Episode Details

The Fables of Ivan Krylov — Episode Twenty-One

Five fables by Ivan Krylov (1769–1844), in new English verse translations made for this show, read aloud over a gentle instrumental bed.

The Little Raft (Плотичка, Book VII, No. 5) — Krylov opens with a moth circling a candle, then warns how a "mere frolic" hardens into habit, passion, and vice. His example is a quick, sly little roach who spins round the fishermen's hooks, strips the bait, and laughs at them — until, boasting she sees through every trick, she dashes at the hooks once too often and is caught on the third.

The Man with Three Wives (Троеженец, Book I, No. 20) — A sinner marries two more wives while the first still lives, and the stern Tsar orders his judges to invent a punishment so terrible that no one will ever dare it again — on pain of the judges themselves being hanged. After three days of cold-sweat deliberation, the court sentences him to keep all three wives. The realm takes the lesson to heart.

The Master and the Mice (Хозяин и Мыши, Book III, No. 3) — Krylov's opening moral warns: if goods are stolen and the thief is unknown, do not punish everyone. A merchant staffs his storehouses with a police of cats, but when one watch-cat turns thief, he orders every cat whipped — honest and guilty alike flee the yard, and the mice finish the stock in a fortnight.

The Mechanic (Механик, Book IV, No. 9) — A young man buys a splendid, solid old house with one flaw: it stands too far from the water. Enchanted by mechanics, he plans to drag the whole house to the river on rollers — feasting inside with friends and music as it travels, like a carriage. He hires workmen, digs beneath the foundations, spares no expense, and achieves exactly one thing.

The Merchant (Купец, Book VIII, No. 11) — Boasting to his nephew, a merchant tells how he just passed off a length of old, damp, rotten Polish cloth as English cloth and pocketed a hundred for it — "God sent a simpleton." The nephew looks closer at the banknote: it is counterfeit. Krylov's closing lines find the same single reckoning far above the shops.

Krylov Fables.

Intermission: "2-21" — instrumental.

KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.