Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Western sev and today's bonus author interview.
Speaker 1: We are sitting down with translator and also historian Robin Waterfield.
Speaker 1: Fans of the show will recall we have had Robin
Speaker 1: on the show before some of his other translations essential
Speaker 1: to the Western Canon. Today, he has a new book out,
Speaker 1: Asop's Fables, a new translation. It's available right now. Link
Speaker 1: is in the show notes if you would like to check.
Speaker 2: It out now.
Speaker 1: If you're like me, you remember Asop's Fables from elementary
Speaker 1: school or lower school or primary school, whatever it was called,
Speaker 1: wherever you were. They were read to you in second
Speaker 1: or third grade with some sort of heavy moral that
Speaker 1: was sometimes expressly stated, sometimes not, and the teacher would
Speaker 1: use it as a way to sort of explain what
Speaker 1: you should or should not do, the most famous of which,
Speaker 1: of course, being the Tortoise and the hair Slow steady
Speaker 1: wins the race. I can almost hear you all saying
Speaker 1: it right now, wherever it is that you're sitting. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out there's over seven hundred of these fables
Speaker 1: and they've been compiled over a long period of time,
Speaker 1: and I love this new translation. It's it would actually
Speaker 1: be an interesting book to kind of keep handy for
Speaker 1: those of you who have young children, but don't let
Speaker 1: them just pick it up, because some of these are
Speaker 1: actually a little racy, honestly. So I thought what we
Speaker 1: would do today is before we hop into the interview,
Speaker 1: because this is a totally different kind of book than
Speaker 1: we normally do on this show. You know, usually we're
Speaker 1: looking at some sort of a narrative history in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form.
Speaker 2: This isn't.
Speaker 1: This is a pure translation, and it's a translation of
Speaker 1: what is usually a bunch of shorter texts because the
Speaker 1: fables are relatively brief. So I thought before we head
Speaker 1: to the interview, I would read a couple of them
Speaker 1: that I enjoy and that I thought you might like
Speaker 1: to hear as well, just so you can kind of
Speaker 1: get a taste of what's in the book. It's a
Speaker 1: great book. It clocks in and right now at just
Speaker 1: over three hundred pages, over seven hundred different fables. So
Speaker 1: it's really great. We make a great gift, I think
Speaker 1: for someone who's maybe a little bit nostalgic for bygone eras.
Speaker 1: So let me read a couple of these to you
Speaker 1: before we hop into the interview. Now, some of these,
Speaker 1: as I mentioned, they have direct sort of morals. So
Speaker 1: this one does I enjoy it. It's called the Goose
Speaker 1: and the Stork. A stork came down to her usual
Speaker 1: hand and found a goose there, diving over and over
Speaker 1: again under the surface of the water. When she asked why,
Speaker 1: the goose said, that's what we geese do. We find
Speaker 1: food in the mud. Oh, it's also how we escape
Speaker 1: when a hawk attacks us. And the stork said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm stronger than a hawk. Be my friend, and then
Speaker 1: you'll laugh with scorn at hawks. The goose agreed, and
Speaker 1: it wasn't long before he asked the stork for protection.
Speaker 1: He left the pond with her and went into the
Speaker 1: open countryside. But a hawk swooped down, seized the goose
Speaker 1: with its talons and started to eat him up, and
Speaker 1: the goose cried out against the stork. Anyone who makes
Speaker 1: a pact with such a pathetic defender deserves to die
Speaker 1: a wretched death, the moral being for those who expect
Speaker 1: to be defended by people who were unable to guarantee
Speaker 1: their safety.
Speaker 2: Watch out.
Speaker 1: Here's another one that has a great moral. This is
Speaker 1: called the Viper and the Snake. A viper used to
Speaker 1: go to a certain spring to drink, but the spring
Speaker 1: was home to a water snake who kept him away
Speaker 1: from the water. He was angry with the viper for
Speaker 1: coming to his domain rather than being satisfied with his
Speaker 1: own feeding ground. Their quarrel grew ever more bitter until
Speaker 1: they agreed that they'd fight each other and that the
Speaker 1: winner would have the use of the land and the water.
