Poetry
Fables and Parables
Bajki i przypowieści
Ignacy Krasicki · 1779
Synopsis
Fables of a few lines, often four, in which animals, plants, objects and the forces of nature speak, and parables in which human beings appear. A lamb asks three wolves why they are going after it, and gets from them only a predator's answer. Each piece closes on a last line that carries its whole meaning, in an ironic and sceptical view of the world.
Context
The collection appeared in Warsaw in 1779 from Michał Gröll, seven years after the first partition that had made its author a Prussian subject, and some pieces have been read as allusions to the dismemberment of the country; the best known, L'Agneau et les loups, runs to four lines. It belongs to the line of Aesop, Phaedrus, Biernat of Lublin and La Fontaine, and anticipates Krylov; the Fables nouvelles continued it after the author's death. J.-B.-M. de Vienne gave an almost complete French translation of it in 1828.
Who it is for
Very short pieces, to be read a few at a time. An old French translation, from 1828, gives almost the whole collection.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by Czesław Miłosz as the most lasting part of its author's poetry; Polish critics usually prefer it to the New Fables.
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