Episode Details

The Fables of Ivan Krylov — Episode Thirty-Four

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

The Spendthrift and the Swallow (Мот и Ласточка, Book VII, No. 4) — A young fellow inherits a rich estate and spends it all, down to his last fur coat — which he keeps only because it is winter. Then he sees a swallow, decides spring is here and a coat is no longer needed, and spends that too. He has forgotten the old proverb about one swallow, and when the frosts return he finds his herald of warm days frozen on the snow.

The Spider and the Bee (Паук и Пчела, Book VII, No. 8) — Krylov opens with his verdict: talents in which the world finds no benefit are worthless, however much the world may marvel at them. A merchant's linens sell briskly at the fair, and an envious Spider weaves all night and opens his own little shop in a window to undercut him. Day comes, and Spider and shop are swept away with a broom — and the Bee's closing answer tells him exactly what his finer weaving is missing.

The Squire's Wife and the Two Servant Girls (Госпожа и две Служанки, Book V, No. 5) — Two servant girls spin for a fussy, grumbling old mistress from morning to deep night, and at dawn a rooster's crow always wakes her in time to shake them from their beds, stick and all. The girls blame the rooster, choose their chance, and do away with him — and learn too late, in Krylov's closing lines, what it means to fall out of the fire into the flame.

The Squirrel — Book Eight (Белка, Book VIII, No. 4) — A Squirrel serves the Lion, and pleasing a Lion is no trifle. For her service a whole cartload of nuts is promised her — but the promise is all she gets while the years fly by, and she often goes hungry, watching her friends crack nuts in the treetops. At last, old and retired, she is sent the cartload at last: glorious nuts, every one choice. There is only one thing wrong with them.

The Squirrel — Book Nine (Белка, Book IX, No. 2) — On a village holiday, a crowd gathers under a landowner's window to marvel at a Squirrel running in a wheel, paws flashing, tail puffed out. A Thrush on a birch branch asks what she is doing there, and she says she labours all day as a great master's messenger, with no time to eat, drink, or even breathe. The Thrush's answer, and Krylov's closing lines, are for every busy man who tears himself out of his skin and never gets forward at all.

Krylov Fables.

KacheliTV — Russian classics, read aloud.