Speaker 1: Once they had fisked a day for the battle, the frogs,
Speaker 1: who hated the water snake, came to the viper and
Speaker 1: boosted his morale by promising to fight alongside him. But
Speaker 1: when the battle was joined and the viper was fighting
Speaker 1: the water snake, the frogs proved incapable of doing anything
Speaker 1: except croaking loudly. Still, the viper won, and afterward he
Speaker 1: told the frogs off. They had promised to fight alongside him,
Speaker 1: but all they did was sing, which was no use
Speaker 1: to him at all. Now, the frogs replied, learn from this,
Speaker 1: my friends, that as allies, we have only songs to offer,
Speaker 1: not strength. The point of this tale is that words
Speaker 1: are useless when physical strength is needed. Now, those of
Speaker 1: you who remember Aesop's fables probably remember that a lot
Speaker 1: of them involved either a wolf or a fox. This
Speaker 1: one has both the treacherous fox and the wolf. A
Speaker 1: wolf had gathered a huge quantity of loot in his
Speaker 1: den in good time, so that he could enjoy all
Speaker 1: kinds of delicacies in the coming months. A fox found
Speaker 1: out about his trove and paid the wolf a visit
Speaker 1: in his den. Are you okay, she whined, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen you for ages. I've missed you so much while
Speaker 1: you've been staying indoors, And the wolf replied caustically, they're
Speaker 1: not here because you're worried about me. You're not come
Speaker 1: out of the kindness of your heart, but to see
Speaker 1: if i'll give you anything. I know you're trying to
Speaker 1: trick me. This enraged the fox, and she went to
Speaker 1: a shepherd and said to him, what will you give
Speaker 1: me if today, right now, I turn the enemy of
Speaker 1: your flock over to you so that you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry about him anymore. I'll be in your debt,
Speaker 1: said the shepherd, and I'll give you whatever you want.
Speaker 1: So the fox showed the shepherd where the wolf's lair was,
Speaker 1: and the shepherd immediately killed the wolf with his javelin.
Speaker 1: Then he let the fox satisfy her envious desire for
Speaker 1: food that was not her own. Later, when the fox
Speaker 1: encountered some hunters and was caught by their hounds. As
Speaker 1: she was being torn to pieces, she said, not long ago,
Speaker 1: I committed a major crime. I'm dying for having caused
Speaker 1: someone else's death. Those who harm others should be aware
Speaker 1: of being harmed by others themselves. Now, not all of
Speaker 1: the fables actually involve animals, Believe it or not. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that, and so I want to read one
Speaker 1: to you. One last one that does not. This is
Speaker 1: Demetrius of Phalarium and Meander the Poet. By an underhanded
Speaker 1: use of power, Demetrius the Phalarian, as he's called, has
Speaker 1: gained control of Athens as its sole ruler. The general populace,
Speaker 1: as is typical of mobs, rushes up to him, pushing
Speaker 1: and shoving at one another in a desire to be
Speaker 1: first to explain their congratulations. Even the leading men of
Speaker 1: the city kissed the hand by which they're oppressed, while
Speaker 1: inwardly resenting the sad twist of fate that impels them
Speaker 1: to do so. In fact, even a political people and
Speaker 1: men of leisure come creeping in at the tail end
Speaker 1: of the crowd, worried in case they fail to do so,
Speaker 1: they'll suffer for it. Among them is Meander, famous for
Speaker 1: his comedies. Now, Demetrius had never met the man himself,
Speaker 1: although he was familiar with his work and admired his genius.
Speaker 1: So when the tyrant saw Meander walking in right at
Speaker 1: the end of the line, with his mincing, foppish gait,
Speaker 1: anointed with perfume and dressed in flowing robes, he said,
Speaker 1: who is this nancy who dares to come into my presence?
Speaker 1: Swiveling his hips like that? That's Meander, the writer, said
Speaker 1: the people standing around him. Demetrius immediately changed his tune.
Speaker 1: What a fine looking man, he said. It is impossible
Speaker 1: to imagine that anyone could be more handsome. Ladies and
Speaker 1: gentlemen beware compliments sometimes. But now, without further ado, the
Speaker 1: interview with Robin Waterfield.
Speaker 2: And welcome back.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned previously in the introduction, today I am
Speaker 1: sitting down with Robin Waterfield is an eminent translator and historian,
Speaker 1: and so we're going to talk today about something that
Speaker 1: you know, if you've gone to school, you know the
Speaker 1: word ASoP and Asop's Fables, because it's something that even
Speaker 1: in grammar school, or at lower school, or in elementary school,
Speaker 1: depending upon where you are, I would wager that we've
Speaker 1: all read or maybe been read at least one of
Speaker 1: them at some point in our lives. I know that
Speaker 1: I've been read several and until I read this book,
Speaker 1: I never really thought much about the fables themselves. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be honest with everyone listening today, I didn't
Speaker 1: actually even know where they originated from.
Speaker 2: But I think one of.
