Competition | 31 October 2009

In Competition No. 2619 you were invited to submit a short fable culminating in a mangled aphorism. The fabulous theme of this comp is a salute to Jaspistos, celebrated translator of fables, whose rendering of La Fontaine’s was deemed by the not-easily-pleased Geoffrey Grigson to have been unsurpassed, ‘earthier and sharper than Marianne Moore’s’. The assignment was also a somewhat backhanded tribute to that most exacting of forms, the aphorism, described by Auden and Louis Kronenberger, in their foreword to The Faber Book of Aphorisms, as ‘an aristocratic genre of writing’.

There was a lot to live up to, then, which perhaps accounted for a lower than usual turnout and a patchy standard overall. Some fables were going great guns, like Aesop’s hare, but then faltered short of the finishing line and failed to deliver on the aphoristic challenge. Commendations, none the less, to Tom Durrheim, Shirley Curran, Virginia Price Evans and Brian Murdoch. Storming in to claim the bonus fiver is P.C. Parrish. His co-winners, printed below, net £30 apiece.

There once were two princes vying for the hand of a beautiful maiden. Prince A was the heir to a spectacular mountain kingdom, Prince Z would be emperor of lands made bountiful by a mighty river. Each of them vowed undying love for the maiden, and she was at a loss to choose between them. After much thought, she asked them both to provide a gift that symbolised their feelings for her — the gift to have no more monetary value than a loaf of bread. Prince Z offered a goblet of water drawn from the source of his river, standing for the pure clarity of his devotion. Prince A laid before her a pointed shard of rock from his loftiest peak to represent Cupid’s heart-piercing arrow.