Fables

Abstract

I searched for this book for a long time and have waited for the chance to read it carefully. Now I have read the first six of these forty-seven verse fables. They are incisive, cynical, surprising--and tough to read. My French is not up to Anouilh's idiomatic poetry, and I would rather let the others go for now than be frustrated understanding 80% of a fable. I am not sure of the tone with which the opening Avertissement hypocrite is to be read. L'enterrement, Les trois lions, and Le chêne et le roseau are all delightful and wonderfully pointed. If you get frustrated even earlier than I did, read the four Anouilh fables translated in Shapiro's The Fabulists French (1992).