The Old Man and Death is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 60 in the Perry Index. [1] Because this was one of the comparatively rare fables featuring humans, it was the subject of many paintings, especially in France, where Jean de la Fontaine's adaptation had made it popular.
The fable is a simple anecdote demonstrating the theme of love of life (φιλοζωία) in no matter what distressing circumstances. The standard version as it now exists is that of Roger L'Estrange's retelling: 'An old man that had travelled a great way under a huge Burden of Sticks found himself so weary that he cast it down, and called upon Death to deliver him from a more miserable Life. Death came presently at his call, and asked him his business. Pray, good Sir, says he, Do me but the Favour to help me up with my burden again.' [2] Originally, however, the old man's request was for Death to carry the sticks for him. [3]
Because ancient sources were confined to the Greek language, the fable did not have much currency until the Renaissance. Then it was told in the fable collections of the Neo-Latin poets Gabriele Faerno (1545) [4] and Hieronymus Osius. [5] A French version also appeared at this time in Bernard Salomon's Les Fables d'Esope Phrygien, mises en Ryme Francoise (Lyons 1544). In England there was a Latin version in Francis Barlow's 1687 collection, accompanied by an English verse synopsis by Aphra Behn.
The story's appearance in La Fontaine's Fables contributed to the fable's growing popularity in Europe. In fact, La Fontaine wrote two and placed them side by side. La Mort et le malheureux (Death and man in misfortune, I.15) is a rewriting of the story in which the main emphasis is placed on the moral to be drawn from the situation. La Mort et le bûcheron (Death and the woodman, I.16) stays closer to the original and is prefaced by a note in which La Fontaine confesses that he was blamed for the freedom of his first version by a contemporary critic and wrote the second by way of comparison. [6]
There have been a number of musical adaptations of La Fontaine's La Mort et le bûcheron, of which the earliest was the two-act musical (folie-vaudeville) by Henri Dupin (1791–1887) and Eugène Scribe in 1815. [7] It was later made a lighthearted section of Francis Poulenc's ballet Les Animaux modèles (1941). [8] There were also settings by Théodore Ymbert and Louis Lacombe (Op. 72, 1875). Later interpretations include Vladimir Cosma's as the fourth piece in Eh bien ! Dansez maintenant (2006), in the style of a saraband; [9] and the setting of the Greek text of Aesop's fable for octet and voice by Lefteris Kordis as part of his Aesop Project (2010). [10]
Book illustrations and prints of the fable have largely shown a skeleton, sometimes cloaked, bending over the prone woodman. A notable exception was Gustave Doré's, depicting the laden woodman leaning against a rock, in which the spectral figure of Death with his scythe is merely an outline down a forest aisle. [11] In the 18th century, the English artist Joseph Wright of Derby painted two Gothic versions. The earliest, dating from 1774, is now in the Wadsworth Athenaeum. It depicts the woodman shrinking back from a standing skeleton in a landscape that includes an ancient ruin in the background. [12] The other is in the Walker Art Gallery and centres on the confrontation of the two figures with only the base of the ruin behind them. [13]
Among the French Romantic artists who used La Fontaine's fable as the inspiration for dramatic landscapes, Louis Boulanger exhibited his painting in 1833, [14] Gabriel Bouret [15] and Eugène-Ferdinand Buttura [16] theirs in 1837. The latter two portray tiny figures dwarfed by the forest that surrounds them. At that time, too, Baron Félix-Sébastien Feuillet de Conches commissioned a Chinese painting of this fable and others for a special edition illustrated by artists from around the world that was published about 1840. [17]
With the coming of Realism, artists turned to depicting the fable in terms of contemporary conditions. Among them was Jean-François Millet, whose treatment of the subject, now in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, [18] was refused by the Salon in 1859. [19] Léon Lhermitte also painted a realistic version in 1893, [20] while the treatment by Joseph Paul Louis Bergès (1878–1956) in 1905 is more in the Symbolist style. [21] Another Realist, Alphonse Legros, made woodcuts and etchings of the fable, but his most celebrated etching was of the dramatic plaster sculpture he made in 1882. In this the woodman is sprawled across a rock and looks up fearfully at the cowled figure of death curving above him. A later sculpture by André Augustin Sallé, dating from 1924, depicts the exhausted peasant seated on his sticks and leaning back on his pack for support. [22]
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of varied and unclear origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.
