Donkey-Skin, by Nadezhda Illarionova*

*Nadezhda Illarionova (Photo credit: Google Images)

Donkey-Skin (Peau d’Âne) was written by Charles Perrault, in 1694.  But it is also dated 1697 as Histoires ou contes du temps passé, (Stories or Fairy Tales from Past Times with Morals or Mother Goose Tales).  So doubt lingers as to the year it was written.  I will date it c. 1695.

Summary of the Plot

A dying queen asks her husband to seek another spouse as beautiful as she is.  The widowed king falls in love with his daughter who is as beautiful as her mother, hence the fairy tale‘s classification as “unnatural love.”  However, Donkey-Skin seeks supernatural help provided by a fairy godmother.  The princess is told that she must ask her father to provide her with lavish gowns, three as it turns out, and to kill his gold-defecating donkey.  The father obliges and Donkey-Skin flees covered in the skin of the dead donkey.

After she escapes, Donkey-Skin starts working as a peasant.  But a prince sees her through a key-hole when she is trying on one the lavish gowns her father has given her.  This is an example of kairos, which means that the prince sees Donkey-Skin at the opportune moment.  He falls in love to the point of being sick.  In literature, French 17th-century literature in particular, writers have often depicted love as an illness.

The remedy that will heal the prince is not the skin of a wolf Ysengrim’s age, but a cake Donkey-Skin has baked.  She therefore bakes the cake and inserts her ring into the batter.  So we now remember the foot-that-fits-the-shoe ‘motif,’ Cinderella’s foot.  The prince goes in search of the woman whose finger fits the ring and finds her.  Donkey-Skin is returned to her regal self.

Réunion de dames, by Abraham Bosse* 17th century (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

*Abraham Bosse (c. 1602-1604 – 14 February 1676)

The Salons and Préciosité

At the time Perrault wrote his Tales of Mother Goose (Contes de ma mère l’Oye), children’s literature was in its infancy.  Charles Perrault was an habitué (a regular) of Salons and fairy tales are associated with Préciosité‘s main objectives: the refinement of language and manners, and the ”Querelle des Femmes,” the French 17th-century debate about women.  Women considered themselves as “précieuses.”  At first sight, it therefore seems puzzling that the story of a princess resisting the incestuous advances of her father should be accepted in literature befitting fine gathering places.  Such is not the case.

The Debate about women and Perrault’s Style

According to the Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, Donkey-Skin is, indeed, part of the “Querelle des femmes,” the debate about women.  Donkey-Skin exposes an abuse against women, which may explain its acceptability.  Salonniers and salonnières also enjoyed the suspense.  The tale also owes its acceptability in that readers know that Donkey-Skin’s plight will end.  Fairy tales have a happy ending.  However, I should think that the manner in which the tale is told is its matter.  Peau d’Âne is an exquisite versified tale, which makes it fine Salon literature.

On Charles Perrault, honnête homme and a “Moderne”

In other words, although Donkey-Skin is pursued by an incestuous father, the tale is told by an excellent writer.  Charles Perrault (12 January 1628 – 16 May 1703) was born to a wealthy bourgeois family and elected to the Académie française, in 1671.  For two decades, he worked at court as Jean-Baptiste Colbert‘s secretary.  He mingled in Salons with other honnêtes hommes,[i] gentlemen who, by and large, were as they seem[ii], quite an achievement in 17th-century France.  Finally, at the close of the 17th century, Perrault would lead the Modernes in the famous Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes.[iii]

Donkey-Skin, by Adrienne Ségur*

Unnatural Love

Yet, in Aarne-Thompson, Donkey-Skin’s is listed as type 510, i.e. unnatural love, rather than a type that could be called the flayed animal, such as Curing a Sick Lion (AT 50).  The incestuous love of a father for his daughter does not seem appropriate entertainment for small children or the audience of Salons.  We have seen, however, that it is acceptable.  Moreover it mirrors other ‘motifs.’

The Flayed Wolf

Let’s recall Reynard the Fox, rooted in the Sick-Lion tale or Curing a Sick Lion (AT 50).  Reynard has overheard Ysengrim the wolf tell the king that Reynard has failed to join other courtiers who are at their sick king’s, the lion, bedside.  Reynard overhears the wolf and visits him later to tell Noble that he has travelled everywhere in search of a cure.  To be cured, the king must wrap himself into the skin of a wolf, the age of Ysengrim.

It would therefore seem reasonable to link tales where a character is covered in the skin of another animal with the tale Aarne-Thompson have listed as AT 50: curing a sick lion.  However, tales intersect and may include more than one motif.  Although the Aarne-Thompson index classifies Donkey-Skin under its unnatural love category, Peau d’Âne does mirror the flayed-animal motif, under any name.  In fact, it also mirrors Cinderella‘s foot-that-fits-the-shoe motif, the shoe in Peau d’Âne, being the ring the prince finds in the cake.  Donkey-Skin also mirrors The Goose who laid golden eggs (Æsop’ Fables, Perry Index 87) and Jean de La Fontaine‘s “La Poule aux œufs d’or” (V. 13).  Like the goose, the king’s donkey is “aurifère,” an endless source of gold.

