Fables

Ivan Krylov

5 ideas

1. Swan, Pike and Crawfish pull a cart

   A swan, a pike and a crawfish harness themselves to a loaded cart; the swan strains toward the sky, the crawfish backs up, the pike pulls toward the water, and the cart does not move although each works hard. Krylov opens with the moral that when partners are not in agreement their work goes badly and yields only torment. The fable is cited as the case of coordinated effort failing because the pullers have misaligned goals, not because any one of them is weak.

2. The Wolf and the Lamb: pretextual justice

   A wolf meets a lamb drinking at a stream and accuses it of muddying his water, then of insulting him last year. The lamb refutes each charge: it drinks downstream, and it was not yet born. The wolf ends the argument with 'You are guilty simply because I want to eat,' and the moral states that 'the strong always blame the weak.' The mechanism is that power first decides the outcome and then invents charges, so disproving the charges does not change the verdict.

3. The Crow and the Fox: flattery

   A crow sits in a tree holding a piece of cheese. A fox praises her feathers and asks her to sing; the crow caws, the cheese falls, and the fox takes it. The mechanism is that flattery works by aiming at the target's vanity, which makes her act against her own interest while she is enjoying the praise. Krylov warns that people are told again and again that flattery is harmful, yet the flatterer always finds a corner in the heart.

4. The Quartet: rearranging instead of learning

   A monkey, a goat, a donkey and a bear decide to play a string quartet. When the music sounds bad, they keep changing their seating positions, believing the arrangement is what is wrong. A nightingale tells them that however they sit, they will not become musicians, because they lack skill. The fable describes the substitution of structural reshuffling, such as reorganizations or new seating charts, for missing competence.

5. Demyan's Fish Soup: excessive hospitality

   Demyan keeps pressing more and more fish soup on his guest Foka, praising it each time, until Foka flees and never returns. Krylov applies the lesson to writers who bore listeners by reciting too much of their work. The mechanism is that a good thing given past the receiver's capacity turns generosity into coercion and destroys the relationship it was meant to strengthen.

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