Credulity — a morality tale

September 17th, 2023

I found a book of morality tales, written at the beginning of the 20th century by Polish poet Jan Lemański. He never had much of a literary or public career — except as a scandalous husband of quite an extraordinary person — judging mostly by the fact that he has no entry on Wikipedia in English. He might be completely forgotten today, even in Poland, but I read his poems with pleasure and his tales are exquisite as well and just a touch absurdist — the way I like them. I will present some of them here, with my translation and paraphrasing — as he wrote in verse and I write in prose.

Credulity.

There was a goose living in a yard overlooking the lake. There were beautiful swans on the lake and the goose longed to be like them and to be with them, instead of living in a dirty and fenced-in yard. The farmer hearing that, convinced the goose that if she eats a lot she will grow to be just like swans and be able to join them. So the goose ate and ate and ate until she could barely move, constantly reminding herself that if she kept on eating, soon she would become a swan. One day, after a month of constant gorging, the goose was convinced that she was a swan already. Seeing the open gate, she waddled toward the lake and the swans she admired so much, being sure that she had already become like them. But since she was so fat, she couldn’t walk very fast and the farmer, seeing what was happening, caught up with her. Taking her in his arms and feeling the weight and the fat of this very plump goose, he quickly broke her neck and took the dead bird to the house to prepare for the massive feast.