Fabulist

“ The exigencies of verse, rhyme and rhythm, carried the worthy fabulist further than he intended: he meant to say that, in a fight between mastiffs and in other brute conflicts, the stronger is left master of the bone. He well knew that, as things go, success is no certificate of excellence. Others came, the notorious evil-doers of humanity, who made a law of the savage maxim that might is right. ”

“ He had, within proscribed bounds, an exquisite and affectionate curiosity, like that of the Renaissance. “The invention of a fable is to me the most enviable exertion of human genius: it is the discovery of a truth to which there is no clew, and which, when once found out, can never be forgotten.” “If the world were good for nothing else, it would be a fine subject for speculation.” ”

“ But truth is always injured by the slightest connexion with fable. The moment I begin to read one of the animated speeches of a hero or a senator, which were never composed, delivered or written, till the historian arose, I feel myself instantly transported from the real theatre of human life into a fairy region. ”

“ After very judiciously observing, that there is the same relation between romances and novels as between tragedy and comedy, he proceeds thus: ‘Since all traditions must indisputably give glace to the drama, and since there is no possibility of giving that life to the writing, or repetition of a story, which it has in the action; I resolved in another beauty to imitate dramatic writing, namely, in the design, contexture, and result in the plot. I have not observed it before in a novel. ”

“ I am glad you determine upon something; there is no writing I esteem more than fables, nor any thing so difficult to succeed in; which however you have done excellently well, and I have often admired your happiness in such a kind of performances which I have frequently endeavoured at in vain. I remember I acted as you seem to hint; I found a moral first, and studied for a fable, but could do nothing that pleased me, and so left off that scheme for ever. ”

“ The author of a fable puts his own human nature into the humbler creatures whom he dramatizes, with a deliberate conscious thought, a creative exercise of the reflective faculty at the second remove, quite unlike the instinctive and half-believing action of the child who straddles a stick pretending that it is a horse. ”

“ So that by this definition we conclude the fable to be the imitation of one perfect and entire action, as one perfect and entire place is required to a building. By perfect, we understand that to which nothing is wanting, as place to the building that is raised, and action to the fable that is formed. It is perfect, perhaps not for a court or king’s palace, which requires a greater ground, but for the structure he would raise; so the space of the action may not prove large enough for the epic fable, yet be perfect for the dramatic, and whole. ”

“ THE MORAL AND APPLICATION OF FABLES.
'Come, sir, lend it your best ear.'
Ben Jonson: Love Freed.
Thus La Fontaine: [10] 'The fable proper is composed of two parts, of which one may be termed the body and the other the soul. The body is the subject-matter of the fable and the soul is the moral.'
On the origin of the added morals to fables, Mr. Joseph Jacobs [11] has the following appropriate remarks: 'The fable is a species of the allegory, and it seems absurd to give your allegory, and then give in addition the truth which you wish to convey. ”

“ The Æsopian fable or apologue is a short story, either fictitious or true, generally fictitious, calculated to convey instruction, advice or reproof, in an interesting form, impressing its lesson on the mind more deeply than a mere didactic piece of counsel or admonition is capable of doing. We say a short story, because if the narration is spun out to a considerable length it ceases to be a true fable in the ordinary acceptation of the term, and becomes a tale, such, for example, as a fairy tale. ”

“ In my Definition of Epic Poetry, I inserted this Clause, that it must be form'd upon a Story partly real, and partly fictitious: For both these are equally necessary. In Tragedy, which is so much shorter, the Performance may not only be excusable, but commendable, tho' the whole Fable should be fictitious: But in a long Work, such as an Heroic Poem is, the Reader will be tir'd, unless he has the Pleasure of finding some Truth interwoven with the Fable. ”

“ Here hast thou, in thy maturer age, taught poetry to tickle not the fancy, but the pride of the patron. Comedy from thee learns a grave and solemn air; while tragedy storms aloud, and rends th' affrighted theatres with its thunders. ”

“ I have chiefly considered the fable, or plot, which all conclude to be the soul of a tragedy, which, with the ancients, is all ways to be found a reasonable soul, but with us, for the most part, a brutish, and often worse than brutish. ”

“ On the other hand, to complete the paradox, in the epic he makes the characters all-important, not the story. Without the tragic plot or fable, the tragedy becomes a series of moral essays or monologues; the life of the drama is derived from the original idea of the fable which is its subject. Without dramatic representation of the characters, epic is mere history or romance; the variety and life of epic are to be found in the drama that springs up at every encounter of the personages.
"Homer is the only poet who knows the right proportions of epic narrative ”

“ From it were taken the parts that appeared the most important, and these were accommodated with the greatest possible dexterity to the comedy, so that, having made, as it were, an ingenious composition from the one fable and the other, it might appear that what the Gods did in the fable of the interludes was done also by mankind in the fable of the comedy, as if constrained by a superior power. ”

“ What distinguishes the non-rational and the mixed fables from allegory is both the limitation of the moral and the kind of hero. The lesson of the fable is always piquant, single, and clear. The actors in a fable are [88] always things concrete in nature as well as in the story.
The most popular, and hence the most typical of the three classes of fables, is the second, often called also the "beast fable." The beast fable departs somewhat from the laws of nature. In the dialogue, animals and inanimate objects act like human beings. A fox and a bear, for instance, will philosophize on politics. ”

“ Here a fable is essential,—a fable which is to be conducted with rapidity, clearness, consistency, and surprise, without any, or certainly with very little, aid from narrative. This is the reason that generally nothing is more dull in telling than the plot of a play. It is seldom or never a good story in itself ”

