The Cat and the Mirror

Fable by Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian Period 18th century

Bold philosophers, who spend your life
wanting to explain what cannot be explained,
deign to listen, I beg you,
to this tale of the wisest of cats.
On a dressing table
this cat caught sight of a mirror;
he leaps upon it, looks, and at first thinks he sees
one of his brothers watching him.
Our cat wants to join him, but finds himself stopped.
Surprised, he then judges the glass transparent,
and goes around to the other side,
finds nothing, comes back, and the cat appears again.
He reflects a moment: for fear the animal,
while he makes the turn, might slip away,
he straddles the top of the mirror,
two paws on this side, two on that; in this way
he could seize him anywhere.
Then, believing he truly holds him,
he gently leans his head toward the glass,
catches sight of an ear, then two… at once,
to the right, to the left he goes flinging
his claw, which he holds all ready:
but he loses his balance, falls, and has caught nothing.
Then, without waiting any longer,
without seeking further what he cannot
understand,
he leaves the mirror and returns to the mice:
what do I care, he says, about piercing this mystery?
A thing that our mind,
after long labor, neither understands nor grasps,
is never necessary to us.

Florian

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/fable-the-cat-and-the-mirror-jean-pierre-claris-de-florian/