The Blind Man and the Lame

Did You Know?

• Andrea Alciato adapted the epigram by Leonidas into Latin and used it in his Book of Emblems (1534) to symbolise mutual support.
• Jan Sadeler's Emblemata evangelica ad XII signa coelestia (Antwerp, 1585) pictures the pair crossing a plank bridge in the lower foreground of a majestic landscape.
• An 18th-century Low Countries print titled "The Allegory of Poverty" shows the blind man carrying a cripple in a rural setting, with a huntsman defending a sleeping man from a feral dog.

Western Asian sources

Four epigrams in the Greek Anthology tell of a blind man and a lame man. Plato the Younger sums it up in two witty, contrasting lines: the blind man carried the lame man on his back, giving him feet and borrowing his eyes. The other three epigrammatists, among them Leonidas of Alexandria and Antiphilus of Byzantium, note that together they form a perfect whole. A West Asian version appears in the Apocryphon of Ezekiel, where the pair team up to rob an orchard but plead innocence by citing their disabilities. A similar story is found in the Jewish Talmud (Sanhedrin 91), and another in Islamic tradition set during Jesus’ childhood. The idea of mutual aid persisted into medieval times, showing up in the Gesta Romanorum around 1300. In that Latin tale, an emperor announces a grand feast, and the lame man suggests how he and the blind man can get there. In the same century, a fresco in Lesnovo monastery depicts a paralyzed boy riding on a blind man’s shoulders, both seeking a cure for leprosy and illustrating cooperation to overcome disabilities.

European fables

The theme does not appear in fable collections until Christian Fürchtegott Gellert included it in his verse collection Fabeln und Erzählungen (1746–1748). In this a blind man in the street asks a cripple for help and suggests how they can aid each other. The moral he draws is that mutual support goes beyond charity to become a model for all of society. When Robert Dodsley adapted the story in the "Modern Fables" section of his Select fables of Esop and other fabulists (1754), he gave it a context from which later versions were to develop. In his prose version, the two meet at "a difficult place in the road" and Dodsley follows Gellert in prefacing it with the comment that "the wants and weaknesses of individuals form the connections of society". Dodsley's version was later illustrated by Thomas Bewick and included in his Select Fables of Aesop (1818). During the 19th century the story was often ascribed simply to Aesop. The nature of Dodsley's "difficult place" is redefined as "a dangerous place" in Jefferys Taylor's Aesop in Rhyme (1820), which the illustration reveals to be planks laid over a brook. In Brooke Boothby's treatment in his Fables and Satires (1809), the two meet at a ford and help each other across, as also happens in Marmarduke Park's Aesop in Rhyme or old friends in a new dress (Philadelphia 1852). The French fabulist Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian gives his story of L'aveugle et le paralytique a completely different urban setting in Asia, prefaced by a saying of Confucius. There were two translations of this fable into English, one by the Rev. William Lipscomb and the other by the Canadian poet Sarah Ann Curzon (1887).

Visual interpretations

Claris de Florian's version achieved lasting popularity, but its Chinese setting was largely ignored by illustrators. Notable exceptions include Benjamin Rabier's 1906 broadsheet with Chinese-style illustrations and Armand Rapeño's illustration in a 1949 edition of Florian's fables. The fable was also given a Japanese background in an edition illustrated by traditional woodcuts published from Tokyo in 1895. Two later Belgian treatments are set in rural locations. Eugene Laermans pictures the pair side by side crossing a stone bridge, the blind man with a cane in his right hand, the lame with a crutch in his left and his own right hand hooked through the other's arm. Anto Carte's painting of 1926–1930 places the pair in a Brabant landscape with the recognisable spire of the church at Ohain downslope; this scene was reused on a 1954 set of Belgian charity stamps. Previously there had been several compassionate treatments in French art over the last quarter of the 19th century. Auguste-Barthélemy Glaize's painting for the 1877 Salon was made part of the French exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Adaptations

Honoré Daumier used Florian's fable for political satire in a caricature, "Blind system and paralytic diplomacy", published in Le Charivari in 1834, picturing King Louis Philippe staggering under the weight of Talleyrand. Such treatment contributed to the French idiom "L'union de l'aveugle et le paralytique", used ironically in reference to any unpromising partnership. Another such appears in a poster by Jules Grandjouan with reference to conflicting interests in the Edouard Herriot government of 1924. The situation was used to more positive effect during World War I to illustrate the care of soldiers for each other on the battlefield. Lucien Jonas pictured such a scene under the heading of Devotion in his album Les Grandes Vertus Françaises, drawing on Turcan's statue. The theme was repeated on a contemporary Belgian lapel badge inscribed Hommage aux soldats invalides. Turcan's statue also formed the basis for a satirical photomontage during World War II depicting Joseph Stalin riding on the back of Adolf Hitler, appearing in the magazine Marianne under the signature Marinus.