Speaker 1: The places that I want to start with today is
Speaker 1: just the role of the translator, because you've translated some
Speaker 1: of the most important texts in the Western world, and
Speaker 1: so I thought maybe you could explain a little bit
Speaker 1: about your role and your methods as a translator, and
Speaker 1: that how you do that when it's a text that
Speaker 1: it's not just word for word translation, it's also things
Speaker 1: like author's intent, author's purpose, things like that that you
Speaker 1: have to take into consideration. So if you could talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about your role, I think that that
Speaker 1: might be illuminating.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, thanks for having me on the show again, Adam,
Speaker 3: But you should be careful what you ask for, because
Speaker 3: I once gave a fourteen minute talk on my translation policy,
Speaker 3: so I'll keep it short. The way I say it
Speaker 3: is this, there are two extreme in translating. There are
Speaker 3: translators who believe that the way to do justice to
Speaker 3: their author is to follow even his word order and
Speaker 3: sentence structure as closely as possible. That to me is
Speaker 3: not translation. Translation is literally the transference of the words
Speaker 3: and idiosyncrasies of one language into another. You don't retain
Speaker 3: the idiosyncrasies of the original language when they don't fit.
Speaker 4: Then.
Speaker 3: The other extreme is the opposite. That is, many translators
Speaker 3: embellish their texts a bit in order to bring out
Speaker 3: the nuances they detect, such as you just suggested, the
Speaker 3: intentions of the author, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 3: I try to find a middle road between those two extremes.
Speaker 3: I try to write modern readable English while remaining faithful
Speaker 3: to the original text. Let me put it this way.
Speaker 3: Of the two extremes, overly literal translation underestimates the intelligence
Speaker 3: of the reader. This is particularly common in translations of
Speaker 3: philosophical texts. And it's true that since action philosophers use
Speaker 3: a lot of precise technical vocabulary, in these cases one
Speaker 3: has to be just as literal. But Plato, for instance,
Speaker 3: I've translated a lot of Plato. Plato was a far
Speaker 3: more fluent writer than most philosophers, and yet still commonly
Speaker 3: gets translated pedantically and over literally. Now you can see
Speaker 3: why I say that this kind of literal translation underestimates
Speaker 3: the intelligence of the reader. In his early and middle works,
Speaker 3: Plato rarely felt the need to express his philosophical profundities
Speaker 3: in pedantic and ugly phrases. He assumed that he could
Speaker 3: write good Greek and still communicate his point and over translation.
Speaker 3: The opposite underestimates the intelligence of the original author, because
Speaker 3: if the ancient author had wanted the flourishes and so
Speaker 3: on that so many translators attribute to them, they'd have
Speaker 3: written them. In art doesn't have to be obvious. It
Speaker 3: doesn't have to spell everything out and express every implication
Speaker 3: and nuance. It leaves such things hovering just below the
Speaker 3: surface of the text or the painting or whatever. The
Speaker 3: painting or text then gains depth and resonance. So in fact,
Speaker 3: in my view, a truer translation is one which leaves
Speaker 3: in place as much of the resonance as possible without
Speaker 3: spelling it out. You can see why this might be
Speaker 3: difficult for philosophers. But please note that I'm talking about
Speaker 3: translating prose, which is what I chiefly do. Poets who
Speaker 3: translatation group poets have to allow themselves much more license
Speaker 3: than I allow myself.
Speaker 4: So that's it.
Speaker 3: In short, Adam, I trying to achieve a balance between
Speaker 3: those two extremes, and I do believe that the middle
Speaker 3: way that I'm trying to walk is the way to
Speaker 3: be truly faithful to the author i'm translating.
Speaker 1: It's interesting because, of course there's a distinction between translation
Speaker 1: and interpretation. I think sometimes we see them packaged together
Speaker 1: in a book, and I find that that students can
Speaker 1: confuse the two, but they they're not the same in
Speaker 1: any way, shape or form. And I think it's important
Speaker 1: to bear that in mind as we start to look
Speaker 1: at any sort of text. And as yesterday we were
Speaker 1: speaking with on the show an author of biblical history
Speaker 1: and the problems of translation, because of course, throughout history
Speaker 1: there have been good translations, and then there have been
Speaker 1: less good translations over time. This is a good translation,
Speaker 1: So that's that's a positive standpoint for us. But well,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk a little bit about the fables. For themselves, like,
Speaker 1: let's just begin, as Lewis Carroll once wrote, at the beginning,
Speaker 1: and start with where did the fables originate? And how
Speaker 1: did they first start to become incorporated into what I
Speaker 1: suppose we might all the Western canon.
Speaker 3: Okay, they didn't reach us by a single route. Originally,
Speaker 3: the fables were told one by one, so to speak
Speaker 3: around the fireside at home, or as a cautionary tale
Speaker 3: for children, or to entertain others at a symposium. Sometimes
Speaker 3: politicians would bring up a persinent fable to help them
Speaker 3: make a point in a speech. Sometimes playwrights or poets
Speaker 3: might tell or paraphrase one. So some of the fables
Speaker 3: we know are found one by one, embedded in some
Speaker 3: such literary context, in a politician speech or something which
Speaker 3: happens to have survived, or a poet or a poem.