Traditions populaires

Also at play is tradition.  Perrault’s Donkey-Skin is perhaps ageless.  It was probably transmitted through an oral tradition and too widely known to be left aside.  Before Peau d’Âne entered a learned tradition, i.e. a written form, a fairy tale was sometimes referred to as a “Peau d’Âne.”[iv]  Molière alludes to Peau d’Âne in his Malade imaginaire (II, 8), his last play (1673).  Moreover, Jean de La Fontaine expressed his love of Peau d’Âne in a fable published in 1678, in his second recueil, or collection, of fables:

According to Marc Soriano,[v] Perrault used many sources before writing his Peau d’Âne in perfect verse.  The tale is not altogether a rewriting of Giambattista Basile‘s (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632) l‘Orsa IT (The Bear), (Il cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille [The Tale of Tales or Entertaiment for Little Ones]), or Pentamerone.  Nor is it a polished version of a tale by Giovanni Francesco Straparola (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632), the author of the Facetious Nights or Piacevoli Notti.  It is Perrault‘s Donkey-Skin and one of the first fairy tales belonging to children’s literature.  Perrault’s, the Moderne, has set the tone.  He has become the model.

Conclusion

So, eloquence and tradition have redeemed unnatural love.  That would be my first conclusion.  As suggested above, folktales enjoy a degree of immunity, not only as fiction but as part of a cultural heritage that has profound roots and crosses borders.  Peau d’Âne is not altogether cleansed:  the donkey is still “aurifère,” i.e. it defecates gold, and Peau d’Âne’s father’s love remains a transgression.  However, even in the most refined social circles, one does indulge, occasionally, in a soupçon, i.e. a tad, of scatological humour, told correctly.  Moreover, by the time Perrault wrote his fairy tales, Préciosité was no longer the ridiculous fashion represented in Molière‘s Les Précieuses ridicules (1659).  Finally, not only does Perrault’s Donkey-Skin mirror many texts, but it is pared down and presented in verses, not the easier prose.  Style transcends “unnatural love.”

However, I will end this post by introducing a new element.  Let me quote Donkey-Skin’s fairy godmother, her marraine fée, who suggests that Donkey-Skin not contradict her father while refusing him: “Mais sans le contredire on peut le refuser,” which is what Donkey-Skin does, thereby displaying that, with a little advice, worldly wisdom, she can negotiate her way out of her father’s incestuous requests.  Her fairy godmother tells Peau d’Âne that incest, without naming it, is a “great wrong,” (une faute bien grande), but her entire statement reads as follows:

One is therefore reminded of Puss in Boots, a fairy tale in which a very clever cat takes his master from rags to riches using his savoir-faire, a more natural recourse than magic.  Donkey-Skin will oppose her father “sans le contredire,” without contradicting him, which is also savoir-faire, not to mention empowerment.

Portrait of Charles Perrault (detail), by Philippe Lallemand,* 1672 (Photo credit: Wikipedia.)

Un Épisode de l’affaire de Quibéron, 1795, by Paul-Émile Boutigny (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

A Portrait of the Three Consuls, from left to right, Jean Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, Napoleon Bonaparte and Charles-François Lebrun* (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On 21 March 1804, aged 31, His Serene Highness, The Duke of Enghien, born on 2 August 1772, was executed by single firearm.  He was an émigré but dragoons captured him and brought him to Strasbourg on 15 March 1804.  He was the grand-son of Louis XIV, by Madame de Montespan, and the son of Louise Marie Thérèse Bathilde d’Orléans, the Duke of Orléans’ sister.  Philippe duc d’Orléans, or Philippe Égalité, the duc d’Enghien’s uncle, voted in favour of his brother’s, Louis XVI, execution, by guillotine.

The Duc d’Enghien was a prince of the blood (Prince du Sang) and, therefore, a possible heir to the throne of France.  He was accused of participating in a Royalist plot (Cadoudal-Pichegru) to defeat the Consulate (18 Brumaire [9 November] 1799 -1804), part of the Napoleonic era (c. 1795-1815 [Congress of Vienna]).  He was tried for the sake of appearances, Napoleon having decided he had to be eliminated.  D’Enghien had been the commander of a corps of émigrés during the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802), but he had not played a role in the above-mentioned 1804 conspiracy.  By the time the duke was captured, he had married Charlotte de Rohan (25 October 1767 – 1 May 1841), privately and in near secrecy, and the couple lived in Ettenheim, in Baden, on the Rhine.  (See Duc d’Enghien, Wikipedia.)

Louis-Antoine-Henri de Bourbon-Condé, duc d’Enghien (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were of course many Royalists among the French during the French Revolution (1789-1794).  Particularly noteworthy is a failed invasion of France called l’affaire Quibéron portrayed above by artist Paul-Émile Boutigny (1853 -1929).  On 23 June 1795, émigrés  landed at Quibéron to lend support to the Vendéens, who had long fought Revolutionary forces, and the chouannerie, royalist uprisings. The émigrés hoped they could raise support in western France, end the French Revolution and re-establish the monarchy.  By 21 July 1795, they had been routed.

As for the duke, nothing could be done to save him.  If Joséphine de Beauharnais,[i] Napoléon I‘s first wife, could not dissuade her husband, born Napoleone Buonaparte, no one could.  Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d’Otrante (known as the Duke of Otranto), Napoleon’s chief of police, said of the execution that “it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake:” “C’est pire qu’un crime, c’est une faute.”  The crime, for it was a crime, was imputed, probably wrongly, to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, one of history’s foremost survivors.  However, if the murder of the young duc d’Enghien is remembered to this day, it is as an obvious injustice, one that lingered in the mind of great writers.

The “Chouans” and the Duke in literature: Balzac, Dumas and Leo Tolstoy

In Les Chouans, a 1829 novel, French writer Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) immortalized the royalist chouannerie, uprisings in western France and, by the same token, the royalist Vendéan insurrection.  For his part, the duc d’Enghien was bestowed life eternal by Leo Tolstoy (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy.  In the first book of War and Peace, Tolstoy has the vicomte de Mortemart, a French émigré, say that:

“‘[a]fter the murder of the duc, even the most partial ceased to regard [Buonaparte] as a hero. If to some people he ever was a hero, after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and one hero less on earth.’ The vicomte said that the duc d’Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were particular reasons for Buonaparte’s hatred of him.”

