Purity is a Proud Toad's Game, a Fable from Jacques de Vitry

La Fontaine, Book I, Fable 3. Chauveau illustrations, 1668.

by KARL STEEL

While doing some philological noodling with the word "fabulous" (because what else does one do on sabbatical?), I found, in this entry in the Middle English dictionary, a citation from a Middle English translation of Jacques de Vitry's Life of Marie of Oignies:

"I telle a fabil not fabulos and sey fals not falsly."

I was hooked. Yesterday, I responded to copy edits for my entry on "Beast Fables" for the Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Medieval Literature in Britain, where I write:

The obvious fictionality of fables, as well as the youth of their first audience, inspired debates over their utility: Seneca thought them frivolous and William of Conches meaningless, and Conrad of Hirsau and Boccaccio thought them suitable for teaching only rustics and children. While the word “fable” itself comes simply from the Latin fabulor, “to talk” (which eventually provides, for example, the French parler and the Spanish hablar), it also came to stand in for fiction as a whole or even, with the sense of moral condemnation, as a false story, a use that appears even in fable collections themselves. 

"A fabil not fabulos"! What treasures awaited me in Marie? What had I (dammit) omitted from my encyclopedia entry? Read on. My translation from Carl Horstmann's edition with some help from the Latin (because I don't have Brown's on hand: lo how lapsed copyright preserves old scholarship!): the story of a monk first led to anhedonia, then depression, and then, for a monk, the worst sin of all, disobedience. If only the monk had been a happy toad, content in its batrachoidal squalor.

It happened that Cistercian monk had such a great zeal and love of innocence and purity, but not of wisdom, that he strove with a fervent spirit come to the same state as the first father, Adam.

And when after much vain effort, tormenting himself in fasting, vigils, and prayers he could not recover the first state of innocence, he fell first into a heaviness and sloth (that is, he became depressed). For he would eat his food, but would feel no sensible delight; he devoted himself not only to refraining from, but also from fully quenching the first stirrings of sensuality and bodily feeling; and so he devoted himself to keeping his life in perfect purity without any venial sin.

And so by the temptation of the noonday demon, he aspired to impossible things, but no matter how much he had labored, he could not in any way have what he wanted: at last in sorrow he slid into the ditch of despair, so much so that he expected he could not be saved at all in the state of corruption that he was in, as he counted venial sins as deadly — and venial sins cannot be avoided in this life. Therefore he would not take the Eucharist on those days his order ordained for this. Behold to how much misfortune and how much and what manner of wretched ruin that ancient enemy dragged a simple soul under the color of the good [Ecce ad quantum infortunium, ad quantam & quam miserabilem ruinam, sub specie boni hostis ille antiquus simplicem illam traxerat animam], so that the sick one fled salvation, and he who had once forsook his own will, took off the yoke of obedience. 

And about that I tell a fable that is not fabulous, and say something fictional but not false [Ut autem fabulam non fabulose referam, nec falsa non fallaciter interseram {such a nice metaphor for tale-telling!}]:

This monk who tried to come to the same state of the first father, he is like a toad that in seeing a handsome and strong ox, wanted to become like that very ox; she tried with great force to stretch and to inflate herself; but in vain, for even if she had burst, she might not have taken on the quality of that ox.

And so that brother, while he would have enhanced himself above himself, fell wretchedly into despair under himself [the Latin's sharper: Frater autem ille dum se supra se extollere voluit, infra se miserabiliter per desperationem corruit]

[Hit happenyd þat a monke of Cisteus ordyr hadde so grete 3ele and loue of Innocens and clennesse, þof not after sciens, þat hee enforced and bisyed hym wiþ feruour of spirite to come as to þe euenlik state of the firste fadir Adam.

And whan longe wiþ ful myche laboure, but veyne, turmentynge hym-selfe in fastynge, wakynges and prayers hee myghte not recuuir þe firste state of Innocens, he felle firste into an henynesse and slouþe. For hee woldde ete his mete, but he wolde not fele no sensible delite, while he eet; hee studyed not oonly to refreyne, but to qwenche fully þe firste stirynges of sensualite 7 bodily felynge; he studyed als to kepe his lyfe in parfite clannes wiþ-outen any venyalle synne.

And so by entisynge of þe myddaye fende, while he desyred impossibil, nor, how so mykelle he hadde labored, he myghte on no manere haue hadde þat hee wolde: atte laste for sorowe hee slode in to þe dyche of dispaire, in so myche þat hee hopyd to gete saluacyone no-wyse in þe state of corrupcyone þat hee was in, as he þat countid deedly synnes þoos þat are venyalle -- þe whiche wee maye not wante in þis lyfe. Wherefore hee wolde not receyue Crystes body any-maner, not þoos dayes þat were ordayned þere-to in þe ordyr. Lo, to how grete unhappe and to how mikel and how myserabil fal under þe coloure of gode þat olde enmye drowe a symple soule, þat was sieke and fledde salue, 7 þat onys hadde forsaken his owne wille, putte aweye from hym þe 3ok of obedyens.
And, atte I telle a fabil not fabulous and sey fals not falsly, 

þis monke þat assyed to come to þe euenlike state of þe firste fadir, to whome is hee like but vnto a paddoke, þat seynge an ox of grete strengthe and fayre quantite, wolde haue comen to þe gretnnesse of hym and hane be like to þe same ox; þen she bygan wiþ grete enfors to streke hir and blowe hir-selfe abrode; but in veyne: for þos she hadde brosten, she myghte not haue taken þe quantite of þe ox.

And so þat broþer, while hee wolde haue enhaunced hym-selfe aboue hymselfe, felle wrecchidly be dispeyre vndir hym-selfe.]

The lesson of the fable is as conservative as usual (from Caxton's version, "The poure ought not to compare hym self to hym which is ryche and myghty").

I'm struck less by the strangeness of comparing an overfastidious monk to a toad than I am by the greater lesson: this life here demands not purity but a reasonable accommodation with corruption. Impurity can only be managed.

Maybe it's just because I'm an ecocritical crank, but with Jacques de Vitry, and with a good awareness of enmeshment in this Naufragocene (more on Steve Mentz's great new book, later), I think the lesson of the toad and ox fable, secularized, could be: "The corruptible ought not to compare hym self to hym which is incorruptible."

The conservative lesson of the fables, so seemingly poisonous from a gender, Marxist, or sexuality studies perspective, is, from an ecological perspective, the key lesson: you must make do, but don't expect miracles. Don't expect an escape. As our friend Steve writes:

Shipwreck is not something to prepare for, something that is about to happen. It is happening. Now. We are inside it,  not waiting for it. Castaways, that name belongs to our present and our future both. (163)

So, hello fellow toads! Let's do what we toads can.