Equality — a morality tale
September 15th, 2023
I am a simple man with simple tastes.
Well, that doesn’t sound right.
I am a sophisticated man with refined tastes.
And that doesn’t sound right either.
I am a complex man with various tastes that change depending on the situation and my moods and a variety of other things and stimuli.
One taste that stays the same is the guilty pleasure I find in reading simple morality tales. I mean, I like fairy tales as well — there is always an underlying mythological foundation there — but a tale that drives a point by criticizing or making fun of our behavior is always welcomed by me.
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 career, judging by the fact that he has no entry on Wikipedia in English, and 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.
Equality
A man was standing on the top of the mountain.
Another man was walking on the ground approaching the mountain.
A man from the top of the mountain spotted the man below.
A man on the ground lifted his head and spotted the man on the mountain.
“He looks like a fly, so tiny and insignificant,” thought the man on the top of the mountain about the man below.
“He looks like a flea, so tiny and insignificant,” thought the man on the ground about the man on top of the mountain.
“I will go down to the ground to this tiny man so he can see me in full glory and might,” thought the man on the top of the mountain about the man below.
“ I will climb up the mountain to this tiny man so he can see me in full glory and might,” thought the man on the ground about the man on top of the mountain.
One man went downhill as the other went uphill.
They met halfway down the mountain.
They were surprised that when they met in the middle they were of equal size and might.