There is an anecdote according to which, during one of his fainting spells,[ii] Napoléon was at the mercy of the duke of Enghien who spared him.  The execution of the duc d’Enghien might well have been Napoléon’s brief but personal French Revolution.  He needed to kill an aristocrat.

Alexandre Dumas, père (24 July 1802 – 5 December 1870) featured the duc d’Enghien in his The Last Cavalier (Le Chevalier de Sainte-Hermine), unfinished at the time of Dumas’ death, but now published and translated into English:

“[T]he dominant sentiment in Bonaparte’s mind at that moment was neither fear nor vengeance, but rather the desire for all of France to realise that Bourbon blood, so sacred to Royalist partisans, was no more sacred to him than the blood of any other citizen in the Republic.

‘Well, then’, asked Cambacérès,[iii] ‘what have you decided?’

‘It’s simple’, said Napoleon, ‘We shall kidnap the Duc d’Enghien and be done with it.’”[iv]

Let these words be the conclusion of this post.  The duc d’Enghien was a scapegoat.

Henri de La Rochejacquelein* at the Battle of Cholet in 1793, by Paul-Émile Boutigny (10 March 1853 – 27 June 1929), Musée d’art et d’histoire de Cholet.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

[i] Napoleon divorced Joséphine in 1810 so he could marry Marie Louise d’Autriche, the future Duchess of Parma, who gave him a son.  Napoléon wanted un ventre, a fertile woman.

[ii] Napoleon had epileptic seizures.  One of Talleyrand’s duties was to remove Napoléon from public sight when seizures occurred.

[iii] Jean-Jacques Régis de Cambacérès, 1st Duke of Parma, is the author of the Napoleonic Code, a fine document still in use in Quebec.

[iv] See Duc d’Enghien, Wikipedia.

Here is a lovely little song.  The music is by Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (4 January 1710 – 16 March 1736).  My translation is mostly literal.  So, please do not expect a beautiful poem.  I wanted to translate the words.  This song is a very simple pastoral.

1. Que ne suis-je la fougère
2. Où, sur la fin d’un beau jour,
3. Se repose ma bergère
4. Sous la garde de l’amour ? Under the watch of
5. Que ne suis-je le zéphyr
6. Qui rafraîchit ses appas,
7. L’air que sa bouche respire,
8. La fleur qui naît sous ses pas ?

Why am I not the fern/ Where, towards the end of a beautiful day,/ My shepherdess rests/ And love watches over her?/  Why am I not the gentle breeze,/ That refreshes her charms,/ The air her mouth breathes,/ The flower born under her steps.

1. Que ne suis-je l’onde pure
2. Qui la reçoit dans son sein ?
3. Que ne suis-je la parure
4. Qui la couvre après le bain ?
5. Que ne suis-je cette glace,
6. Où son minois répété
7. Offre à nos yeux une grâce
8. Qui sourit à la beauté ?

Why am I not the pure mist/ That receives her into its bosom/ Why am I not the ornament/ That covers her after her bath?/ Why am I not that mirror,/ Where her sweet little face repeats itself/ Offering to our gaze a grace/ That smiles at beauty?

1. Que ne puis-je, par un songe,
2. Tenir son cœur enchanté ?
3. Que ne puis-je du mensonge
4. Passer à la vérité ?
5. Les dieux qui m’ont donné l’être
6. M’ont fait trop ambitieux,
7. Car enfin je voudrais être
8. Tout ce qui plaît à ses yeux !

Why am I not, as in a dream,/ Holding her heart bewitched?/ And why can I not from a lie/ Go on to the truth?/ The gods who gave me life/ Made me too ambitious,/ For I would like to be/ All that pleases her eyes!

Micheline Walker©

Reblogged from AMERICAN LIBERAL TIMES:

Date:  May 18, 2013 - -

Subject:  Political Irony - -

Re:  Short Post About Moments I Hold Dear In My Heart - -

OP-ED by John Liming - -

On July 14, 2012 it looked to me like a whole helluva lot of hard-core Right Wingers were all over "Twitter" poking fun at President Obama for what they were calling his "Failed" first term.

Read more… 116 more words

I am sending, once again, my earlier post on The Miller, His Son and the Donkey and one on Ferdinand Hodler.

• Sunday’s News and Ferdinand Hodler (michelinewalker.com)
• You can’t please everyone: Aesop retold (michelinewalker.com)

My purpose is to show images.  Two are by Milo Winter (The Æsop for Children, EBook #19994) and one is the work of Ferdinand Hodler, perhaps the finest Swiss artist of the 19th century.  I would like to show you more of his work.

Ferdinand Hodler (14 March 1853 – 19 May 1918) was born in Berne, Switzerland.  He was soon the only surviving member of his family.  All died of tuberculosis.  This experience coloured his life.  For instance, Hodler painted several portraits of his mistress and former model Valentine Godé-Darel during the years she was dying of cancer.  The video I am inserting in this post documents her “disintegration”  Interestingly, Hodler also painted some 20 portraits of himself.  These may be a chronicle of the gradual metamorphosis that characterizes human life.

After Ferdinand Hodler’s father died, his mother married a decorative artist.  This may explain Hodler’s career as illustrator.  He  apprenticed at Thun and then moved to Geneva.  He is associated with many movements: from realism to expressionism, including symbolism and Art Nouveau (see “Adoration III” at the bottom of this post).  We have seen the work of Alphonse Mucha (24 July 1860 – Prague, 14 July 1939) who was a Czech Art Nouveau artist.

