**Out of Time, Out of Space, Out of Species: Deictic Displacement of the Exiled Self in Hans Sahl's "Der Maulwurf" (The Mole)**

#### **Carla Swiderski**

Institute for German Language and Literature, Universität Hamburg, 20146 Hamburg, Germany; carla.swiderski@studium.uni-hamburg.de

Received: 19 January 2018; Accepted: 2 February 2018; Published: 8 February 2018

**Abstract:** In Hans Sahl's poem "Der Maulwurf" (The Mole), only the title gives an indication about the speaker's species affiliation. The speaker of the poem suggests that he was transformed from a human into an animal. This metamorphosis is not only physical, but also seems to have had an impact on the position of the speaker regarding his position in time and space. In this article, I analyze temporal, spatial, and physiological changes in the poem, and I argue that they are indicative of a theme of displacement that is embodied in animal existence in the text. Specifically, these shifts construct an exiled lyric identity whose transformation from human to animal creates an experience of displacement on every pane of existence.

**Keywords:** animal narration; Hans Sahl; lyric poetry; mole; space; time; species; metamorphosis; transformation; exile

"Lohnt es sich noch, für den Menschen zu sein, nachdem er uns schon so lange enttäuscht hat?" (Sahl 1991a).

(Is it still worthwhile to be in favor of humankind, since it has been disappointing us for such a long time?)1.

#### **1. Introduction**

Hans Sahl (1902–1993) was a German author of literary criticism, poems, short stories, plays, and a novel—some say the novel of exile (Martini 1976; Kellenter 1982).<sup>2</sup> In 1933, he was forced to flee Germany because of the fascist Nazi-regime, as he was Jewish and associated with the political left. After the end of World War II, he remained in New York City and became a US-citizen, but he still considered it exile, although the immediate political threat was over. In several essays, he discussed the complication that exile did not end for him, and that it was impossible for him to return to his home country and start over.<sup>3</sup> He returned to Germany only for the last few years of his life. I therefore contend that a major theme of Hans Sahl's writings is the experience of a perpetual state of exile, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in every piece.4

<sup>1</sup> All German-to-English translations in this article are mine.

<sup>2</sup> As with many exiled authors, researchers focus much more on Sahl's biography than his literary output, because the primary goal of scholarship was to track the personal histories and make the writings accessible for a long time. Of those who do consider his writing, most studies concentrate on his novel *Die Wenigen und die Vielen* (1959; *The Few and the Many*), written between 1942 and 1945 and on his late autobiographical works *Memoiren eines Moralisten* (1983; *Memoirs of a Moralist*) and *Das Exil im Exil* (1994; *Exile in Exile*). Only very few scholarly works take Sahl's poems into account, e.g., Andrea Reiter (Reiter 1998), who also wrote a comprehensive biography (Reiter 2007); especially the late ones are barely recognized, even though they are an essential part of his oeuvre. For more about Sahl's identity see (Reiter 2004).

<sup>3</sup> E.g., *Das Exil nach dem Exil* (*Exile after Exile* (Sahl 1987)) and *Gast in fremden Kulturen* (*Guest in Foreign Cultures* (Sahl 1964)).

<sup>4</sup> For a broader study on exile in Sahl's work see (Hess 2006).

This article focuses on Sahl's poem "Der Maulwurf" (The Mole (Sahl 1991b)). It was first published in a magazine in 1988, and later included in a collection of poems entitled *Wir sind die Letzten/Der Maulwurf* (1991; *We Are the Last*/*The Mole*). Even though the second part of the collection is called "Neue Gedichte" (New Poems), and many of them were written in the 1970s or 1980s, they focus on the Second World War, exile, and related subjects.<sup>5</sup> "Der Maulwurf" is one of the poems that seems not to be related to exile, at least not at first glance. But the speaker of the poem is a migrant, albeit an unusual one. He6 appears to be the titular mole, although that assumption is not confirmed conclusively in the poem, since it is voiced in the first person without an external introduction or description of the focalizing speaker.7 Yet, taking the mole for the speaker complies with the conventional reading of a role poem, which means that the voice of the poem is also a character that speaks from its point of view.8 One can presume, however, that the speaker has not been a mole for his entire life, because he mentions that he once lived among human beings. This suggests that the speaker changed his species affiliation and transformed from a human being into a mole. He moved from human society to the realm of animals and plants, it seems, not entirely voluntarily, and thus addresses the structures of exile in figurative ways. That leads to questions, such as: How does the transformation from human into animal affect the world shown in the poem? Is the physiological appearance of the speaker connected to his position in space and time? Are there any signs of displacement? What does the image of a mole add to the scenery of the poem? In order to answer these questions, this article will focus on the three categories of space, time, and physiology before reflecting on the choice of a mole for this poem.

