the trouble to render them into verse during the imprisonment which preceded his death.

[4] The word Μουσιχὴ implied amongst the Greeks all the arts to which the Muses devote themselves.

It comprises the employments of the mind in opposition to γυμναστιχὴ, which means the exercises of the body.

La Fontaine does not give Plato's meaning quite correctly.

The philosopher, at the commencement of the "Phædo," makes Socrates say that, having been several times warned in dreams by the gods to study music, he had only regarded it as an encouragement to persevere in the pursuit of truth; but that, since his imprisonment, he had given another interpretation to those warnings, and had decided that he should better obey the wishes of the gods by making verses.

[5] The following is the passage in Quintilian to which the poet alludes:--"Ego vero narrationem, at si ullam partem orationis, omni qua potest gratia et venere exorundam."

--<i>Quint.

, "Hist Orat."

</i> lib.

ix.

, cap iv.

[6] La Fontaine has not ventured altogether to repair the oversight of the ancients, for he has left the origin of fables a doubtful point between heaven and earth, when he says, in a dedication to Madame de Montespan, "The fable is a gift which comes from the immortals; if it were the gift of man, he who gave it us would indeed deserve a temple."

[7] The word fabulist was invented by La Fontaine, and has no equivalent either in the Greek or Latin languages.

La Motte only ventured to use it under cover of the authority of our poet; and the French Academy, having declined to admit it into the first edition of its Dictionary, which was published after La Fontaine's death, only did so when it had been sanctioned by usage and public admiration.

[8] <i>Hor.

</i>, "<i>Ars Poet.

</i>," v. 150. TO