THE FABLE AND ITS MASTER WRITER.

Otago Witness, Issue 3525, 4 October 1921, Page 59

THE FABLE AND ITS MASTER WRITER.

Many people have tried to define a fable; not any have been completely successful. Dr Johnson’s definition lias met with wide acceptance. “A fable in its genuine state is a narrative in which beings, irrational and sometimes inanimate, are for -purposes of moral instruction feigned to act and speak with human interests and passions.” The fable is difficult to classify as literature. it is neither poetry nor philosophy, though it partakes of both. Its essential feature is the adapting of animals to represent various characters, and it is suggested the idea was invented to allow wise men to speak the truth to powerful men with a minimum of risk. Certainly beast stories are a form of narrative familiar in the infancy of the race. At that stage they are comparatively free from incongruity ; man -does not then assume that he is lifted very much above the beasts. Like poetry, they were for ages passed on orally. By the time we touch Greece and Rome at their zenith fables have taken on a considerable literary polish. For all time the words “AEsop” and “Babies” are linked together. As a person AEsop is as vague as Homer, yet of the fable lie has been made the traditional father. But, however great its debt to him, the fable is independent of any single author. Its origin is, of course, Eastern ; its purpose at first was merely to entertain. ‘ Red Riding HoocT’ and “Jack and the Beanstalk” are instances. Gradually there was attached to each fable a moral, the Patristic Fathers were probably responsible for this innovation. Certainly for centuries the Church made free use of these little moral stories. There was a great floating mass of them, good and bad. but - mostly indifferent. At last there was born a Frenchman who put the fable on a new fooung, and by his genius made it one of the most delightful forms of literature. Exactly 300 years ago Jean de la Fontaine was bon: .in Chateau-1 hierry. Champagne. Lrobauly many of our Australian boys have seen the town. The house in which I'ontaine was born is still standing; thev show you the very room lie wrote in. France has just been honouring Fontaine’s tercentenary; she counts him one of her greatest sons. And very justly; for he is not only the greatest fable writer of France, but of tho world. If at school }on did any Trench at all, it is certain you made Tontaine’s acquaintance through one or other of his fables, incapable thougn you then were of appreciating their exquisite beauty. '1 he theory of genius as the “inspired idiot was never more fully illustrated than in the case of Jean Fontaine. He was son of a forest ranger. After school he thought of entering the church, but it did not take long to demonstrate his unfitness for that high vocation. Matrimony was more in his line than a monastery ; so he married a- handsome, wealthy girl of 16. As a husband he was unsatisfactory ; he was kind-hearted, hut erratic. His wife had great patience, and had equal, need of it. Incapacity for business and. indifference to social and moral re- ! straints characterised her husband all his days. iney were married 10 years before their first baby appeared. ’Fontaine wholly ignored his duties as father. “I have j never envied any man such a position,'’ j he said in his gentle, easy-going wav. | The child was brought up by others, uong years after, father and son met in society. ! Fontaine, when asked if he knew who the I young man was, said lie thought he had | seen him somewhere before. He was es- | senti-ally a married bachelor. He was a i great lover of Nature and lower aniI mals; wife and children merely annoyed j him. j It was the fashion of those days for j bands of jolly blades to haunt the’ coun- | try inns, dining and wining and writing j love songs and lampoons. That was the : life Fontaine loved. With all his vayj ward ness and indolence he was an onuii- ! vorous reader of classical and contempo- | rary literature. But he was 30 before he I began to practise writing poetry. He I attempted a translation which attracted j little attention, and for 10 years he ati tempted nothing more. Coincident with, j find probably caused by, his son’s birth, i Fontaine abandoned his native town and | settled permanently in Paris. One of his j wife’s .relatives introduced him to Fouquet, the I inaii-ce Minister, who gave Fontaine a pension of 1000 livres for an ode once a quarter. . Until the Minister fell into disgrace with the King. Fontaine was in clover. He and his wife had never quarrelled. but each was happv living an independent existence. He occasionally wrote to her light- verses, and described quite frankly the impressions made on him bv the many pretty women he met. Little though he seemed to deserve them and greatly though he tried them. Fontaine never Iqeked friends, aristocratic and wealthy. Thev chaffed him on his absentmindedness, but thev took upon themselves the burden of his affairs. With all his unpractical habits he was everywhere the pettoTl favourite. His unstudied, personal charm made him as popular with one sc-x as with another. Yet he had no conversational powers, he bungled everv good store he started to tell, he would blurt out awkward truths at most inconvenient moments. He was an intensified form of that Goldsmith who “’wrote like an angel and who talked like poor Poll.” But. uotwithsiandincr all bis sins against social laws, lie continually made friends, who loved him, who supplied his wants, and who begged him to treat their houses as liis home. Along other linos he was at- the same time making other friends. He was one of the famous four -Pacino, Buileau. M-,-liore. Fontaine —who have come down through literary history as the quartet of the Hue du Yioux Coliunbier. That ho was recognised as not the least lii'ilTut.K' of that brilliant group is proof enough that, however impossible ho was in wordly affairs, he had in other directions the qual- , ity of genius. Yet up till now his literary

output had been meagre. lie was made much of by young married ladies, in whose honour he wrote dainty verses. He wrote plays and poetry, which maintained his reputation, but did nothing to increase it. Finally he published his “Tales and Novels.” These, indeed, caused a sensation ; they were sufficiently licentious to rouse into activity the not over-sensitive French police of the seventeenth century. Blit all these things are now forgotten. They are thrown into shadow by the fame Fontaine instantly won when, in 1688, he published his first volume of “Fables. Their popularity was great, and has been enduring. It was a new branch of poetical literature. Fables had been put into rhyme before; Fontaine had invested them with the beauty of true poetry. Every verse ran with easy grace, every line had been polished, and again polished. His know, ledge of bird and beast is not in the least scientific, it is entirely sympathetic. It is not natural history. But that his .animals should reason and speak seems the most natural thing in the world. He had many predecessors in tbo art of the beast fable. He lias had many imitators. But no one, ancient or modern, has ever equalled the skill of Fontaine The modern instances that first spring to mind are Harris's “Uncle Remus” and Kipling’s “Jungle Book” —both wonderful in their art, both deservedly sucrosc-Ful in their appeals —but in the knowledge cf human nature revealed in the story and in the artistic beauty shown in the expression, neither can claim to approach near to the great master. Tn the artful artlessness of their narration, in their sly fun and delicate humour, his exquisite verse tales are a model of this particular form of literature, which is never likely to be surpassed. Ten years intervened between the first and second instalments of the fables. A third was published in 1694, the year before he died. In all there were 239 fables, and by these cunningly simple tales Fontaine has made his fame imperishable. It is by his fables alone that he lives ; but in that field his supremacy is unchallengeable. A story is told of Voltaire which epitomises the world’s feelings on the question of the “Fables of Fontaine.” Jealous at hearing Frederick II praise them, Voltaire rashly said there wasn’t a single one which was safe from even the most indulgent criticism. The King challenged him to prove it. “I’ll simply open the book at random,” said Voltaire, airily. He read one, two, three, four. Then he threw the book angrilv into the closet. “This book is nothing but a- collection of masterpieces,” he cried. And for three centuries the world has been endorsing Voltaire’s verdict.