“The Cock and the Pearl,” La Fontaine cont’d

It is within the nature of fables, and literature, to be ambiguous, but not necessarily impenetrably closed. Although Jean de La Fontaine‘s “The Cock and the Pearl” suggests that we do not always see an object’s intrinsic worth nor, for that matter, a person’s intrinsic worth, it may be interpreted differently. “The Cock and the Pearl” presents a riddle as does Walter Crane‘s shortened “Cock and Pearl,” a limerick, or five-line poem, with the rhyme scheme aabba. Its moral is not altogether apparent: “If he ask bread will ye give him a stone?” However, the exemplum, or illustration, makes the limerick clearer. This cock needs food more than he needs jewels.

As for La Fontaine’s full length but very short “Cock and the Pearl,” it has a second exemplum that further illustrates the first exemplum. This doubling is intentional. In “Le Bûcheron et Mercure” (“The Woodman and Mercury” [1.V.1]), La Fontaine writes that he sometimes provides a “double image,” or second exemplum, which is the case in “The Cock and the Pearl.” Having told about the cock who gives a pearl to a jeweller in exchange for a “crumb of bread,” La Fontaine also tells about a “dunce” who finds a rare manuscript, takes it to a bookstore, and leaves it there in exchange for a gold coin (un ducaton). In “The Cock and the Pearl,” the fabulist himself, transforms the cock into a “dunce.” As a result, the fable is not altogether anthropomorphic.

The First Exemplum

In the first exemplum, or “ìmage,” the finder knows he has unearthed a precious jewel. He would not otherwise take the pearl to a jeweller saying “I think it fine,” « Je la crois fine ». La Fontaine’s translator also writes that the cock scratched up “a pearl of purest ray” and he refers to the jeweller as a beau premier Lapidaire, i.e. someone the cock does not know or someone who was not recommended to him. La Fontaine then resets his narrative using a mirror-image esthetics or “double image” (“The Woodman and Mercury” [V.1]).

The Second Exemplum

In the second image, a “dunce,” now a man, finds a “manuscript of merit,” takes it to a bookstore and leaves it there in exchange for a gold coin. The word “dunce” is derived from the name of John Duns Scotus[ii] (c. 1266 – 8 November 1308) and, by calling someone a “dunce,” un ignorant or ignoramus, La Fontaine himself provides his fable with an interpretation. The fable is about a dunce or un ignorant. Consequently, although the moral is not summed up in a sentence judiciously placed at the end or beginning of the fable, in “The Cock and the Pearl,” the protagonist of the moral, a cock or a man, is un ignorant or a dunce.

Yet, the “The Cock and the Pearl” invites other interpretations, but the use of the word “dunce” (un ignorant, or ignoramus) could say it all, or almost. Fables may be very unkind to humans who often deserve a lesson or two.

“The Cock and Pearl,” by Arthur Rackham (1912)

(Photo credit: Gutenberg [eBook #11339])

Jean de la Fontaine’s « Le Coq et la Perle »

The Cock and the Pearl

A cock scratched up, one day,

A pearl of purest ray,

Which to a jeweller he bore.

“ I think it fine,” he said,

“ But yet a crumb of bread

To me were worth a great deal more. ”

So did a dunce inherit

A manuscript of merit,

Which to a publisher he bore.

“ It’s good,” said he, “I’m told,

Yet any coin of gold

To me were worth a great deal more. ”

Wenceslaus Hollar, illustrator

The Ysopet-Avionnet: a Grammar Textbook

Phædrus and Babrius: two traditions of fables

However, in the Middle Ages, “The Cock and the Jewel” was the first fable of a widely-used grammar book. (See “The Cock and The Jewel,” Wikipedia). In France, this grammar book was called the Ysopet-Avionnet,[i] which suggests a combination of the two traditions of Æsopic fables: the Latin tradition and the Greek. At one point, it was believed the word ‘Ysopet’ [a diminutive of Ésope] stood for the Latin tradition and that the word ‘Avionnet’ [also a diminutive] referred to Avianus’ popular collection of 42 fables written in Latin, but substantially rooted in the Greek tradition, Babrius’ fables. According to the presentation page of the online Ysopet-Avionnet (please click on the Ysopet-Avionnet) I have used, “[t]he title Ysopet-Avionnet was originally given to the fables of Avianus alone.”