The Frog and the Ox appears among Aesop's Fables and is numbered 376 in the Perry Index. The story concerns a frog that tries to inflate itself to the size of an ox, but bursts in the attempt. It has usually been applied to socio-economic relations.
The Ant and the Grasshopper, alternatively titled The Grasshopper and the Ant, is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 373 in the Perry Index. The fable describes how a hungry grasshopper begs for food from an ant when winter comes and is refused. The situation sums up moral lessons about the virtues of hard work and planning for the future.
The Honest Woodcutter, also known as Mercury and the Woodman and The Golden Axe, is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 173 in the Perry Index. It serves as a cautionary tale on the need for cultivating honesty, even at the price of self-interest. It is also classified as Aarne-Thompson 729: The Axe falls into the Stream.
The Cock and the Jewel is a fable attributed to Aesop and is numbered 503 in the Perry Index. As a trope in literature, the fable is reminiscent of stories used in Zen such as the kōan. It presents, in effect, a riddle on relative values and is capable of different interpretations, depending on the point of view from which it is regarded.
The Bear and the Travelers is a fable attributed to Aesop and is number 65 in the Perry Index. It was expanded and given a new meaning in mediaeval times.
The Wolf and the Lamb is a well-known fable of Aesop and is numbered 155 in the Perry Index. There are several variant stories of tyrannical injustice in which a victim is falsely accused and killed despite a reasonable defence.
The Bear and the Gardener is a fable originating in the ancient Indian text Panchatantra that warns against making foolish friendships. There are several variant versions, both literary and oral, across the world and its folk elements are classed as Aarne-Thompson-Uther type 1586. The La Fontaine version has been taken as demonstrating various philosophical lessons.
The Oak and the Reed is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 70 in the Perry Index. It appears in many versions: in some it is with many reeds that the oak converses and in a late rewritten version it disputes with a willow.
The Bird in Borrowed Feathers is a fable of Classical Greek origin usually ascribed to Aesop. It has existed in numerous different versions between that time and the Middle Ages, going by various titles and generally involving members of the corvid family. The lesson to be learned from it has also varied, depending on the context in which it was told. Several idioms derive from the fable.
Speaking of The Snake and the Crab in Ancient Greece was the equivalent of the modern idiom, 'Pot calling the kettle black'. A fable attributed to Aesop was eventually created about the two creatures and later still yet another fable concerning a crab and its offspring was developed to make the same point.
The title of The Woodcutter and the Trees covers a complex of fables that are of West Asian and Greek origins, the latter ascribed to Aesop. All of them concern the need to be wary of harming oneself through misplaced generosity.
The Dog and the Wolf is one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 346 in the Perry Index. It has been popular since antiquity as an object lesson of how freedom should not be exchanged for comfort or financial gain. An alternative fable with the same moral concerning different animals is less well known.
The Man with Two Mistresses is one of Aesop's Fables that deals directly with human foibles. It is numbered 31 in the Perry Index.
Hercules and the Wagoner or Hercules and the Carter is a fable credited to Aesop. It is associated with the proverb "God helps those who help themselves", variations on which are found in other ancient Greek authors.
The Heron and the Fish is a situational fable constructed to illustrate the moral that one should not be over-fastidious in making choices since, as the ancient proverb proposes, 'He that will not when he may, when he will he shall have nay'. Of ancient but uncertain origin, it gained popularity after appearing among La Fontaine's Fables.
The situation of the Eagle Wounded by an Arrow vaned with its own feathers is referred to in several ancient Greek sources and is listed as fable 276 in the Perry Index. It is generally applied to the misery of realising that one has contributed to one's own injury but also as a warning against self-reliant pride.
The classical legend that the swan sings at death was incorporated into one of Aesop's Fables, numbered 399 in the Perry Index. The fable also introduces the proverbial antithesis between the swan and the goose that gave rise to such sayings as ‘Every man thinks his own geese are swans’, in reference to blind partiality, and 'All his swans are turned to geese', referring to a reverse of fortune.
The man and the lion (disputing) is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 284 in the Perry Index. An alternative title is The lion and the statue. The story's moral is that the source of evidence should be examined before it is accepted.
The Apeand the Dolphin is one of Aesop's Fables and is numbered 73 in the Perry Index. Due to its appearance among La Fontaine's Fables, it has always been popular in France, but in Britain treatment of the story was rarer until the 19th century.