Samaniego: Book I of Fábulas morales

Félix María de Samaniego (1745 - 1801)

[Image source: https://www.elcorreo.com/alava/araba/cara-oculta-fabulista-20180408223625-nt.html . From a modern painting by the vitoriano Javier Ortiz de Guinea (b. 1946), based on a portrait from Samaniego´s lifetime.]

A few very swift and free prose translations of verse fables from Book 1 of Félix María de Samaniego, Fábulas morales (1781). 

I.14

THE LION AND THE VIXEN

A lion, once powerful but now old and feeble, vainly gave ravenous and savage chase to the suckling calf and yearling lamb, who climbed up the rough mountainside and easily escaped his fury. 

Afflicted by hunger to the point of death, he came up with this remedy: he gave it out that he was sick in the palace, and that he wished to be visited by the other beasts. 

Some beasts came at once. But the grave illness that laid him low being nothing else than a voracious hunger, his exquisite prescription was simply to gobble up the visitor. 

The vixen quietly approached and leaning towards the portal very slowly scrutinized the entrance to that concave palace. 

The lion spotted her and instantly called out to her: "Come here, for I sense I am in my life´s final moments; visit me like the others, my dear."

"Like the others! Ah sir, I know they entered, indeed, but not that they came out. Look at the footprints, they tell it plainly. And it isn´t good to enter where none leave."

The prudent make good use of caution.

I.15

THE DOE AND THE FAWN

A doe was addressed by her tender fawn:

"O my mother! How is it possible that a single dog can make you flee like a coward to the wood, though so much smaller and so much less powerful than you! Why don't you behave with more spirit?"

"All is true, my son. And when I think thus, I alone defy twenty dogs together. I see myself battling them, leaving some dead and others dying, trampling on their entrails, and the whole lot flying in vain from death, and me vanquishing them all in the most gallant style. . .

But if while absorbed in these thoughts I hear a dog bark, I flee more swiftly than a javelin, and my victory goes to the devil."

Who lacks a valiant spirit, let him not arm as a soldier. Because no matter that, gazing at his armour in peacetime, he thinks how his bravery will wound and kill all he takes on, yet when he hears the trumpet in the field he will behave like the doe in the story, and Devil take the victory! 

I.16

THE FARMER AND THE STORK

A farmer looked at the state of his grain with grief at his heart, because geese and cranes made merry with his wheat. So without further delay he skilfully laid his snares, and into them fell the stork, the cranes and the geese.

"Sir countryman," said the stork trembling, "Release me from these bonds, for I do not merit the pains of the guilty. The Goddess Ceres well knows that far from harming your fields I cleanse them of vermin, of snakes and of vipers."

"So nothing," answered the man angrily. "I found you with villains, and by my hand you shall die with them."

The innocent stork suffered the unfortunate end that the good must expect when they consort with the wicked.

I.17

THE SNAKE AND THE FILE

A snake entered the house of a locksmith one day, and the stupid beast tried to bite a steel file. 

The file said to him: The evil, fool, will be all yours. How did you think you could make a dent in me, when I grind metals to powder?

He who unreasonably tries to assail the stronger, is just kicking against the pricks. 

I.18

THE BALD MAN AND THE FLY

An annoying fly was stinging the extensive bald head of an old man. Wishing to kill him, the old man raised his hand and aimed a blow, but the fly escaped safely, the blow landing instead on his own round pate.

With immoderate laughter the fly broke out: "Cursed Baldy, if you try to take my life for such a minor crime, to what shame do you condemn your arm, the barbarous executor of such a blow?"

"To the one who acts from malice", the man replied to him prudently, "rigorous justice ought to administer the appropriate punishment; clemency should be exercised on the one who errs inadvertently. 

Know, villainous fly, that the human condition appraises an injury according to the hand that dealt it."  

The viler the offender, the higher the degree of offence. 

I.19

THE TWO FRIENDS AND THE BEAR

A bear appeared to two friends. The one, very fearful, seeks safety in the branches of a tree. The other, abandoned to his fate, hurriedly pretends to be dead.

