"Better a living beggar than a buried emperor"
About this Quote
Survival beats status: that is the cold little engine inside La Fontaine's line, and it purrs because it punctures a whole civilization built on ceremony. "Better a living beggar than a buried emperor" takes the glamour of rank and subjects it to the one audit no court can bribe: mortality. The contrast is blunt, almost comic in its staging. Beggar and emperor are social extremes, but the poem's real pair is simpler and nastier: alive versus dead. Once the terms are set, the hierarchy collapses. An emperor doesn't even get to compete. He's "buried" before his titles can matter.
La Fontaine's intent is moral, but not pious. As a fabulist writing under Louis XIV's absolutist spectacle, he specialized in saying dangerous things sideways. A line like this performs that sideways movement: it reads as common sense, even peasant wisdom, while quietly demoting the entire pageantry of power to a costume that cannot outlast a pulse. The subtext is a warning aimed upward and a consolation aimed down. To the powerful: your grandeur is leased, not owned. To everyone else: your life is not a footnote to someone else's coronation.
It also carries an implied rebuke of ambition and vanity, two forces that look respectable in a palace and pathetic in a grave. La Fontaine doesn't need to argue against empire; he lets death do the critique. That's why it lands: the punchline is physics.
La Fontaine's intent is moral, but not pious. As a fabulist writing under Louis XIV's absolutist spectacle, he specialized in saying dangerous things sideways. A line like this performs that sideways movement: it reads as common sense, even peasant wisdom, while quietly demoting the entire pageantry of power to a costume that cannot outlast a pulse. The subtext is a warning aimed upward and a consolation aimed down. To the powerful: your grandeur is leased, not owned. To everyone else: your life is not a footnote to someone else's coronation.
It also carries an implied rebuke of ambition and vanity, two forces that look respectable in a palace and pathetic in a grave. La Fontaine doesn't need to argue against empire; he lets death do the critique. That's why it lands: the punchline is physics.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
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