#### **2. Shifts in Space, Time, and Physiology**

Before analyzing space, time, and physiology, I will introduce the poem itself. It is dominated by an I ("ich" (Sahl 1991b, l. 7)) whose utterances are organized around a temporal structure of past, present, and future, as well as the distinction between the space of realm of earthworms ("das Reich der Regenwürmer" (Sahl 1991b, l. 6)) below the surface of the earth ("unterirdisch[]"(Sahl 1991b, l. 35)), which is full of plants and animals, and the world above, the community of humans ("die Gesellschaft der Menschen" (Sahl 1991b, l. 37)). For a better understanding of the following analysis, here is the full poem:

#### **Der Maulwurf**

1 Hügel aufwerfend, nicht wissend, was draußen vorgeht, wo das Unbeständige beginnt, das Verdorren und Verdursten,

5 das Verblühen— Aber hier, im Reich der Regenwürmer, in das ich mich zurückziehen mußte, ist alles noch Keim, Hoffnung, Ahnung, Urzustand der Dinge, darauf wartend,

10 Gestalt anzunehmen, sich selbst zu formulieren— Da liegen die Larven und träumen von dem Gesicht,

<sup>5</sup> E.g., "Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht" (Thinking of Germany at Night), "Charterflug in die Vergangenheit" (Charter Flight into the Past), "Befragung des verlorenen Sohnes" (Questioning of the Prodigal Son).

<sup>6</sup> The speaker is not gendered. I call him "he" to avoid the pronoun "it" for animals in accordance with the grammatical gender of the mole in German, which is masculine.

<sup>7</sup> As is often the case in poetry, no distinction between the homo-diegetic first-person speaker and the protagonist is possible because of "the contrived congruence of voice and focalization" (Hühn and Sommer 2014, p. 423).

<sup>8</sup> For poetic forms, especially the role poem, see (Ryan 2012, pp. 204–5).

das sie annehmen werden, die Körper von den Gliedern, die sie


Narratological concepts will help determine the speaker's position in the poem more closely.10 The focalizing voice, as Peter Hühn and Jörg Schönert say, shares its "perceptual, psychological, cognitive and/or ideological perspective" (Hühn and Schönert 2005, p. 8) with the reader. Throughout the poem, the reader's orientation is guided by deictic expressions (Hühn and Schönert 2005, p. 8). These are expressions that cannot be understood without context, because they only unfold their

<sup>9</sup> The full poem is printed with permission. No English translation of the poem exists; for the context of this article, all pertinent lines of the poem will be translated throughout the close reading.

<sup>10</sup> For the potential gain that lyric analysis can derive from narratological theory, see (McHale 2009; Hühn 2011).

meaning with a point of reference. They relate directly to the speaker and his speaking position, and change reference points as soon as somebody else is speaking. This referenciality is especially important regarding the axes of person, space, and time. The speaking "I" is "here" and "now." These are the fix points for references such as "you," "there," and "later." They are only relatable when provided given by a specific speaker. In this poem, for instance, there are deictic words for space, like "outside" ("draußen" (Sahl 1991b, l. 2)) and "here" ("hier" (Sahl 1991b, l. 6)), as well as for persons, such as "I" and "my" ("ich", "mir" (Sahl 1991b, l. 26)). On the level of presentation, the grammatical subject is located at the center of the I-here-now-deixis. Since the deictic *origo*, the reference point of the deictic axes, is flexible, meaning that it adjusts to the speaker's position and relates to his specific context, it is impossible for the speaker to leave the deictic center. Yet a closer look at the deixis in the poem reveals a transformative shift of on every deictic axis. The speaker in "Der Maulwurf" seems to be displaced from his previous spot in respect to space, time, and physiology. The only location from which he is not moved is the grammatical level of the I, which remains the deictic center. In order to trace the shifts of the speaker on each axis, I will now examine the spatial, the temporal, and the physical structure of the poem more closely.