In order to improve his skills, Hodler travelled so he could study the work of other artists.  He was particularly interested in the art of Hans Holbein.

Hodler painted several landscapes and portraits.  Favourite subjects were women and people going about their daily activities, genre painting. However he was also an illustrator.

Ferdinand Hodler married twice and his son by one of his models, Augustine Dupin (1852–1909), Hector Hodler (1 October 1887, in Geneva – 31 March 1920, in Leysin, Switzerland) founded the World Esperanto Association.

During the last year of his life, he had suicidal thoughts.  Hodler died at the age of 65 and is now considered a Swiss legend.

Micheline Walker©

Walter Crane‘s composite illustration of all the events in the tale for the limerick retelling of the fables, Baby’s Own Æsop.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

I have revised a post published in 2012.  The pictures are now clearer.  To view the post, simply click on the following link (the first link):

• You can’t please everyone, Æsop retold (michelinewalker.com)[i]
• The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey (classification)
• The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey (text)

In the Aarne-Thompson classification index, The miller, his son and the donkey is motif 1215 and bears many names.  For the time being, we will call it The Man, the Boy, and the Donkey.[ii]  By clicking on this title, we will see tales related to AT 1215.

I used La Fontaine’s version of this fable, entitled Le Meunier, son fils, et l’âne FR, but it is also an Æsopic fable The miller, his son and the donkey, Perry Index 721, AT 1205 (English).  Given that Greek playwright Aristophane‘s (450 BC) alluded to our story in The Frogs; given, moreover, that it also belongs to the Æsopic corpus, The miller, his son and the donkey is a very old fable.  However, it would appear La Fontaine used as immediate model, a Racan retelling and the last fable in a collection of fables by Gabriele Faerno (1510 [Cremona], 17 November 1561 [Rome]), entitled Centum fabulae (A Hundred Fables). The moral of Faërne’s (FR) fable is that, if one tries to please everyone, one pleases very few individuals, or none at all.

Wikipedia’s The Miller, his son and the donkey

Nasreddin and other retellers

According to Wikipedia, La Fontaine was also influenced by Poggio Bracciolini,[iii] called Poggio (11 February 1380 – 30 October 1459), who included the story in his Facetiæ (1450).  It is the opening poem of Giovanni Maria Verdizotti‘s Cento favole morali (1570) (One Hundred Moral Tales).  However, “[t]he oldest documented occurrence of the actual story is in the work of the historian, geographer and poet Ibn Said (1213-1286), born and educated in Al-Andalus[,]” in Islamic Iberia, now Spain and Portugal.  The story is also told in the Forty Vezirs, translated from Arabic into Turkish by Sheykh Zada.  It is one of the stories told in the Arab world’s Goha.

The story was also written in the 17th century by Ottoman Turkish Nasreddin, who, according to Wikipedia, “dealt in concepts that have a certain timelessness” (Wikipedia).  His advice to his son (son fils) is:

“If you ever should come into the possession of a donkey, never trim its tail in the presence of other people. Some will say that you have cut off too much, and others that you have cut off too little. If you want to please everyone, in the end your donkey will have no tail at all.” (Nasreddin Hodja)

Nasreddine et son fils

Photo credit: Google Images

In the 13th century, Jacques de Vitry translated the tale and inserted it in his Tabula exemplorum.[iv]  It was also translated by Juan Manuel, Prince of Villena (5 May 1282 – 13 June 1348).  The story, entitled “What happened to a good Man and his Son, leading a beast to market,” is included in the Tales of Count Lucanor (1335).  It can be found in Shakespeare’s Jest Book (c. 1530), in German  meistersinger Hans Sachs, who created it as a broadsheet, in 1531.  It is also part of German author Joachim Camerarius‘ Asinus Vulgi.  This version was used by the Dane Niels Heldvad (1563-1634) in his translation of the fable.  It was then told by French seventeenth-century Racan, a disciple of French poet Malherbe, who is largely responsible for the development of the poetic rules of French “Classicism.”

We therefore see it in Greece (Aristophanes and Æsop), in the Arab World, in the Ottoman Empire, in Italian city-states, in Spain and Portugal, in England, in Germany and in France.

A 17th century miniature of Nasreddin, currently in the Topkapi Palace* Museum Library.  (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

*Topkapi Palace (Istanbul, Turkey) was the primary residence of the Ottoman Sultans for approximately 400 years (1465-1856) of their 624-year reign.  (See Topkapi Palace, Wikipedia and Nasreddin, Wikipedia.)[v]  

Conclusion

The miller, his son and the donkey is an old story.  In all likelihood, it dates back to Æsop, if there ever lived a Æsop.  If so he was a reteller.  In the case of La Fontaine’s Le Meunier, son fils et l’âne, we know his immediate sources: Racan and Gabriele Faerno.

In my earlier post, I point to a moral underlying the moral.  The people who give advice to the miller and his son are judgmental.  But the fable could also be linked to analysis paralysis.  We often need to seek advice, professional advice in particularly, but we can’t let others stifle our inner voices.  I believe that instinct is often one’s best guide.  When in doubt, abstain! (Dans le doute, abstiens-toi.)

I will close by noting, first, that The miller, his son and the donkey is an example of shared wisdom: the Greeks, Islamic Iberia, the Arab world, Ottoman Turks and various European cultures.  Second, tales we call “folktales” have a wide range of listeners, readers and writers.  Not only are stories delightful, but they also override rank and constitute a testimonial to pluralism.