Speaker 3: But later people began to make collections of the fables,
Speaker 3: and the first such collection we know of was compiled
Speaker 3: by a man called Demetrius of Phalerum, A very interesting
Speaker 3: man in his own right.
Speaker 4: He studied in the Aristotilian.
Speaker 3: School, and for ten years he was the sole ruural
Speaker 3: dictator of Athens.
Speaker 4: At the end of the fourth.
Speaker 3: Century BC, Now Demetrius's collection hasn't survived, but its point
Speaker 3: was almost certainly to aid in the training of orators
Speaker 3: teachers of rhetoric like students to study the fables, because
Speaker 3: they said that it helped them acquire a simple, non
Speaker 3: elevated style which would suit some.
Speaker 4: Contexts or audiences.
Speaker 3: Then, in the early centuries of this era CE further
Speaker 3: collections were made that have survived in whole or in part.
Speaker 4: Three.
Speaker 3: Such collections go to make up a set of three
Speaker 3: hundred and fifty what are called anonymous fables, anonymous meaning
Speaker 3: that the compilers found them one by one in the
Speaker 3: sources I described a moment ago or from collections such
Speaker 3: as Demetrius's. But we also have several collections of fables
Speaker 3: turned into verse, of which the two most extensive are
Speaker 3: the Latin verse fables written by Fedrius and the Greek
Speaker 3: verse fables written by someone called Babrius. More collections were
Speaker 3: made over the following centuries and into the Middle Ages,
Speaker 3: but it was only in the middle of the twentieth
Speaker 3: century that they were all pulled together into a single
Speaker 3: collection by an American scholar called ben Edwin Perry. His
Speaker 3: weighty tone contains far more than the fables contains two
Speaker 3: ancient biographers, two ancient lives of Esop, for instance, But
Speaker 3: he collected over seven hundred fables, and that's not counting
Speaker 3: all the variants.
Speaker 4: Now there I should explain variance. It's because.
Speaker 3: Quite a lot of the fables aren't, as it were,
Speaker 3: just stories, their story types, and so they might exist
Speaker 3: in different versions, with a fox perhaps being the main
Speaker 3: protagonist rather than a wolf, or a goose rather than
Speaker 3: the duck, or the variation might be more extensive than that,
Speaker 3: while still retaining the same core story and moral And
Speaker 3: if we would account those as separate fables, there would
Speaker 3: be way over seven hundred. But Perry collected seven hundred,
Speaker 3: and that is, as it were, the standard collection.
Speaker 1: Now that's interesting. I find it a little bit surprising.
Speaker 1: I suppose that it took so long, relatively speaking, for
Speaker 1: all the fables to come together in one particular text.
Speaker 1: I guess I would have expected, maybe at the latest
Speaker 1: the eighteenth seventeenth century, at some point in there there
Speaker 1: would have been some sort of a collection.
Speaker 2: So it's interesting that it didn't happen till later than that.
Speaker 3: Well, it might have done, but I'm saying not to
Speaker 3: the fullest extent, and people were writing their own verse
Speaker 3: fables well into the seventeenth eighteenth century. La Fontaine's fables
Speaker 3: are particularly famous, and the Sours fables, yeah, were certainly
Speaker 3: known and read and enjoyed, so they must have been books.
Speaker 3: But we're also touching on the fact that in recent centuries,
Speaker 3: I mean even going back to the eighteenth century for sure,
Speaker 3: possibly seventeenth, I don't know, you started getting fables. The idea,
Speaker 3: as you in a sense you suggested in your introduction.
Speaker 3: The idea was that the fables were to be told
Speaker 3: or read by children, told to or read by children.
Speaker 3: And you see, in order to do that, first of all,
Speaker 3: you're not doing a translation, because, as we'll soon see,
Speaker 3: the fables aren't really suitable for children, so they get
Speaker 3: extremely watered down and simplified in order to be told
Speaker 3: for children, so they're not translations. And secondly, if this
Speaker 3: was the main way the fables were being published, a
Speaker 3: book of fables for children would contain no more than
Speaker 3: perhaps twenty thirty to fifty fables at the most.
Speaker 4: Something like that.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's why I'm giving Perry the credit for
Speaker 3: she being the first to pull it all together.
Speaker 1: Then of course, that's the fun part about history, especially
Speaker 1: when you get back to the distant past.
Speaker 2: We don't know exactly.
