Kremlin Chronicles

Author: (Russian) Krylov, translated and compiled by Qi Guizhi
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-06-01
Features: Dear little readers, fable is an important genre in literature. It generally takes the form of a short and concise story, with humans, animals, or even objects as the main characters, depicting vivid tales. Using simple and easy-to-understand language, it conveys profound truths. This Fables of Krylov is a work by Ivan Krylov (1769-1844), a 19th-century Russian writer. Krylov came from a poor military family. His father was a simple and kind-hearted man who was not good at climbing the social ladder but was very fond of reading. His father's collection of books played a great role in Krylov's life. Krylov's father loved his son very much but did not show it outwardly, instead treating him with great strictness. Krylov was exceptionally intelligent and could read fluently at a very young age. His father spoke French, and Krylov also learned French early on. From his father's French books, he read the fable collection of French poet Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695), which deeply interested him. At that time, he even tried to translate it into Russian in poetic form. Krylov's father passed away when Krylov was only ten years old, leaving the family in extreme hardship. Fortunately, soon after, the provincial council where his father had worked hired him as a clerk. This temporarily stabilized the family's situation and also allowed Krylov to early exposure to official life, which greatly benefited his later career in writing. In 1782, Krylov moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg and became an employee of the tax office. That same year, at the age of only thirteen or fourteen, he began writing plays. His first play was The Woman Who Divined by Coffee Grounds, which mainly tells the story of a housekeeper who deliberately ruins the marriage of a young man and woman. Later, he wrote several more plays, satirizing the emptiness and debauchery of the noble life in the capital. In 1789, he founded the magazine The Spirit Mail, and in 1792, he co-founded the magazine The Observer. These magazines criticized the autocratic rule of the czar, exposed the cruelty of the serf owners and the corruption of officials, etc. Later, the magazines were forced to close, and Krylov had no choice but to leave St. Petersburg. In 1806, he returned to St. Petersburg, where he continued to write comedies while devoting most of his energy to writing fables. His Fable Collection was published in 1818. After its publication, it was warmly received by readers, who eagerly awaited the second and third collections. Throughout his life, Krylov wrote over 200 fables. These fables inherited the fine traditions of Aesop's Fables and La Fontaine's Fables while also making bold innovations. Because Krylov was relatively close to the life of the common people, his fables are filled with the flavor of folk language, and many phrases and expressions in his fables have become Russian folk proverbs. More importantly, Krylov's fables are rich in thought content. He could see the big picture in the small, explaining profound truths in very simple language. For example, in his fable The Little Box, he describes an arrogant mechanic who wants to open a seemingly mysterious little box. He flips it over and over, presses here and there, and sweats profusely, but "the little box still cannot be opened." He has no choice but to throw it away. Is the little box really as mysterious and complex as he thought? Krylov points out: "There are some things that you can exhaust yourself trying to solve, but in fact, as long as you grasp the key, solving it becomes very easy." Another fable, The Quartet, tells the story of a monkey, a goat, an ass, and a black bear who want to perform a quartet together. They pull the strings of their instruments, but the sound is always discordant. They think the problem is their seating arrangement, so they sit like this and then like that, busily rearranging, but the result is still out of tune. Dear children, in our lives, studies, work, and everything else, how often do we waste our time on futile efforts because we fail to grasp the essence and key of the problem? Krylov's fables also show deep sympathy for the weak and the kind, and an indescribable anger toward the tyrannical and the wicked. For example, in the fable The Wolf and the Lamb, the wolf asks the lamb why it dared to muddy the river water. The lamb replies: "I dare to report to you, Your Majesty, that I am merely drinking water downstream, a hundred steps away from Your Majesty." How can drinking downstream muddy the water upstream? The "wolf king" then finds other excuses to torment the lamb, but they are all rejected. Finally, the wolf roars: "Your crime is that I want to eat you!" There are many fables like this that expose the law of the jungle. Krylov lived through Napoleon's invasion of Russia, and his fables are filled with patriotic passion. The Wolf in the Dog's Den and The Crow and the Hen deal with such themes. In The Wolf in the Dog's Den, the starving wolf, seeing that the situation is not in his favor, immediately proposes peace, promising that he will no longer raid the flock of sheep and will even help them. But the crowd around responds: "We can never make peace with the wolf; we must tear his skin off!" Krylov's fables are not only profound in thought and thought-provoking but also greatly developed in form compared to previous fables. He had written many plays, and his experience in writing plays was very beneficial to his writing of fables at this time. The fables he wrote, whether featuring humans or various animals as the main characters, were all very vividly individualized. For example, in the fable Timofey's Fish Soup, the protagonist Timofey's eager persuasion for others to eat fish soup and his neighbor's flattered and submissive attitude are truly depicted with great depth. This fable is no less impressive than any short story.