The bear approaches him slowly, but this beast (so it's said) never feeds off carrion, so without injuring him he inspects and touches him, sniffs his nostrils and his mouth; and not detecting any breath nor the slightest movement he goes away saying guilelessly: "This one's as dead as my grandad."

Then the coward, making show of his great friendship, swiftly jumps down from the tree, runs up and hugs his companion, praises the happy chance of having found him uninjured and ends by saying, "You know, I noticed the bear saying something to you. What could it be?" 

"I'll tell you what it was -- two little words in your ear: 

Remove your friendship from the person who seeing you in danger abandons you."

I.20

THE EAGLE, THE CAT AND THE SOW

An eagle nested at the top of an oak tree. At its foot a certain sow nursed her young, and a hollow within the thick tree-trunk was the home for a cat and her kittens. 

This cat, a great trickster, climbed up to the nest of the haughty eagle and with feigned tears said to her:

"O miserable me! O unhappy! Here's what it is: our neighbour who lives downstairs, as you can see for yourself, spends the day rooting out the foundations of the house. She will destroy them. And then this traitor seeing our children falling to earth will devour them." 

After she left the frightened eagle, she quietly descended to the cave below, and said to the sow: "My good friend, you should know that our foe the eagle, when you next take your babies up on the hill, is bent on devouring them, so watch out."

The cat, pretending to be afraid, withdrew to her own room, and did not go out except at night when with cunning skill she provisioned her small chamber. 

The sow, receiving this dire information, did not leave her cave.  The eagle, fearfully standing sentinel in the branches, had no repose. 

Finally, both these families died of hunger, and the cat made food out of them.

O youths, take great care, keep your eyes alert! lest a gossip, a seeming friend, covers his tracks in the cloak of friendship and thus his deceptions cause evil.

[Samaniego means a wild cat and wild boar, both common animals in Spain. (But in English "boar" is a gendered word so it doesn't sound quite right to call the female a "wild boar".) ]

[Image source: http://lapaginadevickylinda.blogspot.com/2009/07/la-aguila-la-gata-y-la-jabalina-fabula.html .]

From Rosario de la Iglesia's introduction:

Libertine, epicurean, moral, cultured, sceptical, Voltairean, licentious, pedagogic, reformist: these are some of the adjectives that appear with greatest frequency in the writings of critics and biographers on the life and work of Samaniego. "A cynic and licentious poet" for Menéndez Pelayo; and, yet, for a long time he was considered required and edifying reading in the colleges of monks and nuns: Samaniego has had the misfortune, common to many other authors in our literature, of being frequently quoted but little known.

He was born in Laguardia (Álava), a small town to the south of Vitoria-Gasteiz. The house where he was born still survives and is now the tourist office. (There is also a Bodega La Fabulista!)

A 19th-century drawing of Samaniego's birthplace in Laguardia

[Image source: https://hidalgosenlahistoria.blogspot.com/2016/04/felix-maria-samaniego-escritor-famoso.html .]

Samaniego's fables in Spanish:

http://amediavoz.com/samaniego.htm

My earlier Samaniego posts:

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2017/04/felix-maria-de-samaniego-el-labrador-y.html

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2017/06/in-time-of-plague.html