Speaker 1: There's there's certainly a possibility that someone else put it
Speaker 1: together earlier and we just don't know. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like a tip of the Iceberg scenario. So now this
Speaker 1: question I feel like I have to ask, even though
Speaker 1: it may again getting to the sort of the distant
Speaker 1: past idea that we might not know everything, we might
Speaker 1: know nothing, But I should suppose I want to ask.
Speaker 2: It anyway, which is who was Esop? To the best
Speaker 2: of our knowledge, Well.
Speaker 3: There almost certainly did exist a person called Esop who
Speaker 3: was famed for his fables. He would have lived in
Speaker 3: the sixth century BCE. But immediately I have to add
Speaker 3: that there are fables still in existence that predate his
Speaker 3: alleged lifetime, so he wasn't the only tender fables, just
Speaker 3: a particularly famous one. But after that, having said that
Speaker 3: much the details get a bit murky. As I've just
Speaker 3: mentioned that there are a couple of acient written in
Speaker 3: ancient times lives of Esop, but.
Speaker 4: They are more excuses to.
Speaker 3: Retell a few fables and Esopian jokes in an obviously
Speaker 3: fictional biographical context. Like most ancient biographers, they are not
Speaker 3: at all reliable sources of information. But pulling the few
Speaker 3: more reliable threads together we get something like this. Esop
Speaker 3: was a slave. He was an enslaved person, born either
Speaker 3: in Phrygia in Asia Minor that is Turkey today, or
Speaker 3: in Thrace, which today would be northern Greece and Bulgaria.
Speaker 3: He worked as a slave on the Greek island of
Speaker 3: Samos before he was given his freedom, and he was
Speaker 3: incredibly out.
Speaker 4: And that that really is as much as is as it.
Speaker 3: Were, common law throughout the biographies and other things that
Speaker 3: we hear about Esop. That's really all therefore that we
Speaker 3: can safely say. But in my opinion, even that isn't
Speaker 3: really safe. I think that certainty is impossible because his
Speaker 3: low status as an enslaved person, his non Greek ethnicity,
Speaker 3: and his ugliness made him the perfect vehicle for commenting
Speaker 3: on aspects of Greek society, which is what the fables do.
Speaker 3: He was an outsider, casting an amused, cynical and critical
Speaker 3: eye on the behavior of people around him. So even
Speaker 3: his enslavement is in a sense too good to be true.
Speaker 3: So as I say, the only really safe thing every
Speaker 3: one can say is that he probably did exist. It's
Speaker 3: the same as the problem with Homer. You know, we
Speaker 3: don't actually know for sure that there was an ancient
Speaker 3: poet called Homeros that almost certainly was. We can't be
Speaker 3: sure that he's the author of both the poems that
Speaker 3: have come down to us under his name, the Iliad
Speaker 3: and the Odyssey. These problems come up time and again
Speaker 3: when studying ancient texts.
Speaker 1: I was going to bring up Homer, and I guess
Speaker 1: the kind of a follow up question to that is,
Speaker 1: you know, does it matter? You know, is it relevant
Speaker 1: that we don't know particularly who this person is. You know,
Speaker 1: if we were to discover I don't know how we
Speaker 1: would unearth this, but let's just say we did unearth
Speaker 1: some sort of biography of Esop or biography of Homer.
Speaker 1: Would it in any way sort of change our perspectives
Speaker 1: on the fables?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it wouldn't. I'm sure it wouldn't time it.
Speaker 3: But that goes for any work of art or creative.
Speaker 4: Work, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's a well, I've been touching on difficult
Speaker 3: issues here. I suppose you know, so much about an
Speaker 3: author that you find he's a despicable person.
Speaker 4: Does that make his work?
Speaker 3: Does that make you want to not read his work
Speaker 3: or listen to his music or something anyway?
Speaker 4: Sorry, that's probably a disgrestion, Adam.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, it wouldn't certainly any socks case, It
Speaker 3: wouldn't wouldn't make the slightest difference. And it doesn't make
Speaker 3: the slightest different because I've just been saying, we don't
Speaker 3: know about up Set.
Speaker 4: What we've got is the Paples.
Speaker 2: That is an interesting question.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's probably and I think it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's dangerous sometimes for us to put our
Speaker 1: modern ideals and perspectives onto people from the very distant
Speaker 1: past and then cast normative statements about them. But you
Speaker 1: make a good point that, you know, if we were
Speaker 1: to discover you know, some oh some terrible, terrible information
Speaker 1: about Esop or Homer for that matter, would that make
Speaker 1: either one of the texts less interesting to me?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 1: I suppose other people may have different responses to that,
Speaker 1: But at least as far as I'm concerned, you know,
Speaker 1: I think we could separate those two things.
Speaker 2: So, looking kind of at the fables themselves.
