Everyone who read Aesop’s fables, I. A. Krylov, and then immediately picked up a volume of Leo Tolstoy, probably asked himself, what is the peculiarity of Tolstoy’s fables? It is precisely this question that our article will try to answer.
Fables focus on a specific age audience
First of all, it is necessary to answer the question of why Lev Nikolaevich translated and composed fables.
It is unlikely that readers will believe that I. A. Krylov, Aesop, or Lafontaine had any special task. They composed fables because they did it, and others liked their works. But Leo Tolstoy is not like that, he composed his fables with intent, or rather, he had a definite task: to sow "good and bright" in the souls of children. One answer to the question of what is unusual about Tolstoy’s fables is this: they are peculiar because they pursued a definite goal - to teach the child to do the right thing. And the fables are special, as they are oriented to a certain age group - children.
"Teacher" moment in the fables of the Russian classic
To fully understand Tolstoy’s task, one must compare his fables and the fables of the ancient Greek - Aesop. In the Greek, all fables are endowed with the morality “not for growth”, that is, in the writings of Aesop in a capacious form recorded folk wisdom. For example, the fable "Eagle, Jackdaw and Shepherd" says that you can not compete with those who surpass you in natural data. The famous fox "The Fox and the Grapes" ridicules people's penchant for self-justification. And there are a lot of such examples.
What is unusual about Tolstoy’s fables? The fact that they have a moral "growth". For example, the fable “The Dog and its Shadow” teaches children (or adults) that you need to compete only with yourself and not look at others, even if your neighbor has “a piece of meat is fatter” than yours. The fable "Liar" tells of a boy who, for no reason, shouted: "Wolves! Wolves! ”, And when the predators came and ate the whole herd, nobody helped the shepherd, because he deceived more than once. The fable “Two comrades” teaches children mutual assistance and the fact that you can’t leave a person in difficult times.
In other words, Tolstoy’s fables are endowed with easily recognizable moral content, and besides, they are extremely close to our children, because when Lev Nikolayevich translated Aesop’s fables or composed his own, he tried to make them understandable to Russian people.
The moral content of fables
Moral children can be taught in different ways. You can set aside every day, for example 2 hours, and teach the mind, but it is likely that the child will soon run away from home and hate the parents soon after such systematic notations. And you can read fables to the child and, together with him, analyze their moral meaning, thereby checking how well the son (or daughter) has learned the simplest rules of behavior in society. Fables are “moral injections with a pleasant aftertaste,” and they, among other things, teach the child to read.
The works of L. N. Tolstoy are studied by children in secondary schools. Therefore, to the question of what is unusual about Tolstoy’s fables, 4th grade (his students) are already able to answer independently.
The philosophical content of fables by L. N. Tolstoy
But there remained one more layer of Tolstoy's fables, which the child is not able to recognize and see, namely: the philosophical content of Leo Tolstoy's fables. Of course, those fables are rare in which the philosophical content is not invented, but is really embedded in them. For example, the fable “The Dog and its Shadow” already cited here contains not only worldly, psychological, but also a deeply philosophical meaning: a person should work only on himself. Neither anger nor envy should confuse his mind. He must leave behind the threshold of all seven deadly sins, and most anxieties must remain there.
What is the peculiarity of Tolstoy's fables, if allegory is present in them as a necessary component? Is it only of folk or worldly character? Of course not. The allegoricalness of Tolstoy's fables leads not only to folk and worldly wisdom, but also to the truths of world religions.