節錄自《Psychology of Art》- Chapter 6. The Subtle Poison, A Synthesis

節錄自《Psychology of Art》- Chapter 6. The Subtle Poison, A Synthesis


He poured a subtle poison on his works. (p.118)

“Subtle poison” is most likely the very essence of Krylov’s poetry, that the fable contains the seeds of the lyric, the epic, and the drama and that it forces us, by the strength and inspiration of its poetry, to react emotionally to its story. (p. 143)


THE CROW AND THE FOX (p.119-120)

Vodovozov points out that children usually cannot agree with the moral of this fable:

How often has the World been told
That flattery is vile and evil!
To no avail.
The adulator always finds
A cozy corner in man’s heart.

Indeed, this moral, which comes to us from Aesop, Phaedrus, and La Fontaine does not fit the story in Krylov’s fable. Surprisingly enough, according to some sources Krylov likened himself to the fox in the fable because of his relationship with Count Khvostov. He is said to have listened patiently to the Count’s poems, praised them, and then asked the delighted Count to lend him some money. Whether this anecdote is true is not important, but it is important that it is possible. For it is unlikely that in the fable the fox’s action is vile and evil. If it were so, no one would expect Krylov to liken himself to the fox. Indeed that fox’s adulation is extremely light and witty while the derision and scorn of the crow could not be more frank or biting. The crow is depicted as an utter fool, so that the reader, contrary to the fable’s moral, is bound to believe that flattery is anything but vile. He is bound to feel that the crow fully deserves his punishment, and that the fox has taught it a very pertinent lesson. Such a change, of course, is a result of the lyrical narration. Our feelings would be completely different if the same story were told in prose, according to Lessing’s prescription, without the words, of adulation used by the fox, without the remark that the crow nearly choked from joy as he listened to the fox, and so on. The graphic description of the encounter, the characters of the participants, all that Lessing and Potebnia rejected in the fable－these are the mechanisms which induce us to perceive and feel the poetic atmosphere created by each word, verse, and rhyme. In Sumarokov’s Russian version of this famous fable, the slight change from the raven of ancient times to the crow has contributed to a complete change in the style of the fable, but it is unlikely that a change in gender brought about any substantial change in the individual animal’s character. Our feeling is polarized between the two contrasting directions in which the author develops the story. We are immediately influenced by the statement that flattery is vile and evil, and we expect to see in the fox the quintessence of an adulator. We know that adulation comes from those who are weak, those who are vanquished, or those who are begging. But our feeling is thrown in an opposite direction, because the fox is not adulating but scoffing, ridiculing, and deriding the crow. The fox is the master of the situation at all times, and each word he utters has for us a double meaning of adulation and mockery:

My dear, how beautiful you are!
And what a neck, what eyes!...
What feathers! What a beak!...

The story of the fable moves continually between these two extremes and keeps our interest alive. This duality makes the fable attractive, charming, and witty. All the other poetic devices, images, and choices of words, for example, are an essential part of the fable’s over-all effect. Thus, Sumarokov’s rewording of the fox’s speech misses the point:

A parrot is nothing compared to you, my dear;
Your feathers are a thousand times more beautiful than the
peacock’s….

The arrangement of the words, the description of the positions of the characters, their tone of voice, and so forth, emphasize this fundamental aim of the fable. With this aim in mind Krylov boldly eliminates the concluding part of the fable, when the fox says as he leaves, “Oh if you also had a mind, Crow.” With this statement the struggle between the reader’s two opposing feelings ends, and the fable loses its wittiness and becomes flat and trite. La Fontaine’s fable ends like this, with the fox running sway and at the same time deriding the crow, saying that he is a fool to believe adulators. The crow swears that he will never again listen to , or believe, any flattery. Here, again, one of the two feelings prevails, becomes too obvious, and causes the fable to miss its mark.

La Fontaine also described the fox’s flattery in a manner different from Krylov’s: “How pretty you are! How beautiful you seem to me!” And the fox’s speech is introduced by La Fontaine thus: “… lui tint à peu près ce langage” (he then held approximately the following speech.)

This deprives that fable of the “counterfeeling” effect, so that it is completely lost as a work of poetry.