Speaker 1: Now, one of the things that certainly I remember as
Speaker 1: a child hearing the fables is that the protagonists, the
Speaker 1: characters are by and large all animals. That was what
Speaker 1: I remember is setting these out when I remember hearing
Speaker 1: about them. It's it is very different from you know,
Speaker 1: the fairy tales that I might otherwise hear or be told.
Speaker 1: We're generally the protagonists was a human, and you might
Speaker 1: have animals who play some sort of a supporting role.
Speaker 2: But this is a little bit different, and.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to ask ours our Aceop's fables unique
Speaker 1: in that the protagonists are animals, in this case non humans.
Speaker 4: No far from unique.
Speaker 3: There are fas from around the world, from particularly common
Speaker 3: in India, which have animals as their protagonist protagonists. So
Speaker 3: the Esopian fables aren't unique in that sense. But I
Speaker 3: have to slightly correct you. You said buy and large,
Speaker 3: which was a good hedge, but far from all the
Speaker 3: Esopian fables have talking animals as their protagonists. It's certainly
Speaker 3: true that the most famous ones and the ones that
Speaker 3: people are most likely to have come across in childhood
Speaker 3: have animals as the protagonists, because you.
Speaker 4: Know, that's their charm.
Speaker 3: And so on, And even in our benighted times, hardly
Speaker 3: anyone is unfamiliar, at least in outline with the dog
Speaker 3: in the manger, for instance, or sour grapes, or the
Speaker 3: tortoise and the hair. These are the sorts of these
Speaker 3: fables are so famous that they're given us proverbs, you know.
Speaker 3: But far from all the fables animal tables. There are
Speaker 3: many that have talking inanimate objects, talking, trees and bushes,
Speaker 3: talking parts of the body, parts of the body talking
Speaker 3: to one another.
Speaker 4: And there are.
Speaker 3: Many in which humans and deities are the protagonists. So
Speaker 3: what I did in my book, it was arranging the book.
Speaker 3: Was Deciding how to arrange the book was not easy.
Speaker 3: So I just you know, because as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: I think the fables were originally told one by one.
Speaker 3: Should I just scatter the fables you in no order whatsoever?
Speaker 4: But in the end what I did was was I
Speaker 4: divided the.
Speaker 3: Book into inter sections depending on what kind of protagonists
Speaker 3: are involved. So you get inanimate objects and humans and
Speaker 3: deities and trees and plants. And then for the majority
Speaker 3: of the fables, which as you say, are animal fables.
Speaker 3: And then I divide the animal fables into according to
Speaker 3: the different type of animal, different types of animal, And.
Speaker 1: And then I guess that gets us into the when
Speaker 1: we're kind of think about how this is divided. I
Speaker 1: think one of the important things we need to think
Speaker 1: about here is, Okay, what is the purpose of a fable?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Is this intended to be moral in some way?
Speaker 1: Or do fables in general? And then maybe I'll ask
Speaker 1: the same question about ESOPs fables in particular.
Speaker 2: Do they serve a particular purpose?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, I can't talk about fables other than Esop.
Speaker 4: I've read some, I know that they exist.
Speaker 3: I've read a couple of studies, but are by no
Speaker 3: means an expert in anything other than Esop's fables. And
Speaker 3: so I'll slide away from that bit. So talking just
Speaker 3: about ESOPs fables, there is no single purpose. The most
Speaker 3: famous fables are certainly those that are designed to advice
Speaker 3: or criticism, with the pill sugared by the lightheartedness of
Speaker 3: the story that acts as the vehicle. But quite a
Speaker 3: lot of fables and no more than jokes with a punchline,
Speaker 3: you would say, rather than with a lesson. Quite a
Speaker 3: few are merely entertaining or paradoxical stories designed to raise
Speaker 3: an amused or ironic smile, and perhaps with little or
Speaker 3: no generalized truth to tell. Many fables are ideological. They
Speaker 3: explain the origin of something, and many are agonal. There
Speaker 3: are other categoriesm sliding over because they're rare, but many
Speaker 3: are agonal, pitting rivals against each other, like famously the
Speaker 3: tortoise and the hair, and some simply retail animal law. Now, Adam,
Speaker 3: if we've got time, should I give a few examples
Speaker 3: of a couple of those times?
Speaker 2: I think apple would be very helpful.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Okay, right, there's one that's just an amusing story.
Speaker 3: For instance, I'm starting to quote now, a square cut
Speaker 3: statue of Hermes had been placed by the side of
Speaker 3: a road, supported by a pile of stones. At his base,
Speaker 3: a dog came up and said, and to begin with Hermes,
Speaker 3: I salute you, But then I'd like to anoint you.
