Friendship — just a tale
September 21st, 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.
Friendship.
A Hermit lived in a forest. In the same forest, a bear lived there as well. Eventually, they met, and even though they both liked being alone, they found out that they liked each other’s company and they became good friends. They would visit each other and spend time together like friends do. They didn’t speak to each other in words, since that happened after people and animals shared a common language, but they understood each other well. One day, the hermit lay down and went to sleep next to a sprawling bear. That was the time when an aggressive wasp decided to fly next to and even attempted to land on the sleeping hermit’s face. Bear seeing that, gently moved his paw to keep the wasp at bay. The wasp was relentless in its annoying aggressiveness, but the bear was resolute and kept moving his paw chasing the wasp away. Eventually, the wasp gave up and flew away and the hermit woke up unharmed. Bear never told the hermit about this incident, since, as I mentioned, he and the hermit didn’t share a language and, besides — why would he do that? There is no need to tell and announce your good and altruistic deeds, since once you say it out loud — those deeds are no longer good and altruistic. You just do good things for people you like and they don’t need to know about them, since they will return the same to you without obligations. That understanding makes good people and good friends.
