LeSSon 1

COLOBOC (Traditional Russian Tale)

<< The Art of Vanity >>

Fortunately our culture has maintained the tradition of eating bread at meals. Delicius, no?

Take a little flour, two teaspoons of milk, a little butter and a pinch of salt. Mix all the ingredients well and make a ball. Put it in the oven and in half an hour you´ll have your coloboc. 

This is what an old lady in a poor neighborhood in Moscow baked. And the little bread felt so golden and beautiful that he jumped through the window so that they could admire his beauty. He rolled down the street until he found a hare.

"Oh, what a golden color!" said the hare licking his mustache. "Will you let me try you?"

"Yes, yes, that´s what you think" answered the little bread and followed his path.

Then he found and enormous bear that told him the same thing as the hare, to which the coloboc answered the same and stayed there showing off his tanned beauty and eluding the answers. 

The little bread was so content that he began to sing until a fox crossed his path and said to him: "Why do you sing? To frigthen away your troubles?"

"Just the opposite", answered the coloboc, "I´m very happy because..." and he began to tell everything to the fox.

"Whaaaat?", said the fox with his mouth watering. "I´m a little deaf. Why don´t you get a little closer?" And the vain coloboc got so close that in one mouthful the fox ate him up.

It´s hard to control the ego in a society that more and more values "vanitas vanitatis"