Speaker 3: I can't walk past a deity without doing so, and
Speaker 3: especially you, the god of wrestling. And the statue said,
Speaker 3: I'll thank you not to come and lick off the
Speaker 3: oil with which I'm already coated, and not to piss
Speaker 3: on me either. That's all the honor I need from you, say,
Speaker 3: Just an amusing story, or here's an ideological one. The
Speaker 3: creature that we now call ant was originally human. He
Speaker 3: worked as a farmer, but the fruits of his own
Speaker 3: labor weren't enough for him, and he used to cast
Speaker 3: envious eyes on his neighbor's farms and steal their crops.
Speaker 3: His greed made Zeus angry, and he changed the man
Speaker 3: into the creature we call ant. But although his form changed,
Speaker 3: his character didn't. Even now he goes around the fields
Speaker 3: gathering grains of wheat and barley that belonged to others
Speaker 3: and storing them up for himself. So there re quite
Speaker 3: a view that do that kind of thing explain in
Speaker 3: this case the origin of ants, but the origin of
Speaker 3: something or other. It could, but not necessarily an animal
Speaker 3: or a creature, but it could be the origin of
Speaker 3: why life is hard.
Speaker 4: For instance. There's another one.
Speaker 3: Now he has an agonal one pitching rivals against each other.
Speaker 3: The north wind and the sun were arguing about which
Speaker 3: of this is a famous one. The north winds and
Speaker 3: the sun were arguing about which of them was stronger,
Speaker 3: and they decided that the victor would be whichever of
Speaker 3: them could get a certain wayfarer to undress the north
Speaker 3: wind went first and blew a mighty blast, but the
Speaker 3: man clung onto his clothes, so he blew even more forcefully.
Speaker 3: Increasingly troubled by the cold, the wayfarer kept adding more
Speaker 3: layers of clothing, and eventually the north wind gave up
Speaker 3: and let the sun have a go. First, sun shone
Speaker 3: quite gently, but once the man had taken off his
Speaker 3: extra layers, he turned up the heat. Finally the man
Speaker 3: could no longer stand it, and he stripped and went
Speaker 3: off to bathe in a nearby river, and finally has
Speaker 3: a piece of animal law. The beaver is a four
Speaker 3: footed pond dwelling creature. It's said that his testicles supply
Speaker 3: effective remedies for a number of ailments, and so whenever
Speaker 3: one is spotted, he's hunted down. But the beaver knows
Speaker 3: perfectly well why he's being pursued. For a while, he
Speaker 3: tries to escape simply by running as fast as he can,
Speaker 3: After all, he wants to keep himself whole. But when
Speaker 3: he sees that his capture is inevitable, he bites off
Speaker 3: his own testicles and abandons them, thus saving his life.
Speaker 4: So right, not only the.
Speaker 3: Ones that have a moral at the end that are
Speaker 3: supposed to supply advice or Something's all sorts of different fables.
Speaker 1: And I think as a child growing up, I recall
Speaker 1: basically only hearing those that did supply morals. I think
Speaker 1: by marchward those were the only ones that we got.
Speaker 1: And maybe that was simply because that was what wound
Speaker 1: up in the textbook, but it certainly it is.
Speaker 3: It is it's like I said before, it's because they
Speaker 3: were being it's because it was usually assumed that the
Speaker 3: fables were a good thing for children, and so they
Speaker 3: you know, have this, have this, uh a little moral
Speaker 3: at the end, as a way of educating children.
Speaker 1: Well, there, certainly we certainly weren't told the uh, the
Speaker 1: one about the beaver and testicles that was that was
Speaker 1: not one that was reiterated to the third grade. I
Speaker 1: can tell you that much. Well, that's that's interesting. So
Speaker 1: that that, like a lot of them, was just things
Speaker 1: that we Again, it's it's what gets it's what gets
Speaker 1: included in the various anthologies and in the different compilations
Speaker 1: of texts throughout time, because it's it's rare, other than
Speaker 1: in your translation, to see so many of them together.
Speaker 1: That's just not something that I think that most people
Speaker 1: normally get, which is unfortunate, but that's also just kind
Speaker 1: of the way that it is. I was wondering a
Speaker 1: little bit about could you eplain a little bit about
Speaker 1: the structure of the fables? They seem obviously very short,
Speaker 1: to the point I didn't know if there was some
Speaker 1: variation between the structures, if they lined up to the
Speaker 1: purpose behind the fable in some way, shape or form,
Speaker 1: or if they were all more of a uniform structure.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, quite a lot of the fables in Perry's collection,
Speaker 3: for instance, are quite long and rambling. But I believe
Speaker 3: that these were all written later. They were, you know,
Speaker 3: embellishments of an original short core. And so I believe
Speaker 3: that the original fables were short, as you just said.
