The shepherd and the king
The Shepherd and the King (French Le Berger et le Roi ) is the tenth fable in the tenth book of the collection of fables by the French poet Jean de La Fontaine . The fable is one of La Fontaine's most impressive examples of the solitude of a monarch .
In “Le Berger et le Roi” a king sees how well a shepherd treats his flock of sheep and decides to make him “Pasteur de gens” (shepherds of men), a judge for disputes at his court. A hermit learns of this and rushes to the shepherd to dissuade him from this folly. He tells him about a blind man who picked up a snake frozen in the cold, thinking it was a whip, and who refused the advice to drop the poisonous animal. He eventually died of a snakebite. The shepherd does not heed the advice of his friend, which he later regrets. The losers of the new judge's verdicts make false accusations against him, claiming that he appropriated their wealth in order to build his own palace. The king investigates the matter, but finds neither a palace nor treasures and exonerates the shepherd. Though innocent, the Shepherd nonetheless chooses to return to his flock for a wiser experience.
moral
The narrative begins by enumerating the vices that turn out to be the root of all human misfortune:
"Our life is possessed by two demons,
and where they rule, reason is far removed;
I don't know a heart that isn't given to both of them.
And what are their names? Well, they are well known to you:
Love is called one, ambition the other.
The latter's realm is wide: all souls indulge in it,
even love is threatened by him. "
Even a good king is dangerous company for an honest man. However, if you look at the situation from the king's point of view, his plight is far more desperate than that of the shepherd: he loses his only good servant and is lonely.
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Andrew Calder: The Fables of La Fontaine: Wisdom Brought Down to Earth . Librairie Droz, 2001, ISBN 978-2-600-00464-0 , pp. 170 ( google.de [accessed on August 14, 2020]).
- ↑ Randolph Paul Runyon, Randolph Runyon: In La Fontaine's Labyrinth: A Thread Through the Fables . Rookwood Press, 2000, ISBN 978-1-886365-16-2 , pp. 143 ( google.de [accessed on August 14, 2020]).
- ↑ Lafontaine's Fables. In: Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe . P. 230 , accessed on August 14, 2020 .