______________________________

 

Image publicitaire, Ets Bourcheix & fils, nouveautés, draperie, à
Clermont-Ferrand (Photo credit: lafontaine.château-thierry.net)

The illustration I used at the top of my post on ‟The Cat and the Fox” (10 May 2013) is by Granville,[i] sometimes spelled Grandville.  I have inserted the image of ‟Le Chat et le Renard” at the bottom of this post.  I love it.  However, I am particularly fond of the illustration below ‟Les Deux Rats, le Renard, et l’Œuf,” (The Two Rats, Fox and Egg), a fable associated with La Querelle de l’âme des bêtes FR (The Quarrel about the Soul of Animals).  In 17th-century France, there were literary and philosophical quarrels, called querelles, the most famous of which is the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes  (The Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns).[ii]  It took place beginning in the last decade of ‟The Splendid Century,” the title of a superb account, by W. H. Lewis, of the age of Louis XIV.

Les Deux Rats, le Renard, et l’Œuf, by Granville (Photo credit: lafontaine.net)

The Quarrel about the Soul of Animals: Descartes

The Quarrel about the Soul of Animals, may not have been of great interest to writers, but it was important to philosophers and it has endured.  The deeper quarrel concerned ‟reason” versus ‟instinct.”  According to René Descartes, (31 March 1596 – 11 February 1650), the author of the Discours sur la méthode (The Discourse on Method), published in 1637, reason was the way to knowledge (epistemology).

Darwinism, the transmutation of species or evolution, can also be associated with the ‟quarrel about the soul of animals,” but from a different point of view. Darwinism gives the human race animal ancestry, as does totemism.

According to Descartes, animals do not think.  They are machines, or ‟un ressort,” a clock one winds up.  La Fontaine writes that Descartes ‟goes further and claims that beasts do not think at all: ‛nullement’ ‟ (‟Descartes va plus loin, et soutient nettement// Qu’elle [la bête] ne pense nullement. (IX, 20)”  An English translation of the entire fable can be accessed by clicking on the following link: Discours à Madame de La Sablière.  La Fontaine was Madame de La Sablière’s house guest from 1673 until 1693.  He called her Iris.

La Fontaine would not and did not state that animals had a soul.  However, his position was that necessity (the mother of invention) had given animals all the wit they needed to survive.  According to Jean de La Fontaine, animals haven’t the soul humans have, but they are not mere machines.  He therefore closes his Discours à [Address to] Madame de la Sablière, by telling the story of two smart rats, a fox and an egg.

Les Deux Rats, le Renard, et l’Œuf

In Les Deux Rats, le Renard, et l’Œuf (FR) or The Two Rats, Fox and Egg (EN), La Fontaine uses a cast of three and an egg.  The fox is not very near the rats, but they know of his presence and cannot sit and eat the egg they have found without moving the egg away from the snooper (l’écornifleur).  They think and think.  Should they package the egg and carry it with their front paws?  Should they roll it or drag it?  It was impossible and very dangerous: chose hasardeuse. 

The rats having pondered the problem, one of the two turns upside down and puts the egg between his four paws, while the other rat pulls him by the tail.  Necessity, or the instinct of self-preservation, has rescued our likeable little fellows.  Instinct is something we share with animals.  Yet, there does not seem to be a quarrel about this bond between humans and animals.

souls: Middle-Souls

Therefore, La Fontaine thinks in terms of middle-souls:  L’un [trésor] cette âme pareille en tous tant que nous sommes, //Sages, fous, enfants, idiots, //Hôtes (guests) de l’univers sous le nom d’animaux; //L’autre encore une autre âme, entre nous et les anges.

One we share with all things alive: /the wise, madmen, children, idiots //The universe’s guests under the name of animals; //And still another shared between us and angels.

Conclusion

The key-word is indeed nécessité: ‟Nécessité l’ingénieuse /Leur fournit une invention.” (Ingenuous necessity /Provided them with an invention.)  Moreover, La Fontaine’s idea could be compared to a vertical line.  He is thinking of gradation.  It could be that Darwinism would give us a horizontal line, but a line that would no doubt have branches.  As for classification according to motifs, it would appear this fable has escaped that particular exercise.  It seems part of the ‟querelle” about the soul of beasts.

However, it did elicit comments in the classroom.  My students always had dozens of stories demonstrating how intelligent their dog was.  I would tell them that it could be dogs dit not know they would die, but that I had met Einsteins among dogs, not to mention very clever cats galore.  As Blaise Pascal (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) wrote, “The more I see of Mankind, the more I prefer my dog.”  In Beast literature, animals are considered superior to humans.

Sources:

Photo credit: (Please click on the smaller images to enlarge them.)

[i] See LaFontaine.net.  Granville, pseudonym for Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gérard (1603 – 1647)

[ii] Officially, the quarrel opposed authors and literati (persons interested in literature) who believed literature in French had come of age and those who felt the Græco-Latin models had not been surpassed.  Charles Perrault led one camp, supporters of the Moderns.  Boileau championed the Ancients, as did his friend La Fontaine.     

Lubka Kolessa plays Hummel Rondo in E flat major Op. 11

Le Chat et le Renard

Related articles

• The Cat and the Fox Revisited (michelinewalker.com)
• The Cat’s Only Trick (michelinewalker.com)

Gutenberg’s Æsop: EBook #19994

The translation I used for Jean de La Fontaine‘s (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) ‟The Cat and the Fox,” is Gutenberg’s EBook #19994 entitled The Æsop for Children and illustrated by Milo Winter (7 August 1888 – 1956).   I made a mistake.  I scrolled down to page 88 and found a fable entitled ‟The Cat and the Fox.” Usually, Æsop’s cat and fox fable is entitled ‟The Fox and the Cat.”  I have not found the name of the translator of Gutenberg’s The Æsop for Children, but the correct illustration is the following by Milo Winter.  In order to read Gutenberg’s translation of Æsop, click on ‟The Cat and the Fox.”

