Iván Ivánovich Khémnitser. (1745-1784.)
Khémnitser was the son of a German physician who had emigrated to Russia. At thirteen years of age he left his home and entered military service, which he left in 1769 as a lieutenant; he then served in the Department of Mines, and died in Smyrna, where he was Russian consul. Khémnitser translated La Fontaine’s and Gellert’s fables, but two-thirds of all the fables he wrote are his own. He forms the transitional stage between Sumarókov and Krylóv, and is distinguished for extreme simplicity of language and a certain elegiac tone.
Sir John Bowring has translated his The House-Builder, The Rich and the Poor Man, The Lion’s Council of State, and The Waggons. Sutherland Edwards, in his The Russians at Home, gives a version of The Metaphysician, which is also reprinted in F. R. Grahame’s The Progress of Science, Art and Literature in Russia.
THE LION’S COUNCIL OF STATE
A lion held a court for state affairs:
Why? That is not your business, sir, ’twas theirs!
He called the elephants for counsellors—still
The council-board was incomplete;
And the king deemed it fit
With asses all the vacancies to fill.
Heaven help the state—for lo! the bench of asses
The bench of elephants by far surpasses.
He was a fool, the foresaid king, you’ll say:
Better have kept those places vacant surely,
Than fill them up so poorly.
O no! that’s not the royal way;
Things have been done for ages thus,—and we
Have a deep reverence for antiquity:
Naught worse, sir, than to be, or to appear
Wiser and better than our fathers were.
The list must be complete, even though you make it
Complete with asses; for the lion saw
Such had for ages been the law,—
He was no radical to break it!
“Besides,” he said, “my elephants’ good sense
Will soon my asses’ ignorance diminish,
For wisdom has a mighty influence.”
They made a pretty finish!
The asses’ folly soon obtained the sway:
The elephants became as dull as they!
—From Sir John Bowring’s Specimens of the Russian Poets, Part I.
THE METAPHYSICIAN
A father had heard that children were sent beyond the sea to study, and that those who had been abroad are invariably preferred to those who had never been there, and that such people are respected as being possessed of wisdom. Seeing this, he decided to send his son also beyond the sea, for he was rich and did not wish to fall behind the others.
His son learned something, but, being stupid, returned more stupid yet. He had fallen into the hands of scholastic prevaricators who more than once have deprived people of their senses by giving explanations of inexplicable things; they taught him no whit, and sent him home a fool for ever. Formerly he used to utter simply stupid things, but now he gave them a scientific turn. Formerly fools only could not understand him, but now even wise men could not grasp him: his home, the city, the whole world, was tired of his chattering.
Once, raving in a metaphysical meditation over an old proposition to find the first cause of all things,—while he was soaring in the clouds in thought,—he walked off the road and fell into a ditch. His father, who happened to be with him, hastened to bring a rope, in order to save the precious wisdom of his house. In the meantime his wise offspring sat in the ditch and meditated: “What can be the cause of my fall? The cause of my stumbling,” the wiseacre concluded, “is an earthquake. And the precipitous tendency towards the ditch may have been produced by an aërial pressure, and a coactive interrelation of the seven planets and the earth and ditch.”...
His father arrived with the rope: “Here,” he said, “is a rope for you! Take hold of it, and I will pull you out. Hold on to it and do not let it slip!” “No, don’t pull yet: tell me first what kind of a thing is a rope?”
His father was not a learned man, but he had his wits about him, so, leaving his foolish question alone, he said: “A rope is a thing with which to pull people out of ditches into which they have fallen.” “Why have they not invented a machine for that? A rope is too simple a thing.” “’T would take time for that,” his father replied, “whereas your salvation is now at hand.” “Time? What kind of a thing is time?” “Time is a thing that I am not going to waste with a fool. Stay there,” his father said, “until I shall return!”
How would it be if all the other verbose talkers were collected and put in the ditch to serve him as companions? Well, it would take a much larger ditch for that.