You remember Aesop’s fable, don’t you, about the grasshopper who whiled away the summer months, singing and making  music , while the ant worked to store up food for winter?  As we watch events unfold in Europe, and Greece seems fated to become the scapegoat for the turning of blind eyes during years of EC financial shenanigans, it is as if we are watching Europe divide itself along North/South lines much older than any political divisions.

It has been called the bread line: the languages of Northern Europe use some version of the word bread (brot, brod) and the languages of southern Europe use some version of the French pain (pan, pane). The architecture of northern Europe was Gothic, while the architecture of the south was Romanesque.  France was notionally divided between the langue d’oc  (the south) and the langue d’oïl (the north). The Italians of the north refer somewhat disparagingly to the south of Italy as the  mezzo-giorno, ‘the land of the midday’ [sun], by inference where not much work gets done.

Zorba, the character created by Nikos Kazantakis, played by Anthony Quinn in this clip from the film, personifies the understanding of life in Southern Europe. The ‘suited and booted’ Alan Bates, on the other hand, typifies the hard-working northern European, willing to be seduced on annual holidays by the dolce far niente of  the Mediterranean, while continuing to return to the serious business of living (and the Protestant work ethic) at the end of summer.

The beaches of Greece fill every year with holidaymakers from the north of Europe. It is these same people, personified by Angela Merkel, who now play the role of the self-righteous ant:

I like best the version by  Jean de La Fontaine

La cigale ayant chanté
Tout l’été,
Se trouva fort dépourvue
Quand la bise fut venue :
Pas un seul petit morceau
De mouche ou de vermisseau.
Elle alla crier famine
Chez la fourmi sa voisine,
La priant de lui prêter
Quelque grain pour subsister
Jusqu’à la saison nouvelle.
« Je vous paierai, lui dit-elle,
Avant l’août, foi d’animal,
Intérêt et principal. »
La fourmi n’est pas prêteuse :
C’est là son moindre défaut.
« Que faisiez-vous au temps chaud ?
Dit-elle à cette emprunteuse.
— Nuit et jour à tout venant
Je chantais, ne vous déplaise.
— Vous chantiez ? J’en suis fort aise :
Eh bien ! Dansez maintenant. »

The story is used to teach the virtues of hard work and the perils of improvidence. Some versions of the fable state a moral at the end, along the lines of “Idleness brings want”, “To work today is to eat tomorrow”, “Beware of winter before it comes”. The point of view is supportive of the ant, as in the  Book of Proverbs: “Go to the ant, you sluggard! Consider her ways and be wise, which having no captain, overseer or ruler, provides her supplies in the summer, and gathers her food in the harvest” (6.6-9).

But, as Christians, we should perhaps also look at this story from the point of view of the ant’s morality. Gustave Doré  illustrated the story thus:

As Wikipedia has it:

The readers of his time were aware of the Christian duty of charity and therefore sensed the moral ambiguity of the fable. This is further brought out by Gustave Doré’s 1880s print which pictures the story as a human situation. A female musician stands at a door in the snow with the children of the house looking up at her with sympathy. Their mother looks down from the top of the steps. Her tireless industry is indicated by the fact that she continues knitting but, in a country where the knitting-women (les tricoteuses) had jeered at the victims of the guillotine during the French Revolution, this activity would also have been associated with lack of pity.

Well, what do you think? On moral grounds, whose side do you take? Can it be right that rich northern Europeans leave some of the Greeks now unable to eat?

What would Jesus do?

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‘The cricket had sung her song all summer long but found her victuals too few when the north wind blew. Nowhere could she espy a single morsel of worm or fly. Her neighbour, the ant, might, she thought, help her in her plight, and she begged her for a little grain till summer would come back again. “By next August I’ll repay both Interest and principal; animal’s oath.” Now, the ant may have a fault or two But lending is not something she will do. She asked what the cricket did in summer. “By night and day, to any comer I sang whenever I had the chance.”“You sang, did you? That’s nice. Now dance.” Tr. Don Webb