From the stargazer who fell into a well
About the stargazer who fell into a well (French: L'Astrologue qui se laisse tomber dans un puits) is the 13th fable in the second book of the collection of fables by the French poet Jean de La Fontaine . The actual narrative of the fable, which was handed down for the first time by Plato in Theaetetus (174a) and also by Aesop , consists of only four verses:
An astrologer fell into the well once.
So they said to him: "You poor being,
you don't see what is at your feet, and you think
you could read up in the sky!"
You shouldn't look up at the stars, but down (like a stargazer who fell into a well because of it). The fable is a reckoning with all adventurers and illusionists, whether they deceive themselves or others; The narrator is deeply upset about them (je m'emporte un peu trop), for him they are just "cream puffs and charlatans". The speculator who fell into the water is for the poet the epitome of all dreamers.
La Fontaine mocks all those who mess with "heavenly augurs ": he argues that there can be no science of astrology and divination because the future is inaccessible to our senses and our understanding. However, one can observe the movements of the heavenly bodies themselves - the rising and setting of the sun or the course of the seasons. The fabulist concludes that the obsession with predicting the future in order to ward off imaginary dangers, which are in any case beyond their control, is only an attempt to evade the more pressing and immediate demands of the present moment.
Heinrich Hoffmann (1809–1894) takes up the motif in a Hans-peek-in-die-Luft .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean de La Fontaine : Fables Choisies, Mises En Vers. Retrieved August 18, 2020 .
- ↑ Lafontaine's Fables. Retrieved August 19, 2020 .
- ↑ cf. Thales anecdotes
- ↑ Theophil Spoerri : The uprising of the fable . In: Erwin Leibfried , Josef M. Werle (eds.): Texts on the theory of fable: Metzler collection . tape 169 . Springer-Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-476-03875-3 , pp. 93 ( google.de [accessed on August 18, 2020]).
- ↑ Andrew Calder: The Fables of La Fontaine: Wisdom Brought Down to Earth . Librairie Droz , 2001, ISBN 978-2-600-00464-0 , pp. 158 ( google.de [accessed on August 18, 2020]).