Against the Hard to Suit by Jean de La Fontaine

Name: Against the Hard to Suit
Author: Jean de La Fontaine

The speaker reflects that, if he possessed Calliope’s favour, he would use poetry to adorn Aesop’s divine inventions. Though he does not claim the highest poetic powers, he takes pride in having made beasts, plants, and trees speak in French. Critics dismiss such work as a few childish tales and demand a more serious, elevated subject. To satisfy them, the speaker begins a heroic account of Troy, describing the Greeks’ long failed siege and the immense wooden horse that conceals Ulysses, Diomed, Ajax, and their men. The critics interrupt again, finding both his grand period and the horse itself less credible than Renard’s trick upon Raven, and declaring that heroic verse does not suit him. The speaker then adopts a humbler pastoral manner, telling of jealous Amaryllis grieving for Alcippus and asking the zephyr to carry her words to her lover while Thyrsis secretly listens. Yet the critics immediately object to an imperfect rhyme. Angered by their constant fault-finding, the speaker rejects their interference and concludes that attempting to please such people wastes both time and strength, for some men are too fastidious ever to be satisfied.

By Jean de La Fontaine · First published 1668 · Genre: Fable, Narrative Poetry, Satire · 1,039 words

First lines

Were I a pet of fair Calliope, / I would devote the gifts conferr'd on me / To dress in verse old Aesop's lies divine; / For verse, and they, and truth, do well combine; / But, not a favourite on the Muses' hill, / I dare not arrogate the magic skill, / To ornament these charming stories. / A bard might brighten up their glories, / No doubt. I try, -- what one more wise must do. / Thus much I have accomplish'd hitherto: -- / By help of my translation, / The beasts hold conversation, / In French, as ne'er they did before. / Indeed, to claim a little more, / The plants and trees,[1] with smiling features, / Are turn'd by me to talking creatures. / Who says, that this is not enchanting? / 'Ah,' says the critics, 'hear what vaunting! / From one whose work, all told, no more is / Than half-a-dozen baby stories. '[2] / Would you a theme more credible, my censors, / In graver tone, and style which now and then soars? / Then list! For ten long years the men of Troy, / By means that only heroes can employ, / Had held the allied hosts of Greece at bay, -- / Their minings, batterings, stormings day by day, / Their hundred battles on the crimson plain, / Their blood of thousand heroes, all in vain, -- / When, by Minerva's art, a horse of wood, / Of lofty size before their city stood, / Whose flanks immense the sage Ulysses hold, / Brave Diomed, and Ajax fierce and bold, / Whom, with their myrmidons, the huge machine / Would bear within the fated town unseen, / To wreak upon its very gods their rage -- / Unheard-of stratagem, in any age. / Which well its crafty authors did repay.... / 'Enough, enough,' our critic folks will say; / 'Your period excites alarm, / Lest you should do your lungs some harm; / And then your monstrous wooden horse, / With squadrons in it at their ease, / Is even harder to endorse / Than Renard cheating Raven of his cheese. / And, more than that, it fits you ill / To wield the old heroic quill. ' / Well, then, a humbler tone, if such your will is: -- / Long sigh'd and pined the jealous Amaryllis / For her Alcippus, in the sad belief, / None, save her sheep and dog, would know her grief. / Thyrsis, who knows, among the willows slips, / And hears the gentle shepherdess's lips / Beseech the kind and gentle zephyr / To bear these accents to her lover.... / 'Stop! ' says my censor: / 'To laws of rhyme quite irreducible, / That couplet needs again the crucible; / Poetic men, sir, / Must nicely shun the shocks / Of rhymes unorthodox. ' / A curse on critics! hold your tongue! / Know I not how to end my song? / Of time and strength what greater waste / Than my attempt to suit your taste?

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Genres

Fable — The work explicitly defends the art of the Aesopian fable, including its convention of animals, plants, and trees speaking as moralized fictional characters.
Narrative Poetry — It is composed in verse and moves through brief illustrative narratives, including the Trojan Horse and a pastoral love complaint.
Satire — Its central target is the impossible-to-please critic, mocked for demanding contradictory subjects, styles, and poetic rules.
Literary Satire — The poem satirizes literary taste, genre hierarchy, pedantic criticism, and the dismissal of fables as childish or inferior.

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Against the Hard to Suit is listed on Textopian as a fable by Jean de La Fontaine, dated 1668 CE.

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Work type: Fable
Author: Jean de La Fontaine
Date: 1668 CE
Language: English
Genres: Fable, Narrative Poetry, Satire, Literary Satire, Metapoetry
Length: 1,039 words
Structure: 1 section, 5 paragraphs
Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)

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