Aphorisms #3
~~~ “He planned to paint his shadow from dawn to dusk. At midday, he gave up.” ~~~ Is this a rebuke to those who lack resolve? Or an admonition to make better plans? This individual understood that shadows change—it was his subject—but forgot that change includes a (short) period of loss when the sun reaches […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #63
I’ve been roaming this land of fables for so long I fear I may be going around in circles, of figures of eight, infinities. I return to the same stories from different directions and forget the sights I’d seen and the thoughts I’d had. Sometimes I repeat them. I read again Arthur Golding’s curious rendering […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #62
Regular readers may have noticed I’ve been referencing a volume of fables called ‘A Moral Fabletalk’ on and off throughout the year. I forget where I first encountered it, but I confess I only recently got around to reading the accompanying introductory essays. I discovered the manuscript was never published. Golding was a Tudor author […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #61
‘The Ant and the Grasshopper.’ This fable has always bugged me, if you’ll forgive the pun. I don’t know exactly when I first heard it, at school no doubt, but I do know I have always had objections. I probably don’t need to recite the story here, but I will, in its most blunt form, […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #60
An example of creative confusion. Two bird fables from Arthur Golding got conflated in my recollection while I was occupied with other business. Add an original thought of my own—they happen!—and a new fable was conceived, the off-spring of these three parents. In one fable, a ‘puttock’ (a bird of prey) seizes a nightingale and […]
Misadventures in the Land of Fables #59
There is no character development in the classic Aesopic fable. It is the reader who learns the lesson not the protagonist; the protagonist’s actions are constructed only to produce the lesson and for this purpose it is not necessary, or desirable, to develop what you might call a character. It’s not surprising then that fables […]