Misadventures in the Land of Fables #24

‘The Astrologer who Fell into a Well’ is a mean-spirited anecdote that demonstrates a common sense truth: you need to look where you are going, otherwise you may trip and fall. It goes like this:

An astrologer went walking at night to study the stars. He fell down a deep well. A passer-by answered his calls for help and, learning what had happened, told him he would do better looking at the ground before him than the sky above his head.

Apparently the anecdote’s protagonist was pre-Socratic philosopher Thales. It was widely-circulated  in Ancient Greece and first cited by Plato. Later, during the Enlightenment period, the Thales character became an astrologer and the fable was used as a cheap shot to mock the pseudo-scientific occupation.

Gags, Gotchas, and Generosity

I have to confess the slapstick comedy amuses me. It’s a classic gag, straight out of the silent era. Keaton/Lloyd/Chaplin have all done versions of it. It works best in long-shot where the viewer sees the danger and also that the distracted character does not—the comedian has some fun with this anticipation.

Aesop’s fable reduces the gag to a simple gotcha, a told-you-so with the observer character pushing their way between the reader and action. In some versions, the observer doesn’t even bother to help and I end up having (even) more sympathy for astrologer—at least they have a passion. If I were staging the incident, I’d be tempted to have the observer also fall down a hole, distracted by a barely-warranted sense of superiority.

Like most fables, the characters are not fleshed out, the drama not fully inhabited. It seems plausible that the rescuer would offer advice on looking where you are going, plausible if irritating, but I somehow doubt the astrologer would stand there and explain what had happened. I imagine he would merely thank his rescuer and shuffle off, probably resuming his observations, without having learned the lesson. This gave me an idea: what if his studies were so captivating that he actually refuses the offer of help and instead complains that his rescuers are blocking his view of the stars. As the rescuer(s) stand there baffled, the astrologer continues his calculations in order to determine when he is destined to escape.

As I write, this picture of stupidity still makes me chuckle.

And the message? Well, it seems to be something to do with the way we fit events around our beliefs and not the other way around. The astrologer’s faith in his ‘science’ is so complete that, in all sincerity, he ignores the fact that his rescue was actually about to take place, whether the stars and the planets aligned or not. He would rather have the confirmation than the results. This is a more generous and subtle rendering of the incident which, at the same time, still argues the man is an idiot.

Up-date: I wrote this version too: ‘The Stargazer‘

The Dreamer

Despites its inadequacies, the fable hooked me because it has something to say about dreamers. And that means me. It’s easy to see how the figure of the scientist lost in thought could be replaced by the daydreamer lost in fantasies, with both inclined to neglect life’s practicalities. (I’m not the only one to see that association. It must be an influence on ‘The Story of Johnny-Head-In-Air’ from Heinrich Hoffmann’s ‘Shockheaded Peter,’ a collection of amusing, but mean-spirited, cautionary tales.)

In fact, it was when I saw an illustration entitled the dreamer that I was prompted to revisit Aesop’s fable.

I first began to consider something original, inspired by that seductive image of neglect, both beautiful and disturbing, a man re-wilding himself, but I couldn’t (yet) settle on a narrative that would make this work. In the meantime, I decided to return to Aesop’s fable, introducing a dreamer into the action. They would replace the redundant observer character, or rather the astrologer, while also giving the astrologer the observer role, if you see what I mean. The dreamer consults the astrologer to discover what the future holds. After the astrologer predicts great things, they leave his premises head brimming with visions of a bright future, and they neglect to look where they are going. Down the hole they go! As I worked my way into the situation I realised the shock of the fall would make this person angry and they would likely blame someone else, the astrologer for example, pointing to his failure to predict the accident.

And there you have the bones of another new version of the fable, which you can find fully-dressed here: ‘The Astrologer and the Young Prince‘