Avianus

However, because the Ysopet-Avionnet contained and still contains 64 Æsopic fables, translated by “Romulus,” and 18, translated by Avian or Flavius Avianus, there had to be a Romulus or a person using the name Romulus as a pseudonym. It would appear, however, that the fables contained in the Ysopet-Avionnet are rooted in both the Latin tradition, the fables of Phædrus (c. 15 BC – c. 50 AD), and the Greek tradition, the fables of Babrius (c. 2nd Century CE).

Avianus lived in the 5th century CE, the 400s. His collection of 42 fables, translated into Latin, proved a success. Famed English printer and translator William Caxton (ca. 1415~1422– ca. March 1492) printed Avianus’ 42 fables in the 15th century (1484) and then translated them into English naming his collection The Fables of Avian.

Le Coq et la Perle

Un jour un Coq détourna

Une Perle, qu’il donna

Au beau premier Lapidaire.

“ Je la crois fine, dit-il ;

Mais le moindre grain de mil

Serait bien mieux mon affaire.”

Un ignorant hérita

D’un manuscrit, qu’il porta

Chez son voisin le Libraire.

“Je crois, dit-il, qu’il est bon ;

Mais le moindre ducaton

Serait bien mieux mon affaire.”

(Photo credit: Gutenberg

[EBook #18732])

The Moral

“The Cock and the Jewel” is the first fable of the Ysopet-Avionnet where it is entitled “Du coc et de l’esmeraude” (“The Cock and the Emerald”), in old French, and “De Gallo et Iaspide,” in Latin. “The Cock and the Emerald” most certainly owes some of its prominence to its being the opening fable in a widely-used textbook. The Ysopet-Avionnet can be read online (please click on the title) but the jewel is an emerald rather than a pearl and the fable entitled “Du coc et de l’esmeraude,” “The Cock and the Emerald” (“De Gallo et Iaspide”). Therefore, the pearl is a function and so is the cock himself. In other words, the pearl’s role could be played by any precious jewel. As for the cock, La Fontaine transforms him into a human being before our very eyes.

“Du coc et de l’esmeraude:” The Moral

More importantly, however, “Du coc et de l’esmeraude” has a moral. Unlike more modern translations of Æsop’s fables, “Du coc et de l’esmeraude” does not present a riddle. It has in fact a long moral according to which the stone, the emerald, means wisdom and the cock, folly. The fool is foreover a fool and he cannot stay still. Fools have no stability, or fermeté. The online edition I have used is dated 1919, and is based on three manuscripts of the 14th century (Brussels, Bibl. roy. 11193; Brit. mus. Add. 33781; Paris, Bibl. nat. fonds franç. 1594). It was edited by Kenneth McKenzie and A. Oldfather and published by the University of Illinois. However, the French is old French. (See Ysopet-Avionnet.)

Jean de La Fontaine

Which takes us back to La Fontaine. The moral of his “Cock and Pearl” is somewhat veiled, but thinly so. As noted above, the finder goes to the beau premier Lapidaire (jeweller) and is called un ignorant (ignoramus). He is a “dunce,” in an English translation. Fables being anthropomorphic, i.e. humans in disguise, the “dunce” fares poorly among humans. If such persons can settle for a “crumb of bread,” they are unlikely to choose a good leader or a good spouse. As well, it would also be difficult for a “dunce” to tell right from wrong. Dunces may, in fact, be so foolish as to believe they are harming others when they are harming themselves. To La Fontaine’s “double image,” or two exempla, we could add a third or a fourth exemplum. But the moral of the fable would always be that fools are fools and will forever remain fools. Other fabulists have offered different interpretations, but it could well be that “The Cock and the Pearl” is about human folly and fools. Fools cannot see the intrinsic value of an object or human being.

Other fabulists include John Lydgate‘s (c.1410), Samuel Croxall (1722), John Ogilby (1665) Wenceslaus Hollar (17th century), Robert Henryson (The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian [Greece], c. 1480), William Caxton (1484), etc.

