Fables and Parables
Fables and Parables (Bajki i przypowieści, 1779), by Ignacy Krasicki (1735–1801), is a work in a long international tradition of fable-writing that reaches back to antiquity.
"[2] Emulating the fables of the ancient Greek Aesop, the Macedonian-Roman Phaedrus, the Polish Biernat of Lublin, and the Frenchman Jean de La Fontaine, and anticipating Russia's Ivan Krylov, Poland's Krasicki populates his fables with anthropomorphized animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature, in epigrammatic expressions of a skeptical, ironic view of the world.
[3] That view is informed by Krasicki's observations of human nature and of national and international politics in his day—including the predicament of the expiring Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth.
[6] Krasicki's, writes Czesław Miłosz, "is a world where the strong win and the weak lose in a sort of immutable order... Reason is exalted as the human equivalent of animal strength: the [clever] survive, the stupid perish.
"[7] Miłosz writes: Poetry for [Krasicki] was a more concise and elegant prose, and originality of subject had no importance.
Thus [he] borrowed the subjects of his fables from the enormous body of fabular literature starting with Aesop and finishing with his own French contemporaries.
He also borrowed from [the earlier French fabulist] LaFontaine, especially in... his New Fables... published [posthumously in 1802], but whatever he took was always completely transformed.
His extreme conciseness is best seen if one counts the number of words in the original author's version and compares it to that of Krasicki's on the same subject.
The pleasure... for the poet [as well as] for the reader... is probably due to the [compression] of a whole story, sometimes even a novella, into a few lines, and among Krasicki's best... fables [are those] which [comprise] only one quatrain where the author's pen moves in one rush toward the final pointe.
Quoth father: "All does alter, Your lord's good graces, women's favor, autumn weather."
He had guessed aright, the son's plans did not turn out well: The Sultan withheld his sister, all day the rain fell.
A farmer, bent on doubling the profits from his land, Proceeded to set his soil a two-harvest demand.
That night it slept soundly and did the burglar no harm; He burgled; the dog got caned for not raising alarm.
In spring, the oxen to their plowing would not attend; They would not carry the grain to the barn in the fall; Came winter, bread ran out, the farmer ate them withal.
Having spent at the bottle many a night and day, The ailing drunkard threw his mugs and glasses away; He declared wine a tyrant, reviled beer, cursed out mead.
As the bread lay next to the sword, the weapon demurred: "You would certainly show me more respect if you heard How by night and by day I conscientiously strive So that you may safely go on keeping men alive."