in a time of plague

Los animales y la peste


En los montes, los valles y collados
 de animales poblados,
 se introdujo la peste de tal modo,
 que en un momento lo inficiona todo.
 Allí donde su Corte el león tenía,
 mirando cada día
 las cacerías, luchas y carreras
 de mansos brutos y de bestias fieras,
 se veían los campos ya cubiertos
 de enfermos miserables y de muertos.
 "Mis amados hermanos"
 exclamó el triste Rey, "mis cortesanos:
 ya veis que el justo cielo nos obliga
 a implorar su piedad, pues nos castiga
 con tan horrenda plaga:
 tal vez se aplacará con que se le haga
 sacrificio de aquel más delincuente,
 y muera el pecador, no el inocente.
 Confiese todo el mundo su pecado.
 Yo, cruel, sanguinario, he devorado
 inocentes corderos,
 ya vacas, ya terneros,
 y he sido, a fuerza de delito tanto,
 de la selva terror, del bosque espanto".
 "Señor" dijo la zorra, "en todo eso
 no se halla más exceso
 que el de vuestra bondad, pues que se digna
 de teñir en la sangre ruin, indigna
 de los viles cornudos animales
 los sacros dientes y las uñas reales".
 Trató la corte al Rey de escrupuloso.
 Allí del tigre, de la onza y oso
 se oyeron confesiones
 de robos y de muertes a millones;
 mas entre la grandeza, sin lisonja,
 pasaron por escrúpulos de monja.
 El asno, sin embargo, muy confuso
 prorrumpió: "Yo me acuso
 que al pasar por un trigo este verano,
 yo hambriento y él lozano,
 sin guarda ni testigo,
 caí en la tentación, comí del trigo".
 "¡Del trigo!, ¡y  un jumento!",
 gritó la zorra, "¡horrible atrevimiento!"
 Los cortesanos claman: "Éste, éste
 irrita al cielo, que nos da la peste".
 Pronuncia el Rey de muerte la sentencia
 y ejecutola el lobo a su presencia.
Te juzgarán virtuoso
si eres, aunque perverso, poderoso;
y aunque bueno, por malo detestable,
cuando te miran pobre, miserable.
Esto hallará en la Corte quien la vea,
y aun en el mundo todo. ¡Pobre Astrea!


(Fábulas morales, Book 3 number 2, by Félix Maria de Samaniego. Based on a fable by La Fontaine, apparently.)



Loosely translated:






The animals and the plague





In the mountains, valleys and hills that are inhabited by the animals, there came once such a plague as in a moment struck down all in its path.


The lion was holding his court, where he was wont to watch each day the hunts, combats and tournaments of meek brutes and wild beasts. But even from here you could see the fields already covered with miserable sick and dead creatures.

 "My beloved brothers," exclaimed the sad King, "my courtiers: you see that a righteous Heaven obliges us to implore His mercy, since He punishes us with such a horrible plague. Maybe He would be placated by a sacrifice of the most guilty of us. Let the wicked die in place of the innocent! So confess, everyone, your sin.  I, cruel, bloodthirsty, I have devoured innocent lambs, yes, and cows, and calves. And from the volume of my crimes I have been named the Terror of the Jungle, and the Dread of the Forest."

 "Oh Sir," says the fox, "as for all that, it's nothing more than the noble excess of your majesty, that is pleased to tint, with the blood of these vile horned creatures, the sacred teeth and the royal claws."  

The court considered the King far too scrupulous.


Then from the tiger, the ounce and the bear, were heard confessions of rapine and of murder by the thousand. But being such great ones, these testimonies were dismissed (leaving all flattery aside) as nunnish scruples.  

A donkey, however, became very confused and burst out: "I accuse myself that when passing through a cornfield this last summer, I felt so hungry and the wheat looked so luscious, and there being no guard or anyone to see, I fell into temptation, and I ate some of the wheat."
 
"Eat wheat!! A donkey!!" cried the fox, "Oh, hideous crime!"

The courtiers cried out, "This is he, this is he, who incenses a just Heaven and brings the plague upon us!" 
The King pronounced the death sentence, which the wolf carried out in his presence. 
 
You will be judged virtuous if you are, though wicked, powerful; and criminal if you seem, though good,  poor and wretched. Thus it is in the court, and even in the whole world. Oh,  Astraea!

