Poetry
Пан та собака
Not translated into English
Petro Hulak-Artemovsky · 1818
Synopsis
Night falls on an estate. Only Riabko, the yard dog, does not sleep: he watches over the master's livestock like a brother, makes the rounds of the henhouse and the pigsty and barks at the top of his voice to drive off thieves. In the morning, the whole yard calls him; he runs up wagging his tail, sure that the leftovers of the roast are waiting for him. He is beaten black and blue, and the valet Iavtoukh tells him the reason: the day before, the master had lost at cards, and the barking kept him from sleeping.
Context
The starting point is a four-line fable by the Pole Ignacy Krasicki, expanded with episodes from one of his satires: the Ukrainian text carries it to nearly two hundred lines, rich in sayings and scenes from the farmyard. The author called it a tale. It appeared in 1818 in the Ukrainskii vestnik, a Kharkiv periodical to which the author was then contributing his verse, at a time when serf-owners were attacked only in veiled terms, and the animal fable provided this cover. A French prose version appears in the anthology that the Ukrainian Sociological Institute published in 1921.
Who it is for
A short poem, read in one sitting. The word pan means the landowner, and critics read the dog of the fable as the figure of the serf.
Prizes and reception
The best known of its author's fables, regarded as the first verse fable of modern Ukrainian literature.
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