Le Chat et le Renard, by Milo Winter

Gutenberg’s Jean de La Fontaine: EBook #24108

The Gutenberg project is preparing an EBook edition of Jean de La Fontaine’s Fables in French: EBook #17941.  However, its current translation of fables by La Fontaine is Gutenberg EBook #24108, translated by William Trowbridge Larned and its illustrator is John Ray‘s.  EBook #24108 is entitled Fables in Rhyme for Little Folks, from the French of La Fontaine and it is a selection of La Fontaine’s fables.  One can read W. T. Larned’s translation of Le Chat et le Renard (IX, 14, 1678) by clicking on The Cat and the Fox.

I have corrected the blog I posted on 10 May 2013, but have posted the semicircular picture again, at the top of this post, giving credit to its illustrator: John Ray.  However, there are three more illustrations by John Ray, the last of which is Reynard the Fox‘s tombstone.

La Fontaine translated by Robert Thomson

William Trowbridge Larned translated Gutenberg’s EBook #24108, a selection of Jean de La Fontaine’s fables and this selection includes the ‟The Cat and the Fox,” by La Fontaine.  However, there are several translations on La Fontaine’s fables one of which is by Robert Thomson (19th century).  One can access Thomson’s translation of 10 of La Fontaine 12 books of fables by using the Château Thierry site, named after La Fontaine’s house: http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/fablanglais.htm and the lafontaine.net: http://www.lafontaine.net/index.php are excellent sources of information on La Fontaine: the fables, the illustrators, the translators, etc.

Retellings and Translations of La Fontaine

Retelling and translating La Fontaine is a major endeavour.  According to Wikipedia, with respect to mastery of the French language, Jean de La Fontaine has only been surpassed by Victor Hugo, but barely.  There may be simplified and more modern retellings of La Fontaine’s fables, but I know of none.  I would have to access a catalogue of current children’s literature rooted in La Fontaine.  But I will not investigate the matter.

As for translating La Fontaine, it is also very difficult.  A literal translation is almost impossible.  One has to rewrite La Fontaine.   Moreover, one is faced with instances of intertextualité.  These are difficulties Robert Thomson encountered when he translated The Cat and the Fox.

An Instance of Intertextuality (EN)

The term may seem daunting, but intertextualité (FR) occurs when a text refers to another text.  For instance, La Fontaine calls both the cat and the fox ‟Tartufs” and ‟archipatelins.”  The name ‟archipatelins” is a reference to the anonymous Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin.  Maître Pierre Pathelin is a lawyer.  La Fontaine was not very kind to lawyers.

As for Tartuffe, shortened in La Fontaine so a syllable could be removed[i], it is the title of a play by Molière (baptised January 15, 1622 – February 17, 1673), first performed in 1664.  After Tartuffe premiered, further performances were cancelled by Louis XIV, a supporter and friend of Molière.  In all likelihood, Louis was following the advice of the Archbishop of Paris, Paul Philippe Hardouin de Beaumont de Péréfixe.  It was written and performed in 1667, but the dévots, probably members of the Compagnie du Saint-Sacrement, remained hostile.  There was a third and final revision of Tartuffe, performed in 1669.  The full title of the play is Tartuffe ou l’Imposteur: the Impostor.  

The world has many impostors, but Tartuffe, the eponymous main character of the play, uses false devotion to defraud a tyrannical pater familias.  This is the mask, the faux-dévot, Renart uses to escape a death sentence.  In William Trowbridge Larned‘s translation, Gutenberg’s EBook #24108, the fox is called Reynard.  It is also called Reynard in Robert Thomson’s translation.  As for La Fontaine, his fox is ‟le renard” spelled with a ‘d’ rather than a ‘t,’ as in the Roman de Renart, but his cat and fox are like ‟nice little saints,” going on a ‟pilgrimage.”  (‟Comme beaux petits saints, S’en allaient en pèlerinage”.)  The translators give us an indication of the popularity of Reynard the Fox.  But there is filiation between Renart, who pretends he is leaving for the Crusades, and our cat and fox, ‟nice little saints” off on a ‟pilgrimage.”

So our Gutenberg’s EBook #24108, is a translation and adaptation, by W. T. Larned, of a selection of fables written by La Fontaine and illustrated by John Ray.  To read the text, click on The Cat and the Fox.

As for our EBook #19994, it seems an anonymous translation and adaptation of fables by Æsop.  However the translator could be G. F. Townsend.  There is or will be a Gutenberg publication of Æsop by Townsend, but it isn’t EBook #19994.  My own Æsop is a translation and adaptation by G. F. Townsend.

Fortunately, the mistake I made did not affect my brief interpretation of the fable about the cat and the fox.  However, it had to be corrected and my readers had to know the post was as accurate as it could be.

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[i] (C’é/ taient/ deux/ vrais/ Tar/ tufs,// deux/ ar/ chi/ pa/ te/ lins.) = 12 feet (pieds).  We have an alexandrin with a césure // after 6 pieds.  Alexandrine verses have twelve pieds.

Micheline Walker©

Related articles

• The Cat’s Only Trick (michelinewalker.com)

The Cat’s only trick is classified as AT 105 in the Aarne-Thompson motif index.[i] In the Perry Index, it is Æsopic fable number 605.

This motif goes back to the Panchatantra and does not always feature the same cast, i.e. a Cat and a Fox.  In Æsop, the “Cat’s only trick” is usually entitled “The Fox and the Cat,” but in La Fontaine the title is “The Cat and the Fox,” “Le Chat et le Renard.”  We therefore have a reverse image, which is appropriate since the Cat, not the Fox, manages to get out of harm’s way.

