A fable is a small poem of a satirical character, in which allegorical forms are ridiculed and criticized by certain vices of society. The founder of the genre is considered to be Greek slave Aesop. It was he who, unable to express directly to the offender in the face of his dependent position, was able to express everything he wanted in a disguised manner, and to come up with a veiled form of expressing his attitude towards these or other people, their actions, their character traits. The traditions of Aesop were continued by the French poet Lafontaine, the Moldovan ones - Dmitri and Antiochus Kantemiry. And in Russian literature they were developed and raised to a new height by AP Sumarokov and IA Krylov.
The source of history
His fable "The Wolf and the Lamb" Krylov wrote on the plot, invented by Aesop. In this way, he creatively reworked not one famous story, creating on its basis an original, original work. Aesop's story reads as follows: the lamb drank water from the stream. The wolf saw him and decided to eat it. Here only the pretext tried to choose more decently. At first, the wolf reproached the child for stirring up the water - you can not drink! The lamb has dissuaded that that hardly labiums wet, and is below a wolf on a current. Then the predator accused the opponent of desecrating him - the wolf - the father. But the lamb also found something to say: he does not have a year, and by age he could not do it. The wolf was tired of pulling a decency mask. He said openly: no matter how clever you were, you did not care! The moral of the story is obvious: no matter how you try to prove your innocence, the better you do it, the less chance to win. Of course, if the enemy decided your fate in advance. The virtue of Aesop is not triumphant, but defeated.
Krylov's version
The poem "The Wolf and the Lamb" Krylov created in 1808, it was printed in the "Dramatic Herald." And the author began immediately with morality, that is, the logical conclusion to which the readers were supposed to come by the end of their acquaintance with the text: "A strong man always has a helpless guilt ..." In order not to prove his "Wolf and the Lamb", Krylov relies on historical perspectives, emphasizing that there is this "darkness of examples" to this principle. But in the following lines he contrasts the said with his own attitude: "... we do not write stories". It turns out that a fable is a manifestation of the case of the individual. And generally accepted postulates are just such specific cases and are checked.
Artistic features
Krylov's fable "The Wolf and the Lamb" is an epic work. This can be seen, for example, for such details: the author's position can be traced clearly from the very beginning of the fable. But instead of direct "I" Krylov uses the generalized "we". The reception of detachment makes it possible to depict the inner space objectively. In general, the entire poem is quite realistic from the point of view of the likelihood. The wolf is the predator, the lamb is the embodiment of the victim. Between them are relationships that are characteristic of those that exist in the natural environment. True, the wolf is hypocritical. He is going to kill his victim on "lawful grounds", that is, legalize iniquity. Thus, the motive of social relations arises in the fable "The Wolf and the Lamb". Krylov morality of the work reveals, revealing the true price to the speeches and actions of the predator. As soon as the wolf showed his hypocrisy, he uncovered an open calculation, he took the lamb to pieces. A reasonable life, based on rigid but fair laws, is one thing. And immorality and the lie of reality - it's quite another matter. And her immorality is criticized by the great fabulist.
This is the deep meaning hidden in this simple, known to us from school work!