La Fontaine: The Virtue of Absentmindedness

Charming naivety has allowed 'Fables' to go uncensored, from the court of the Sun King to the modern French classroom

"Fables" by Jean de La Fontaine features more than 200 adapted and original fables, keenly demonstrating the foibles of human nature, morals, and society. Nastasic/Getty

It’s often forgotten that being memorized is the best way to be remembered. For centuries, British schoolchildren had to learn to recite the first 20 lines of Geoffrey Chaucer’s general prologue from the “Canterbury Tales.” Then that got thrown out. Now, Chaucer has, for most people, joined that long list of vague names inhabiting a vague past.

Jean de La Fontaine, the greatest fable writer since Aesop, has yet to suffer this fate. This is, I would argue, something to be celebrated. Just as nobody would say that a history student who couldn’t recall facts was good, literary appreciation requires the enlistment of memory. Fortunately for French schoolchildren, La Fontaine’s charming verse makes this task only minimally torturous.

An Innocent Genius

Born in 1621, La Fontaine lived during the age of Louis XIV, a period similar to the Elizabethan age in its rich productions of poetry and drama. He was described by those who knew him as charming and absentminded. According to his wife, he would often forget that he was married. Once, he struggled to recognize a familiar face at a party—his own son, it turned out. Another time, he visited the house of an old friend. When told the friend had died six months previously, La Fontaine expressed shock—then remembered that he had attended the friend’s funeral.