The Cat and the Fox, by John Ray (Photo credit: Gutenberg EBook #24108)

Æsop’s The Fox and the Cat

Gutenberg’s The Æsop for Children: The Cat and the Fox

La Fontaine’s The Cat and the Fox or Le Chat et le Renard

For a selection of Jean de La Fontaine (8 July 1621 – 13 April 1695) fables, including The Cat and the Fox, click on Gutenberg’s EBook #24108.  If you are looking for La Fontaine’s Le Chat et le Renard, in French, click on the title or on lafontaine.net.

Townsend’s and Gutenberg’s Æsop’s fables are slightly different from one another.  G. F. Townsend’s Æsopic cat is a female.  As for Gutenberg and La Fontaine’s cat, it is a male and, although the fox is trapped by the dogs, in Gutenberg’s The Cat and the Fox and in La Fontaine’s Le Chat et le Renard, the fox is not killed by huntsmen.  There are no hunters in Guntenberg and La Fontaine’s “The Cat and the Fox.”  In La Fontaine, the dogs strangle their prey.

However banal this fable may seem, it has been considered an instance of analysis paralysis (see the Blue Inkwell,  “Are you the Fox or the Cat?” and The Fox and the Cat, Analysis Paralysis, Rob Clarke‘s post).  However, in my earlier readings of this fable, it did not occur to me that the Fox was paralysed by his own potential for survival.  I simply reflected that cats were fortunate to have claws that allowed them to climb trees and that our Fox had done the best he could without claws.

In Wikipedia’s entry on The Cat and the Fox, I read that there is a proverb attributed to ancient Greek poet Archilochus according to which “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” which presupposes that our cat may have been a hedgehog.  I also read that the Panchatantra (Book 5) illustrates the dangers of being too clever.  Two clever fish, Satabuddhi (hundred-wit) and Sahasrabuddhi (thousand-wit), are told by a frog, named Ekabuddhi (single-wit), not to worry if the fishermen who have visited and plan to return do come back.  He, Ekabuddhi (single-wit), will protect them.  But Ekabuddhi escapes as quickly as he can, and when the fishermen return, the clever fish are caught.  (See The Fish That Were Too Clever.)

Kalila wa Dimna has a related story.  Three fish, wise, clever and stupid, hear fishermen.  The wise fish flees.  The clever fish “plays dead” (AT 56) and the stupid fish is caught by the fishermen.  Writing in the thirteenth century, Persian writer Rūmī used this story in Book IV of his Masnavi.  In Rūmī’s opinion, one who does not have “perfect wisdom” had better play dead. 

In the much earlier Sanskrit Mahabharata or Mahābhārata, a swan rescues a crow who knows a hundred and one ways of getting himself out of trouble.  The Mahabharata and the Ramayana are the two Sanskrit epics (Indian and Nepalese).  The Bhagavad Gita is part of the Mahabharata.  (See The Crow and the Swan.)

Wikipedia’s entry goes on to list the various animals who, in Eastern and Western Europe, have the “cat’s only trick” that makes them defeat a boastful fox or other animal.  According to the author of the Wikipedia entry, La Fontaine finishes his fable with a practical moral.  “Too many expedients may spoil the business.” (« Le trop d’expédients peut gâter une affaire. »)

Conclusion

It is quite true that having too many options may slow a person down; making a decision is difficult.

However, it would seem that we do not have a level playing field.  The Cat has claws, and claws are what an animal needs to climb a tree.  As for the Fox, however clever he may be, he does not have claws.  There is not much the Fox can do except enter a foxhole.  We can compare three fish, but a cat is a cat and a fox is a fox.  We are dealing with different animals and different abilities.

So “The Cat and the Fox” is probably, first and foremost, about limitations.  Both the Cat and the Fox have limitations, but it so happens that, in this particular fable, claws are needed.  Therefore circumstances favor the Cat rather than the Fox.

Moreover, the Fox makes a terrible mistake.  He boasts about his cunning tricks.  Fables are comic texts where the deceiver is deceived.  Had the Fox not boasted, he and the cat may not have been attacked by a pack of dogs.

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[i] See The Fox and the Cat (Wikipedia).  Click on Aarne-Thompson 105 (AT 105) for stories based on the “Cat’s only trick.”

[ii] No 88 (Gutenberg EBook #19994, pictures by Milo Winter).

Modernity: Reversal of Archetypes

In modern Children’s Literature, there is a tendency to reverse archetypes.  In Kenneth Grahame‘s, Wind in the Willows (1908), Mr Toad is the anthropomorphic and gentrified hero of the novel.  He is the future Toad of Toad Hall, who appears in A. A. Milne‘s 1929 dramatisation of Kenneth Grahame‘s Wind in the Willows (1908).  In fairy tales princes and princesses are turned into “ugly” toads, but Kenneth Grahame’s Mr Toad is not ugly.  He is a gentleman and lives in Toad Hall.  However, he gets into trouble when he falls in love with cars to the point of stealing one and finding himself imprisoned.  He escapes prison with the assistance of the jailer’s daughter, also a motif, and he is rehabilitated by Badger, Mole, and Rat, who would not be beautiful and “good” in a Charles Perrault fairy tale. Kenneth Grahame is also the author of The Reluctant Dragon (1898).

