Fables
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Authors
Vroylande, Robert de
Issue Date
2016
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Abstract
Here is a facsimile of a 1941 edition of fables by Robert de Vroylande. The black-and-white illustrations come from Hergé, the pen-name of Georgés Remi, the illustrator of the many albums of Tintin. I presume that Buret is the publisher. Researching Buret has introduced me to a bookshop I want to visit on my next trip to Paris! First of the fables here is "La Nouvelle Histoire du Lievre et de la Tortue." Its opening illustration shows the hare winning. De Vroylande's verse has the hare, as in La Fontaine's fable, beginning the race by not beginning. He postpones. On this occasion, when the tortoise is ten feet from the goal, the hare takes off and soon wins. "Rien ne sert de partir, il faut courir un peu." The parody is clever and enjoyable. The second fable features two hungry bears with a plan to devour a moose. Reduced to selfish plans, they end up killing each other while the moose goes free. A further fable presents "the unhappy fabulist." Humanity has been reduced, for him, to mechanical repetition. He cannot find anything to fabulize! In the midst of his mental groping, a kid gets a slingshot through his window and blinds him, and a driver plows through his wall. Our poor fabulist spends two months in the hospital meditating…. "Rien ne nous surprend plus que la réalité." Nothing is as surprising as reality! I see two sources of delight here, de Vroylande's adept poetry and Hergé's enjoyable illustrations. 88 pages. 8⅜ x 11⅜.
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STYX/Librairie Roland Buret?