Labyrinte de Versailles

Abstract

Finding this book was a terrific surprise! Laurence Veyrier had shown me a number of fable books. As I finished, she mentioned offhand that I probably would not be interested in the Versailles labyrinth. I have looked for it for years! At last I had it in my hand. I breathed deeply and considered my policy that I should buy any book that I have not had in my hand before. We negotiated and I finally agreed to have the book sent to me in Heidelberg, so that I would carry it back to the USA. (A box of books from Germany had been lost in the mail a year before.) I love the book! There are several clues to its structure. First, the text sections are all in fours to accommodate the four languages. The title-page thus has four titles. After what look like two imprimi potest statements in Dutch, there are four addresses to the Courteous Reader. After four descriptions of the labyrinth, quartets of fable texts plus fountain explanations follow, both in prose. Pagination of this section ends on 82. Four explanations of the platform follow, an enumerated list of fables. New pagination then marks the illustration section. Two beginning illustrations show the labyrinth's plan and the two statues -- Aesop and Cupid -- at its entrance. Then follow thirty-nine engravings of the fountains. On the left facing each illustration is Benserade's quatrain and a poetic rendering into quatrains in the other three languages. The key to understanding the artistry of the fountains is, I believe, that the water is the animals' speech. They frequently spew forth in competition with each other. The pattern is at its simplest in Fable III, UP. Cock spews back a lie for the fox's lie. That the stream of water is speech-as-attack seems to me clear in Fable XXI, WC, where only the wolf spews water. The same effect is at work in The Fox and the Goat (XXIV), where the goat is in the water and not spewing it, while the fox pours insults onto him. Of course a well is a perfect setting for a part of a fountain! Stories that are new to me include The Cock and the Turkey-cock (Fable VIII) and The Parrot and the Ape (XVII). I had mentioned the latter in my comment on the reprint version of this book done by Helmut Eisendle in 1975. The mother monkey squeezes her son to death in Fable XI; might the water be pressured out of him by her embrace? Favorites of mine include Fable XII, a domed enclosure in which the birds and beasts fight it out with their water streams; Fable XXII, the kite's party in which the guests learn that they are the meal; Fable XXVI, in which the frogs are stupidly spewing forth their desires about kingship; and Fable XXXVIII, The Serpent and the Porcupine, where torrents of water represent the porcupine's quills. Fountains XIII and XIV are the two phases of FS, beautifully done. Fable XIX has the frog carrying the mouse on his back in the water. I have trouble finding that a good version of this story. It may be a sample of what had become of some fables in the tradition: the principal twist of the story is lost, and good artists are working with inferior stories. Bodemann #79 mentions four editions in a LeClerc tradition: 1677 in Paris, 1679 in Paris (first and second editions by Mabre-Cramoisy); about 1700 by Krauss in Augsburg (the edition used by Eisendle); and 1768 in London with plates by Bickham. Hobbs describes the Visscher edition (60) and seems confident that the illustrations are from LeClerc. Veyrier calls this a second edition. A pencilled date is either 1682 (Visscher's first edition) or -- more likely -- 1683.