Misadventures in the Land of Fables #44

A great many fables consist of nothing more than a brief dialogue. As a rule, these fables pass me by. They’re too obviously didactic, too dry, the juice squeezed out of them, the flesh stripped.

The dialogue typically takes the form of answer to a question or challenge, an answer which articulates the moral. And that’s it. There is no story, no turn of events, no surprise. The only colour comes from the quality of the observation, the insight revealed in the line of comparison drawn between human behaviour and that of the natural world.

One of the better examples is Robert Dodsley’s ’The Kingfisher and the Sparrow’ [read here], in which a sparrow, a town-dweller, exhorts a kingfisher to display its beauty to the world. Dodsley draws on observable charasteristics of the two birds. Kingfisher plummage is vivid and brilliant and yet it is an elusive sight, confined to its habitat of rivers, canals, and wetlands. You won’t see it flying overhead or hopping about the hedgerows.

The sparrow argues the kingfisher was given those attributes for the visual pleasure of others and should not therefore hide itself away. It ought to exploit them for fame and adulation. ‘No!’ says the Kingfisher. ‘Not interested. I have no need for any of that fuss.’

“I have learned not to build my happiness upon the opinion of others, so much as on my own conviction, and the approbation of my own heart.”

I applaud the message, an affirmation of being true to yourself, but it remains only that, a message. A message sealed with a simile. Take it or leave it.