 

Félix María de Samaniego: El labrador y la cigüeña / The farmer and the stork

[Image source: https://tesoroinfantil1234.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/el-labrador-y-ciguena.html]



El labrador y la cigüeña


Un Labrador miraba
Con duelo su sembrado,
Porque gansos y grullas
De su trigo solían hacer pasto.
Armó sin más tardanza
Diestramente sus lazos,
Y cayeron en ellos
La Cigüeña, las grullas y los gansos.
«Señor rústico, dijo
La Cigüeña temblando,
Quíteme las prisiones,
Pues no merezco pena de culpados;
La diosa Ceres sabe
Que, lejos de hacer daño,
Limpio de sabandijas,
De culebras y víboras los campos.»
«Nada me satisface,
Respondió el hombre airado:
Te hallé con delincuentes,
Con ellos morirás entre mis manos.»
La inocente Cigüeña
Tuvo el fin desgraciado,
Que pueden prometerse
Los buenos que se juntan con los malos.


Fábulas I.XVI by Félix María de Samaniego (1745 – 1801)



The farmer and the stork



A farmer looked at the state of his grain with grief at his heart, because geese and cranes made merry with his wheat. So without further delay he skilfully laid his snares, and into them fell the stork, the cranes and the geese.


"Sir countryman," said the stork trembling, "Release me from these bonds, for I do not merit the pains of the guilty. The Goddess Ceres well knows that far from harming your fields I cleanse them of vermin, of snakes and of vipers."


"So nothing," answered the man angrily. "I found you with villains, and by my hand you shall die with them."


The innocent stork suffered the unfortunate end that the good must expect when they consort with the wicked.


*

The fable-form, in Samaniego and probably always, exemplifies the program "to delight and instruct". The two aspects aren't detached, but neither do they flow to the same end; they converse together in a complicated way.

The morals tend to teach tribal values: they promote fear, conformity, diligent labour, knowing your place, being forearmed. They deplore ambition, spontaneity, sensibility, emotion and innovation.

The prudential moral is in sync with the story, the moral is a wise moral, yet we have a freedom whether or not to take the moral.

We learn, if we care to, that this moral is an account of the world's imperfect justice. We see that the stork isn't doing anything bad in consorting with the other birds, and we see that those birds aren't really villains either. They are just pests in the same way that a flower may be called a weed, because it grows where we don't want it. So the fable can even be read as commending keeping company with those whom the world calls villains, and it informs us that this keeping company need not corrupt us; though it warns, too, of how the world may punish us for our temerity. Samaniego's fables are replete with a double irony which probes at both sides of a matter, like Fielding's.


*


This is a winter fable, the time when grain is sown. The fable is perfectly accurate so far as the feeding habits of the three birds are concerned.


Cranes are omnivorous and eat mostly plant food, including grain, with an increased percentage of animal food in summer when feeding their young. Some Common Cranes (Grus grus) winter in Spain.


Geese are herbivorous. They are principally specialist grass-feeders but they do enjoy eating grain sown in winter furrows. Some Greylag Geese (Anser anser) still winter in Spain, though in places like the Guadalquivir Marismas rather than on arid wheat-growing farmland.


Storks like the White Stork (Ciconia ciconia) are entirely carnivorous, feeding on insects, worms, amphibians, small reptiles and mammals etc. Plant food is only ingested by accident. Their presence on farmland is considered beneficial as they eat mice and rats. White Storks remain fairly common in Spain and in central Europe, though their range has declined (last seen in Belgium 1895, Sweden 1955) perhaps due to drainage of wetland. They like to nest in built environments and now find a lot of their food (and nest materials) in rubbish dumps.




*

White Stork / Cigüeña blanca o común / Ciconia ciconia

[Image source: http://waste.ideal.es/ciconia.htm]

Samaniego and Phaedrus, fabulists

The wolf and the lamb, illustration by Gustav Doré

[Image source: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/172161442/antique-print-fables-la-fontaine-dore?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_campaign=Share .


Today's miniature post.  So, along with my TEFL study I thought it would make sense to sharpen up my own knowledge of foreign languages, so I picked up Félix María de Samaniego´s fables and began to have a read. (Samaniego was a sceptical author, influenced by the French Encyclopaedists, whose popular fables were written in the late 18th century.)

Samaniego's fables are in verse and Spanish Wikipedia entry compares his approach to "Fedro", who it turned out, was the 2nd-Century Roman fabulist Phaedrus, an author I'd never come across before.

