Misadventures in the Land of Fables #20
Last week I began to poke around in the distant corners of the land of fables, the hinterland. I went to the bottom of the Perry list* and started to work my way up. I can report most of these fables were unfamiliar and forgettable, as you might expect, but at number 559 (out of 584) I paused.
A snail found a mirror and when she saw how brightly he shone, she fell in love with him. She quickly climbed up onto the mirror’s round surface and began to lick him. The snail clearly was no good for the mirror and only besmirched his lustrous radiance with filth and slime. A monkey then found the mirror after it had been dirtied by the snail, and remarked, ‘That’s what happens when you let someone like that walk all over you!’ <translation by Laura Gibbs, here>
Curious and Incomplete
A snail and a mirror are a curious pair in a curious scenario which leaves several questions unanswered. Is the mirror on the wall? or on the floor? How did it end up there? Where does it belong? It’s also a scenario that feels incomplete dramatically. This is common in fables: the brief events provides an opportunity for another character to comment, rather than take the drama further. But it’s that possibility of development which provokes the imagination.
Much more than that, the Monkey’s comment needed to be addressed. It struck me as harsh. Misplaced. And unfairly dismissive of the snail. The snail’s affection seems to me quite innocent. Lovely, even. By other eyes, its silvery trails could be viewed as expressive or decorative. What then? (Swap slugs for snails and it’s a different matter.)
And doesn’t the mirror have a view on the matter? A mirror’s nature may be passive ipso facto, but if it can be rebuked for the company it keeps, it should be permitted a voice too, no? You’d think?
My version gives her that voice. I suppose you might call it a feminist version. If anything ought to be repudiated here it is the superficiality of objectification, of propriety and prettiness, but above all, for me, the scenario provides an affirmation of intimacy and the essential messiness and mystery of attraction.
You can read it here on the Fables pages: The Snail, the Mirror, and the Monkey.
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*American academic Ben Edwin Perry compiled a comprehensive list of fables attributed to Aesop, placing those from Greek sources first, then Latin, chronologically.