Marie de France

“The Cock and the Pearl” is also the first fable of Marie de France‘s (1160-1210) famous collection, where “The Cock and the Pearl” is entitled “Del cok e de la gemme” (“The Cock and the Gem”). Normandy-born Marie de France lived in England. She will be discussed in a later post. However, in closing, I should point out that according to Wikipedia’s entry on “The Cock and the Jewel,” this fable can be compared to Zen Buddism‘s kōan, a story, dialogue, question, or statement, that may provoke “great doubt.” (See kōan, Wikipedia.) I must end this post as it is already far too long. However, I will first provide the English translation, by Harriet Spiegel,[iii] of Marie de France’s moral for “Del cok e de la gemme.” True to anthropomorphism, the moral begins with a “Many people are like this…”

The Cock and the Gem

Many people are like this

When something does or suit their wish.

What for the cock and gem is true

We’ve seen with men and women too:

They neither good nor honour Prize;

The worst they seize; the best, despise.

Marie de France, illuminated manuscript

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)

_________________________

[i] The Ysopet-Avionnet is available in English, from Amazon.France

[ii] “He was known as “Doctor Subtilis” because of the subtle distinctions and nuances of his thinking. Later philosophers in the sixteenth century were less complimentary about his work, and accused him of sophistry. This led to his name, “dunce” (which developed from the name “Dunse” given to his followers in the 1500s) to become synonymous for ‘somebody who is incapable of scholarship’.” (See Duns Scotus, Wikipedia.)

[iii] Harriet Spiegel, editor and translator, Marie de France, Fables (Toronto: the University of Toronto Press, 2000 [1994]), pp. 31-32.

RELATED ARTICLES

Sources and Resources

Ysopet-Avionnet http://archive.org/details/ysopetavionnetla00aeso

http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.htm

http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/perry/503.htm

Perry Index

1. Le Coq et la Perle

http://www.la-fontaine-ch-thierry.net/coqperl.htm

2. S. Vernon Jones, (tr) G. K. Chesterton, Arthur Rackham (ill)

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/11339/11339-h/11339-

[EBook #11339]

3. George Fyler Townsend, translator

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21/21-h/21-h.htm#link2H_4_0008

[EBook #21]

4. Harrison Weir, John Tenniel and Ernest Griset, illustrators

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18732/18732-h/18732-h.htm

[EBook #18732]

5. The Æsop for Children, Milo Winter, illustrator

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19994/19994-h/19994-h.htm#Page_39

[EBook #19994]

6. The Baby’s Own Æsop, Walter Crane, illustrator

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25433/25433-h/25433-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25433/25433-h/25433-h.htm#Page_10

[EBook #25433]

Le Coq et la Perle

Un jour un Coq détourna

Une Perle, qu’il donna

Au beau premier Lapidaire.

“ Je la crois fine, dit-il ;

Mais le moindre grain de mil

Serait bien mieux mon affaire. ”

Un ignorant hérita

D’un manuscrit, qu’il porta

Chez son voisin le Libraire.

“ Je crois, dit-il, qu’il est bon ;

Mais le moindre ducaton

Serait bien mieux mon affaire. ”

(Photo credit Gutenberg [EBook #18732])

Le Chant des oiseaux – Clément Janequin (c. 1485 – 1558)

449px-Wenceslas_Hollar_-_The_cock_and_the_jewel

10 October 2013

WordPress

“The Cock and Jewel”

by Wenceslaus Hollar

(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)

“Le Chêne et le Roseau” (The Oak and the Reed): the Moral

28 Saturday Sep 2013

Posted by michelinewalker in Æsop, Fables, French Literature, Jean de La Fontaine

≈ 49 Comments

Tags

Achille Michallon, Avianus, Æsop, Elizur Wright, Jean de La Fontaine, l'honnête homme, Le Chêne et le Roseau, Louis XIV, Maëlle Doliveux, Perry Index, The Oak and the Reed, Vaux-le-Vicomte

the_oak_and_the_reed_by_achille_michallon

Achille Michallon (1796-1822; aged 26)

(For Michallon, the “Oak and the Reed” could be used to describe the fate of Napoleon I.)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Oak and the Reed

Jean de La Fontaine (Wikipedia)

The Oak and the Reeds (Wikipedia)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oak_and_the_Reed

http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/index.htm (texts, etc.)←

Aesop’s Fables

Perry Index (#70)

“That proud, old, sky-encircled head,

Whose feet entwined the empire of the dead!”

mdoliveux_The%20Reed%20and%20the%20Oak%20Tree

The Reed and the Oak Tree

Maëlle Doliveux

(Please click on the image to enlarge it.)