Motifs: Bruin loses the Skin off his nose, not Pooh

Moreover, although archetypes tend to be reversed, children’s literature, a relatively recent literary genre, has preserved ancient motifs.  As we have seen, Pooh bear gets stuck in the burrow he uses when he goes visiting the rabbit and overindulges, but although he has to lose weight, he is not otherwise punished.  He simply faces the consequences of eating too much honey and drinking too much condensed milk.  But the Roman de Renart‘s Brun (Bruin) loses the skin “off his nose” when his nose gets stuck in a hole in a log where he is told, by Renart, that there is excellent honey.  The hole is kept open by wedges that are suddenly removed.  Bruin’s nose is therefore “coincé” (wedged in) and the skin comes “off his nose” when he frees himself.  He is wounded.

A. A. Milne‘s Winnie-the-Pooh also contains a variation on the Tail-Fisher Motif.  In fact, we have already seen this variation which we could call the Missing-Tail or Severed-Tail Motif.  In Jean de La Fontaine‘s Le Renard ayant la queue coupée (The Fox whose tail has been cut off), a fable based on Æsop’s The Fox Who Had Lost His Tail (Perry Index 17), a fox whose tail has been cut off would like other foxes to have theirs removed.  However, when they ask to see the mutilated fox’s rear end, the other foxes reject the fox’s suggestion.  It seems that deprived of his bushy tail the fox’s rear end is not an attractive sight.

In which Eeyore Loses a Tail and Pooh (as of 1924)

However, when Pooh notices Eeyore has lost his tail, Pooh does not express revulsion.  On the contrary, Pooh feels sorry for Eeyore and sets about finding the missing tail.  He visits with Owl who has found the tail in the forest and is using it to hold his door bell.  The tail is therefore returned to Eeyore and nailed back painlessly.

Not that Eeyore does not feel sorry when he is told his tail is missing.  He feels very sorry, but no one has cut it off and Pooh goes looking for it.  In fact the tail seems removable and ornamental.  So the motif, classified by Antti Aarne (1875-1925) and Stith Thompson (1885–1976) as AT 2, has remained but Eeyore’s back side is not an ugly sight, which it is in La Fontaine and Æsop.  So, Eeyore fate could be deemed a modern twist on the Tail-Fisher motif.  The motif has been edited.

Editing is precisely what French fairy tale writer Charles Perrault does when he retells Giovanni Francesco Straparola‘s (c. 1480 – c. 1557) The Facetious Nights (75 stories) and Giambattista Basile ’s (c. 1575 – 23 February 1632) Il Pentamerone, Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille, or The Tale of Tales.  As a regular of seventeenth-century French salons, Perrault retold borrowed tales so they would meet the requirements of the elegant salons.  Seventeenth-century authors had to respect bienséances, a certain étiquette, and eloquence.  As a result, Perrault’s Tales and Stories of the Past with Morals (Histoires ou Contes du Temps passé) or Tales of Mother Goose (Les Contes de ma mère l’Oye), published in 1997 are considered the birthplace of fairy tales as we know them.  Perrault, a bourgeois, was the quintessential honnête homme, a gentleman’s gentleman. 

Similarly, Eyeore may lose his tail, but it cannot be painfully and, contrary to the fox in La Fontaine and Æsop, when Eeyore turns around, he cannot be ugly.  In other words, although motifs remain, in texts written for children, a degree of discretion and bienséances is expected of the writer.  Therefore, as we enter modernity, not only are archetypes often reversed, but motifs are adapted to a broader audience, including children.  Not to mention that although they may suffer from what we consider personality disorders, the characters created by A. A. Milne are perfectly lovely.  Psychologists and psychiatrists may benefit from diagnosing yet another mental illness, but they do so at an enormous cost.  Humanity is about to run out of normal individuals.  We cannot allow the mutilated victims of the Boston bombings to be considered as unacceptable and should be kind to Eeyore who seems depressed.

Conclusion

Yes, Eeyore does seem forever depressed, but does it matter?  Must he also be deprived of friends? It may be useful to present the world of Reynard the Fox as possessing the flimsy reality of cartoons where cats get flattened by a steamroller yet soon return to the former fluffy selves.  As we have seen in an earlier post, according to translator Jill Mann,[i] in Ysengrimus, the 6,574-line Beast Epic in Latin elegiac couplets, the poem should be looked upon as possessing the unreal reality of cartoons.  The same should true of the various Reynard stories in which it originates.  The confrontation between Ysengrin and Renart must and does continue which precludes his losing his tail permanently.  In fact, there are versions of the Roman de Renart where the flayed wolf survives.  The various versions of Reynard the Fox are a comic text and comic texts have their own protocol.  For my part, I think we should be merciful and broaden acceptance to include the now one-legged Boston dancer and the burned veteran.  They are simply special and so is our depressed Eeyore.

As a modern author and illustrator, in Les Malheurs d’Ysengrin, Samivel (1907-1992) writes compassionately about Ysengrin’s misfortunes. Samivel also wrote a Goupil (old French for Renard, or Fox) translated into English as Rufus, the Fox, by Margery Williams, the author of The Velveteen Rabbit, 1922.  See How Rufus Lost His Tail, by Mahtrow (http://mahtrow.com/).

There was a time when few children were expected to survive childhood.  It was difficult for some parents to love them and difficult for authors to write books dedicated to them.  But times have changed and although motifs, such as the severed tail (The Tail-Fisher AT 2) remain, they have been adapted.

I hope all of you are well.

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• More on the Tail-Fisher (michelinewalker.com)
• Another Motif: The Tail-Fisher (michelinewalker.com)
• Another Motif: Playing Dead (michelinewalker.com)
• A motif: Getting Stuck in a Hole (michelinewalker.com)
• The Topsy-Turvy World of Beast Literature (michelinewalker.com)
• The Velveteen Rabbit & Animism (michelinewalker.com)