La Fontaine and the Subversion of Poetry

Abstract

There is a line in La Fontaine’s Fables: ‘L’onde était transparente ainsi qu’aux plus beaux jours’, which has often been commented on (notably by Odette de Mourgues)¹ for its beauty. It is also a bit of a joke. For us, sensitive readers of poetry that we are, and delicate appreciators of nature, the water attains that limpidity which we associate with the clearest, most perfect weathers. For the heron in the scene (the line is in ‘Le Héron’, Book VII, fable 4), the transparency of the water allows him to see the fish, and promises him another substantial catch like those he remembers from his best days’ angling. The bird’s prosaic gaze subverts the line throughout its length, reading into it another, gastronomic, meaning and altering most completely, and perhaps pointedly, the word ‘beaux’.