“ The complexity of the fable, the rapid transitions in the action, the picturesque beauty of the scenes, and the domestic nature of the emotions it excites, have a far less classic than romantic stamp. ”

“ When we forget the singularity of the fable, and the masquerade dresses of the actors, we pronounce them to be real personages, and that the dramatic style distinctly conveys to us incidents which, however veiled, had occurred to the poet’s own observation, as we perceive that the scenes which he has painted with such precision must have been localities. ”

“ The further our literary inquiries are extended here, the more vast and stupendous is the scene which opens to us; at the same time, that the true and false, the sublime and the puerile, wisdom and absurdity, are so intermixed, that, at every step, we have to smile at folly, while we admire and acknowledge the philosophical truth, though couched in obscure allegory and puerile fable. ”

“ Hence he is called a poet, not he which writeth in measure only, but that feigneth and formeth a fable, and writes things like the truth; for the fable and fiction is, as it were, the form and soul of any poetical work or poem. ”

“ For the end of tragedy being to excite the affections by action, and the end of comedy, to manifest the truth of character through it, an artful constitution of the Fable is required to do justice both to the one and the other. It serves to bring out the pathos, and to produce humour. ”

“ In the narrative sense of the term, a fable is a very brief invented, double-meaning story in which a lesson of every day practical morality is taught. The kind of lesson is one of the points that distinguish fable from parable and allegory. The fable never aims higher than inculcating maxims of prudential conduct—industry, caution, foresight, and the like—and these it will sometimes recommend at the expense of the higher, self-forgetting virtues. A typical fable reaches just the pitch of morality which the world will approve. In spirit the fable is often humorous, often ironical. ”

“ To write what is strictly a fable, a person will need to observe the distinctions of the type in general as cut off from parable on the one hand and allegory on the other, and to observe the distinctions of the subdivisions within the type. Then he must decide, of course, which subdivision he is going to follow, must select his moral, pick out his actors, think over their characteristics, and finally narrate a brief occurrence in a vivid, homely [89] style. The dialogue, while correct, should be very colloquial. ”

“ Thus rose the two modes of imitation, known by the names of tragedy and comedy, compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and considered as so little allied, that I do not recollect among the Greeks or Romans a single writer who attempted both.
Shakespeare has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition. Almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter. ”

“ As in a play of the English fashion which we call a tragicomedy, there is to be but one main design, and though there be an under-plot or second walk of comical characters and adventures, yet they are subservient to the chief fable, carried along under it and helping to it, so that the drama may not seem a monster with two heads. ”

“ The province of the epic is the poetical narrative of real or supposed events, and the representation of real, or at least natural, characters; and history, in its noblest examples, is an account of occurrences in which great events are commemorated, and distinguished men appear as agents and actors. Epic poetry and the drama are but narratives, the former partly and the latter wholly, in the form of a dialogue, but their characters and personages are usually, in part at least, the creations of the imagination. ”

“ The beauty of the fable proves the importance of the sense; to the poet, and to all others; or, if you please, every man is so far a poet as to be susceptible of these enchantments of nature: for all men have the thoughts whereof the universe is the celebration. I find that the fascination resides in the symbol. Who loves nature? ”

“ And the comedy at the close is added by way of counterpiece to the light, delicate fancies of the dream. It is the thoughts we have thought, the painfully-wrought products of the waking mind, given in a sparkle of mocking laughter against the background of nightly visions. ”

“ A fable is a story, like that of King Log, or the Fox and the Grapes, in which characters and plot, neither pretending to reality nor demanding credence, are fabricated confessedly as the vehicle of moral or didactic instruction. ”

“ The drama, in its finished literary and histrionic sense, is seen when a story, instead of being merely described in forms, words, or colors,—as by sculpture, narrative, and painting,—is exhibited by fit personages in living action with all the appropriate accessories of looks, attitudes, tones, articulations, gestures, and deeds. ”

“ The fable, as a type of wisdom literature, is always short, simple, and emphatic. It always emphasizes marked human characteristics, and usually ends with a “moral” that adds to the emphasis. The influence of the fable helped to make the story short, condensed, vivid, pointed, and based on character. ”

“ It must not, therefore, be imagined that it was without the knowledge and will of the poet that a heroic drama turns out a comedy in his hands, and ends in the manner of Comedy with a marriage of convenience. ”

“ When traditionary fables are rehearsed by the vulgar, they bear the marks of a national character; and though mixed with absurdities, often raise the imagination, and move the heart: when made the materials of poetry, and adorned by the skill and the eloquence of an ardent and superior mind, they instruct the understanding, as well as engage the passions. ”

“ Since its fables, furthermore, are to arise from the immediate data of life, it must equally emphasise the significant factor of those common things amid which man passes his struggle. And so the naturalistic drama was forced to introduce elements of narrative and exposition usually held alien to the genre. ”

“ We now come to consider another “miracle” discovered in the plays,—a miracle if the actor be the author. The new portent is the courtliness and refinement (too often, alas! the noblest ladies make the coarsest jokes) and wit of the speeches of the noble gentlemen and ladies in the plays. To be sure the refinement in the jests is often conspicuously absent. How could the rude actor learn his quips and pretty phrases, and farfetched conceits? This question I have tried to answer already,—the whole of these fashions abound in the literature of the day. ”

“ Hence the dramatic poet, as well as the orator, must from the very commencement, by strong impressions, transport his hearers out of themselves, and, as it were, take bodily possession of their attention. There is a species of poetry which gently stirs a mind attuned to solitary contemplation, as soft breezes elicit melody from the Aeolian harp. ”