The two friends
The two friends (French: Les Deux Amis ) is the eleventh fable from the eighth book of the collection of fables Fables Choisies, Mises En Vers by Jean de La Fontaine .
La Fontaine, whose fables mostly deal with dangerous friendships, such as in The Cat and the Two Sparrows , hereby presents a rare positive example of friendship. The story is about an unheroic but devoted couple of friends. One friend dreams that the other is unhappy and rushes to his house to offer his services. The other friend, for his part, thinks he is in need of help and gives him everything he has. The poet introduces morality with the question “Who loves the other more? How do you think, my reader, you? "And then concludes with the realization:
“The question is worth looking at seriously;
a true friend deserves to be respected.
In the bottom of your heart he seeks what you need,
save yourself the shame of yourself
discover what is wrong with you;
a dream, a nothing, does not leave him alone,
it applies to the beloved of his soul. "
Jean-François de La Harpe suspects in his eulogy to La Fontaine that the poet chose Qu'un ami véritable est une douce! Il cherche vos besoins au fond de votre coeur ; (How sweet a true friend is! He searches for your needs deep in your heart;) thought of his friend Madame de La Sablière , in whose house he lived for twenty years until her death.
Individual evidence
- ^ Jean de La Fontaine: Collection Brandes / Tome 4 [132]. Pp. 66–68 , accessed January 25, 2020 (French).
- ↑ Andrew Calder: The Fables of La Fontaine: Wisdom Brought Down to Earth . Librairie Droz, 2001, ISBN 978-2-600-00464-0 , pp. 174–176 (English, google.de [accessed January 25, 2020]).
- ↑ " https://digital.blb-karlsruhe.de/blbihd/content/pageview/5198992 " pp. 92-93
- ^ The Literary Panorama, and National Register . Cox, Son, and Baylis, 1809, pp. 291 ( google.de [accessed on May 2, 2020]).