“I bend, and do not break”

In an earlier post on the “The Oak and the Reed,” I commented on this line, the moral of the “The Oak and Reed:” ‘Je plie, et ne romps pas.’ (‘I bend, and do not break.’) This line illustrates La Fontaine’s uncanny ability to tell what he is not telling (dire-sans-dire). In fact, it was long believed that this fable expounded the importance of humility and little else:

“Written in the autocratic time of Louis XIV of France, this was so successfully achieved that it appeared to teach the value of humility at the same time as suggesting that rulers may not be as powerful as they think themselves.” (“The Oak and the Reed” [I.22], Wikipedia)

La Fontaine as a Protégé of Nicolas Fouquet

La Fontaine had been a protégé of Nicolas Fouquet/Foucquet (January 27, 1615 – March 23, 1680), the Superintendant of Finances, from 1653 until 1661, the year Louis XIV became King of France. After 17 August 1661, the day Louis XIV attended a fête at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Fouquet’s magnificent castle, Louis XIV accused Fouquet of embezzlement. Fouquet was convicted and condemned to banishment, a sentence Louis XIV himself, then aged 22, commuted to life imprisonment, at Pignerol (now Pinerolo, Italy), a sadder fate than banishment. La Fontaine had written his “Élégie aux Nymphes de Vaux,” in the vain hope of obtaining a degree of clemency towards his former patron, Nicolas Fouquet. He also wrote “Le Songe de Vaux.”

The Oak and the Reed

(Photo credit: oldbookillustrations.com)

The Moral of “The Oak and the Reed”

As a university teacher, I often taught La Fontaine’s “Chêne et Roseau” and would ask my students to provide a moral for La Fontaine’s fable. What did “Je plie, et ne romps pas” (I bend, and do not break) mean?

At first, they saw a fable about “the value of humility.”
They also said that it was about the mighty. They could break.
Third, they commented on the underlying structure of fables and farcical comic texts, the formulaic “deceiver deceived” (“le trompeur trompé”). People who allow themselves to boast, even moderately, are punished.

However, they did not see that “The Oak and the Reed” was about human behaviour and, in particular, about the importance of flexibility. He who bends does not break. The meaning of La Fontaine’s fables does not jump off the page.

“Je plie, et ne romps pas.” (I bend, and do not break)

Earlier in the history of this fable, this moral, “I bend but do not break,” was expressed more explicitly. According to Wikipedia, such was the moral of Avianus‘ (400 CE) telling of this fable, and the moral of earlier Greek retellings. It is the moral expressed in Geoffrey Chaucer‘s (c. 1343 – 25 October 1400) Troilus and Criseyde, (II.1387-9) [EBook #257].

A reed before the wind lives on, while mighty oaks do fall.

In footnote 28 of Gutenberg’s version of La Fontaine’s Fables, classified as [EBook #7241], American translator Elizur Wright and J. W. M. Gibbs, editor, state that “[t]he groundwork of this fable is in Æsop, and also in the Fables of Avianus.” Flavius Avianus lived in the 5th century CE (the 400s) and translated 42 Æsopic fables. Famous translator and printer William Caxton (ca. 1415~1422 – ca. March 1492), translated “The Fables of Avian” into “Englyshe.”[i]

Two Traditions: Phædrus and Babrius

Phædrus (Latin) and Babrius (Greek)

Yet, it should be pointed out that, although Flavius Avianus‘ translation was in Latin verse, his main source had been Babrius who translated Æsop’s Fables into Greek. It could be, therefore, that Babrius’ moral was more explicit. European sources of Æsopic fables were either the Latin translation by Phædrus‘ (c. 15 BCE – c. 50 CE) or Babrius‘ Æsop’s Fables. In fact, Avianus became a source to fable writers as did Névelet, whose Latin translation of Æsopic fables La Fontaine used, the Mythologia Æsopica Isaaci Nicolai Neveleti, Frankfurt, 1610. (See lafontaine.net.)

