The Picture Treasury of World Fables 2

Abstract

Here is the second volume of an ambitious set of five. This comprehensive presentation is quite an undertaking! This Book Two covers fables by Krylov and Schedrin and other fable writers from the Soviet Union, Romania, Yugoslavia, Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia. Krylov finishes at 210 and Schedrin at 252. Schedrin's fables are quite long, e.g. 211-229. This volume offers some 67 fables on 378 pages. There is an English T of C on 3-5. I believe that one refers correctly to the Chinese here as Simplified Chinese. Each story is attributed to a particular writer, adapter, translator, and illustrator. The cartoon approach fits the fables well. One notes the struggles of foreigners to deal well with English in the sometimes crazy syllabification of words in their narrow columns. The trouble with English perdures here as we see became divided on 362 into beca and me. A distinctive style here is that of Wang Longfer in The Eagle and the Mole (14-19). Another distinctive style follows immediately in A Swan, a Barracuda, and a Shrimp (20-22). We usually see this fable as featuring the swan, pike, and crab trying to work together to drag a cart. OF by Wu Ming (63-38) represents another style. Did Wu Ming do the covers' OF illustration? New to me is Holding the Funeral Procession (134-138). A visitor interrupts the usual wailing at a funeral and offers to revive the deceased. The hired mourners mention that he did nothing worthy of a reviving in his lifetime -- and apparently they would prefer to have yet another mourning in three days! In The Wolf and Its Bag (304-309) we see three enemies of the wolf attack him, but they attack singly. He wins and the fabulist wonders what might have happened if all three had attacked together. The last Russian fable, A Crane and a Small Fox, praises the wisdom of those, like the crane, who have one secure last ploy and puts down the wisdom of those, like the fox, who have many tricks (373-378). This volume features OF in color on both of its covers. This set of volumes was reproduced, I believe, in 2008 in similar but not identical form.