(1985)
Aesop was—if he ever really existed—a slave. Based on his origin, he is referred to as a Phrygian, in some sources as Lydian, in better ones as Thracian. Testimony in favor of this origin is given by Wieland’s detailed proof in the History of the Abderites,1 according to which there had been a cultic worship of all kinds of animals in the Thracian capital of Abdera. To come thence would be plausible for the inventor of speaking animals. Recently, more has become known.
From Thrace, too, came the slave whom Socrates introduced into world history in recounting the nocturnal accident that befell the forefather of philosophers. This man, Thales of Miletus, left the town to observe the stars but overlooked a well and fell into it. The Thracian woman who also dwelt there at the same time—albeit for no such reason—laughed at the fallen man. Socrates, of whom it is said that he brought down philosophy from the heavens to earth and into the homes of humans, was not without sympathy for the mocking Thracian. He simply called her pretty.
There was also some marveling—as philologists are wont to marvel: by athetesis [rejection]—that the protohistory of philosophy told by Socrates should be included in a collection of fables that from time immemorial had been ascribed to Aesop—there, however, without naming the philosopher and without identifying the know-it-all. In the Aesopic corpus with its talking animals, the anecdote cuts an unfortunate figure. How did it end up there?
Now there is an answer to that. Aesop smuggled an encrypted history of his own origin into the vehicle of his literary immortality.
The Thracian woman was not a chance witness to the philosopher’s accident. Nor was her laughter motivated by spiteful schadenfreude. She must have had a soft spot for philosophers. Every night, she secretly followed the stargazer. Her intuition that during such nonsensical activities there would be no lack of situations where help might be needed was faultless. So it came to pass that by her wit and throaty laughter, she was able to help the man who had fallen into the well get over his embarrassment in order to encourage him to return to realism: he ought to stick to what was comprehensible down here.
By betraying the secret of Aesop, Socrates subtly implied how the fable—which he was the first to put into verse while in prison awaiting his death—arrived at the inexhaustibility of its wisdoms: the forefather of all philosophy was also that of all fables.
Thus, the disconcerting problem that Aesop placed himself on rare occasions in his stories (which were therefore suspected to be apocryphal) is finally solved. The new findings, three of which are presented here, prove that intermediate forms between animal fable and anecdote belong to the original stock [Urbestand]: Aesop with his talking animals.
Perhaps they are attempts that he discarded, in which case they would be further evidence for the fact that discarded matter from all ages has good prospects one day to be pulled from the scrapheap and into the light of imperishability.
… the mute, phlegmatic stock of fishes …2
—RILKE, “DOLPHINS”
A large fish was brought to the house in which Aesop served as a slave. The fish was supposed to be prepared for the master’s table, but it was not forbidden for Aesop to have an appetite for the leftovers.
When the fish noticed who he was dealing with, he said to Aesop: “In your fables you let all animals speak, except the fishes. You seem not to be as much in favor of equality as your interpreters claim.”
“Fishes are mute,” Aesop responded briefly and succinctly.
“But the other animals that you allow to speak,” the fish insisted, “have no language, either.”
“You see,” Aesop concluded reluctantly and turned away, “now the fish had one opportunity to say something—and what does he make of it? He talks about other animals. Thus, there is a truth in the expression ‘mute as a fish,’ namely that fishes are mute because they have nothing to say.”
One day, the inventor of the fable encountered the wolf for whom he had tailor-made some of the most beautiful of his pieces. Yet he greeted him sullenly.
“You seem bad-tempered,” said Aesop.
“I am angry with you,” the Wolf replied.
“You have no reason for that. I have always made the mistake with you to let you look for causes, where you had none. What is there to complain about?”
“You’ve distorted my nature,” the Wolf answered.
“And how so?” Aesop wanted to know.
“You let me talk too much. No talking while eating is even what humans tell their children. We, too, enjoy the finest of upbringings. We don’t talk while we eat. Our mouth is already dripping with greed and it would sound outrageously un-wolfish if we were to say something. But you, Aesop, are letting me gas on incessantly, which is why in a moment I will enjoy my meal.”
“You are right,” Aesop admitted. “But had I let you be as you claim to be, you would have never ended up in the fable. We would have heard nothing from you except your nighttime howling.”
The Fox, too, complained to Aesop. He made him look ridiculous with all the cleverness he imputed to him. “I am not smarter,” the Fox said, “than I need to be in order to survive.”
“In return you are preventing others from surviving,” Aesop pointed out to him. “Think about the chickens you are stealing.”
“They have their own art of survival,” the Fox protested. “They have invented the easiest procedure to reproduce—they pursue it while seated.”
Aesop did not want to let the Fox get away with that. “You are confusing two things there. The chickens that you feed on can no longer make their kind by sitting. But you live on each time, and even better, meal by meal.”
The Fox did not relent. “But were it not for my devouring chickens, the world would be full of chickens, as easy as it is for them to become many.”
Aesop took the objection in good grace. “That wouldn’t be bad. Then even we slaves would have our daily egg and our chicken on Sundays.”
“But,” the Fox triumphed, “you could no longer invent fables, because the interpreters and exegetes think they have recognized that your little stories are cryptic outcries of a slave’s misery.”
From Aesop’s own hand, we find the addition: Here Aesop was silent. He never told of just how clever he had to find the Fox to be.
The Frankfurt publisher to whom I offered these unknown Aesopica declined on the grounds that Aesop was not a German classic.
Translated by Florian Fuchs
Originally published as “Unbekanntes von Äsop: Aus neuen Fabelfunden,” from Neue Zürcher Zeitung, October 5, 1985, 47–48.