Aesops Fabler

Abstract

This slim book of some 24 pages was apparently a Christmas gift of the Bergen Faktorforening. In fact, Wiig had done a 1951 translation of Aesop 106 pages in length, illustrated by Johan Berle Reidar and published by J.W. Eides. I have found a copy available and have ordered it. I am delighted to find this book from Bergen and from a Bergen bookseller because I did not have time to seek out booksellers during our short stay there this summer. Strong endpapers offer a forest with a lion attacking, a squirrel (?) fleeing, and a donkey prancing. The Aesop of the cover and title page look to me as though they were in India. That cover has a background of green and gold for its line-drawing of the seated fabulist. In the book's first illustration, miller and son both are bent in dejection. I need a good Norwegian to tell me what happened to their ass! There are two strong, highly interpretative illustrations for OR and three for FG. Similarly, the artist takes two moments to picture in AD. The second pictures quite dramatically and minutely the ant biting the big toe of the hairy hunter. Is that Androcles in the last picture? Is there a text to accompany this picture? It is a feather in the cap of this collection that a rare book like this becomes available here. Online I could find only four copies. Two are in Denmark, one is in China, and the last is at the University of Southern California. This copy has a slightly musty smell.