According to Wikipedia’s entry on “The Oak and the Reed,” flexibility was the teaching of the Rabbinic Talmud and the moral of earlier versions of “The Oak and the Reed,” all of which are rooted in “Near Eastern dispute poems.” The Talmud‘s “Be pliable like a reed, not rigid like a cedar” is attributed to Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar. The same moral is expressed in a Chinese proverb “A tree that is unbending is easily broken,” and the saying goes back to the Tao Te Ching. (See The Oak and the Reed, Wikipedia.)

(Photo credit: Gutenberg (EBook #25357]

Percy J. Billinghurst)

“L’Honnête Homme”

Moreover, this moral, “[h]e who bends does not break,” could be associated with a French seventeenth-century ideal, that of l’honnête homme. “L’honnête homme” or the concept of “honnêteté” was first described in Baldassare Castiglione‘s Il Cortegiano (1528), The Book of the Courtier, but Castiglione’s courtier underwent changes in Paris salons and in the works of the Chevalier de Méré, Nicolas Faret and Guez de Balzac.

In France, l’honnête homme is the perfect gentleman and courtier and he is, furthermore, as he seems. There is very little, if any, sprezzatura, a form of studied carelessness, about “l’honnête homme.” “Honnêteté,” in its literal sense, that of “honesty,” militates against the idea of a mere façade. I should think there were exceptions, but, in theory, l’honnête homme was well-educated (but not pedantic), had fine manners, dressed well, spoke well, never boasted and avoided all extremes, favouring modération.[ii]

Bernard Salomon‘s woodcut of “The olive tree and the reed” from a French collection of Æsop’s Fables in rhyme (Lyon 1547)

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Oak, the Cedar and the Olive tree

Trees have been rigid for a very long time, but they have not been oak trees consistently. The Talmud features a cedar and fabulists Gilles Corrozet (1547), Gabriele Faerno (1564) Giovanni Maria Verdizotti used an olive tree. As for Swabian translator Heinrich Steinhöwel, he also used an olive tree. His 1480 translation of Æsopic fables is rooted in Avianus, Babrius (Greek) and Romulus (a 5th-century Latin-language fabulist). Romulus may be a legendary figure, which may also be the case with respect to Æsop himself.

Conclusion

I must close, but the above illustrates the depth of “The Oak and the Reed,” its age, not to mention its universality. It is not only about the doomed pride of the mighty, but also about the flexibility humans require to function in society, under Louis XIV especially. As for the ambiguity of its moral, it illustrates La Fontaine’s mute eloquence and may point to the Latin source of this fable. However talkative animals, trees and willows can be in literature, they do not speak. La Fontaine himself gave everyone the impression he was absent-minded and he was often referred to as a “bonhomme.” After Vaux-le-Vicomte, the fall of Nicolas Fouquet, he let animals, trees, willows and, at times, humans retell a fable that had been told for centuries and, perhaps, millennia.

RELATED ARTICLES

_________________________

[i] [EBook #7241], Elizur Wright (translator), J. W. M. Gibbs (editor)

28. The groundwork of this fable is in Æsop, and also in the Fables of Avianus. Flavius Avianus lived in the 5th century. His Æsopic Fables were written in Latin verse. Caxton printed “The Fables of Avian, translated into Englyshe” at the end of his edition of Æsop.
29. This fable and “The Animals Sick of the Plague” [I.7] are generally deemed La Fontaine’s two best fables. “The Oak and the Reed” is held to be the perfection of classical fable, while “The Animals Sick of the Plague” is esteemed for its fine poetic feeling conjoined with its excellent moral teaching. [EBook #7241]

[ii] If you can read French, you may wish to visit Larousse’s site: honnête homme.