Speaker 3: And I also think they had a very clear triparthite structure,
Speaker 3: clearer in the sh sort of fables than in the
Speaker 3: slightly longer ones. Sometimes the shorter fables consist of just
Speaker 3: three sentences, each sentence giving.
Speaker 4: A part of that structure.
Speaker 3: So what they do is they start by giving the
Speaker 3: bare minimum of background information needed to enable the reader
Speaker 3: or listener to creatively imagine the scene. Let's say, and
Speaker 3: after this introduction, of the scene and the protagonist of
Speaker 3: the fable, comes the action of the story, and then
Speaker 3: finally a closing comment, which usually carries the moral or
Speaker 3: lesson of the story.
Speaker 4: So here's one.
Speaker 3: A dog who had proved his speed and strength against
Speaker 3: all kinds of wild animals, and who had always pleased
Speaker 3: his master, began to lose his energy under the burden
Speaker 3: of old age. Okay, Sentence one gives us the background information.
Speaker 3: Then we get the action of the story. One day
Speaker 3: he found himself up against a bristle backed boar, and
Speaker 3: he sees the bee by the ear, But with his
Speaker 3: rotten teeth, he couldn't maintain his grip, and the ball
Speaker 3: got away. Okay, second sentence, and now what about the moral.
Speaker 3: The hunter lost his temper and scolded the dog, but
Speaker 3: the old warrior replied, it wasn't my spirit that let
Speaker 3: you down, but my strength. If you see fit to
Speaker 3: condemn me for the way I am, you should praise
Speaker 3: me for what I was. Okay. So I believe that,
Speaker 3: as I say, to be the original structure, which, as
Speaker 3: I say, got somewhat lost when people were just sort
Speaker 3: of telling the fables as stories in their own right,
Speaker 3: not necessarily because I mean, in order to deliver a
Speaker 3: moral or a lesson, they've got to be short and punching.
Speaker 3: And I also believe that the original fables are like
Speaker 3: the one I just read out, that is that the
Speaker 3: moral is embedded in the story. Was in the last
Speaker 3: sentence of that bit, it wasn't my spirit delaid? If
Speaker 3: you praise, if you see fit to condemn me for
Speaker 3: the way I am sure praise me for what I
Speaker 3: was spoken by the dog, who is himself the protagonist
Speaker 3: of the story.
Speaker 4: But quite often what you get is.
Speaker 3: As again as I say, I think in later ages,
Speaker 3: people started adding morals onto the story, sometimes the moral,
Speaker 3: which in my translation I've translated in italics to show
Speaker 3: that it's separate from the story itself, from the fable itself.
Speaker 3: Sometimes this italicized moral just repeats the moral that's contained
Speaker 3: in the story already. Sometimes it adds something on. Sometimes
Speaker 3: its interpretation of the story is really quite weird, so
Speaker 3: that you get morals appended to stories, which to fables
Speaker 3: which you know you have to struggle to see their relevance,
Speaker 3: and things like that. But the one I just quoted,
Speaker 3: I believe preserves the original structure with the tripath i'd
Speaker 3: structure with the moral contained within the story itself.
Speaker 1: Well, I think I would be remiss then if I
Speaker 1: didn't ask if you had a personal favorite fable or
Speaker 1: something that you really would like to share with everyone,
Speaker 1: Because I mean, I read them and I enjoy them all,
Speaker 1: but I obviously didn't spend nearly as much time translating them,
Speaker 1: so I didn't know if there was one that you
Speaker 1: just particularly enjoyed, maybe enjoyed the translation work of that one.
Speaker 1: But I think it'd be worth us knowing about.
Speaker 3: An elderly woman had a problem with her eyes, so
Speaker 3: she asked a doctor to call on her and agreed
Speaker 3: to pay him his fee. The doctor made repeated visits
Speaker 3: to her house, and each time, after he'd put ointment
Speaker 3: on her eyes and gummed up her eyelids, he made
Speaker 3: off with something of hers. Once she was cured, by
Speaker 3: which time he'd cleared the house out, he asked to
Speaker 3: be paid the stipulated fee, and when she refused, he
Speaker 3: took her before the authorities, but she argued that she'd
Speaker 3: promised to pay him he cured her eyes, whereas his
Speaker 3: treatment had made things worse than before. I used to
Speaker 3: be able to see all the things I had in
Speaker 3: my house, she said, But now I can't see a
Speaker 3: single one of them.
Speaker 2: That's amusing. I didn't see it going that way until
Speaker 2: the very end.
Speaker 3: And that one has one of these appended morals as well,
Speaker 3: It says, likewise, dishonest people fail to realize that their
Speaker 3: greed causes them to convict themselves.