Phaedrus' fables were translated into English by Christopher Smart (the sometimes mad poet famous for his amazing Song to David and Jubilate Agno).  Here's one of them (like many, it's based on an Aesop fable) that struck me as well worth pondering in our hyper-accusatory times.



Fable I. the wolf and the lamb.

By thirst incited; to the brook

The Wolf and Lamb themselves betook.

The Wolf high up the current drank,

The Lamb far lower down the bank.

Then, bent his rav’nous maw to cram,

The Wolf took umbrage at the Lamb.

“How dare you trouble all the flood,

And mingle my good drink with mud?”

“Sir,” says the Lambkin, sore afraid,

“How should I act, as you upbraid?

The thing you mention cannot be,

The stream descends from you to me.”

Abash’d by facts, says he, “I know

’Tis now exact six months ago

You strove my honest fame to blot”—

“Six months ago, sir, I was not.”

“Then ’twas th’ old ram thy sire,” he cried,

And so he tore him, till he died.

To those this fable I address

Who are determined to oppress,

And trump up any false pretence,

But they will injure innocence.

 Read more Phaedrus/Smart fables here:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25512/25512-h/25512-h.htm#smart_I_I


The story, or one like it, is alluded to in Wole Soyinka's novel The Interpreters (1965):

Egbo had been truly brittle that night. Some thoughts evoked the darker passes of his mood, and then of course he would turn fox in the fable -- you spoiled my water -- no? -- well if it wasn't you it was your father -- any slight served him then, swatting nagging thoughts with sudden violence. . .

(from Chapter 15)

[Image source: https://www.behance.net/gallery/6510519/The-Wolf-and-The-Lamb . Illustration by Glenda Maye Abad.]

Samaniego's fable "El cordero y el lobo" (Book 2, Number 18) tells a different story.

Uno de los corderos mamantones,
Que para los glotones
Se crían, sin salir jamás al prado,
Estando en la cabaña muy cerrado,
Vio por una rendija de la puerta
Que el caballero Lobo estaba alerta,
En silencio esperando astutamente
Una calva ocasión de echarle el diente.
Mas él, que bien seguro se miraba,
Así lo provocaba:
«Sepa usted, señor Lobo, que estoy preso,
Porque sabe el pastor que soy travieso;
Mas si él no fuese bobo,
No habría ya en el mundo ningún Lobo.
Pues yo corriendo libre por los cerros,
Sin pastores ni perros,
Con sólo mi pujanza y valentía
Contigo y con tu raza acabaría.»
«Adiós, exclamó el Lobo, mi esperanza
De regalar a mi vacía panza.
Cuando este miserable me provoca
Es señal de que se halla de mi boca
Tan libre como el cielo de ladrones.»

Así son los cobardes fanfarrones,
Que se hacen en los puestos ventajosos
Más valentones cuanto más medrosos.

A little mollycoddled lamb, who had been fattened up in a secure shed (for the benefit of some future gourmet), and had never once been out in the field, happened to notice through a crack in the door that Sir Wolf was just outside, keeping intent watch, cunningly and silently waiting for his chance to grab a toothsome snack.

But the lamb, observing that he was perfectly safe, assailed him as follows:

"Know, Sir Wolf, that I am imprisoned here, because the shepherd knows what a terrible creature I am. But if this shepherd weren't such a fool, there wouldn't be a single wolf left upon the earth. Yes, if I were allowed to run free among the hills, away from the shepherds and their dogs, my strength and my courage would soon put an end both to you and to your whole race."

"Well," thought the wolf, "bang go my hopes of a treat for my empty belly! If the wretch taunts me so, clearly he's no more scared of my jaws than robbers are scared of Heaven."

Thus cowardly braggers, as soon as they find themselves in a place where they can't be touched, the more feeble they really are, the more valiant they appear.


Known in our own days as the internet troll effect!

*

In Europe, far more than in the UK, fables remain a living part of popular culture. Here's a children's Phaedrus that I spotted in a gas station.