#### *2.1. Spatial Structure*

In the category of space, the poem describes a change of the spatial position of the speaker. He introduces a deictic distinction between the inside and the outside. These two spatial dimensions, the outer and the inner, are semantically identified with an existence on and beneath the surface of the earth, respectively. The position of the speaker is down in the soil ("unten" (Sahl 1991b, l. 18)), subterraneous ("unterirdisch[]" (Sahl 1991b, l. 35); "unter Tage" (Sahl 1991b, l. 36)), with his head beneath the ground ("Kopf unter der Erde" (Sahl 1991b, l. 47)). According to the poem, there has been a move of the speaker from the outside towards the inside, from above the earth to below (Sahl 1991b, ll. 6–7, 34–38). While many texts that depict migration or exile use the metaphor of losing their homeland and being rootless,<sup>11</sup> this poem creates an alternate image: its subject moves from above ground into the soil, literally to the plants' roots ("Wurzeln" (Sahl 1991b, l. 15)). It is a dialectic image, as it combines with contrary movements: the speaker migrates to a foreign habitat that is separated from his former living environment, yet at the same time he seems to stay in his 'native home', that is, he migrates to his own roots deep down in the soil. One could also describe this shift as a move to a terrain beyond all distance ("eine Landschaft jenseits aller Ferne" (Sahl 1991c, l. 2)), like it says in "Strophen" (Verses), another poem of the collection.

The speaker is cut-off completely from his former home. Since he moved, he does not know anymore what is happening outside ("nicht wissend, was draußen vorgeht" (Sahl 1991b, l. 2)). The change of place thus also entails a cultural and social change which is the price the speaker paid for his escape from human society ("Gesellschaft der Menschen,/der ich entlief" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 37–38)). He left the human world to live in a non-human world, i.e., the realm of the earthworms ("Reich der Regenwürmer" (Sahl 1991b, l. 6)). It is not clear in the poem whether there would be a way to return above ground, though it is also not explicitly excluded. Yet, longing to return above ground seems itself to be a problem, since the speaker does not dare formulate it as an explicit wish, but rather expresses it indirectly in the form of warning and lament: "woe is me, if I cannot bear the self-imposed underground activity anymore" ("wehe mir, wenn ich das mir selbst auferlegte,/unterirdische Tun nicht mehr zu ertragen/vermag" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 34–36)). This does not suggest that the move underground is final; rather, it shows that there is great necessity for the speaker's existence in this spatial sphere, and that the above and below follow different rules that are decisive for his wellbeing.

It becomes clear that the speaker left his position above ground and his usual habitat to find a new place to live. This movement underground also places the speaker in a different social realm,

<sup>11</sup> For the motif of plants and roots in exile literature see (Bischoff 2015).

in which small animals and plant roots become his companions instead of human beings (Sahl 1991b, ll. 6, 12, 15, 31). This sphere below seems to be a parallel world to the human one, yet it is out of reach of human perception, or even an exchange of information and experience. The position of the speaker after the migration is therefore not just a move on the spatial axis, but seems to be no longer on the same spatial axis whatsoever. He has moved to a different space from his pre-migration-world and hence been utterly displaced from its former living space.

#### *2.2. Temporal Structure*

The spatial descriptions in the poem are closely connected to the temporal ones. When the speaker describes his position beneath the ground, it seems that he leaves the present tense of the I-here-now-deixis. Instead, the speaker steps outside of the linear historical timeline to a place that is *before* time, where everything is still in the process of becoming ("ist alles noch Keim" (Sahl 1991b, l. 8)); or as "Strophen", another Sahl poem of the volume says, it is like slowly stepping out of time, toward a future beyond all stars ("Ich gehe langsam aus der Zeit heraus/in eine Zukunft jenseits aller Sterne" (Sahl 1991c, ll. 6–7)). This seems to be a temporal pane in which everything is preparing to enter the deictic time axis. Above ground, everything is transient, destined to pass away in the end. The words used to describe this ephemerality are all semantically connected to vegetation: above begins the impermanence, where one dries up, dies of thirst, and withers ("wo das Unbeständige beginnt,/das Verdorren und Verdursten,/das Verblühen" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 3–5)). Using the fragile life of flowers as an exemplification of an existence above ground shows the vulnerability of living beings in the outside world. From a socio-historical perspective, plants played an important role in the process of human civilization, as knowledge about plants and their annual cyclical rhythm of life allowed humans to settle (Deußer and Nebelin 2009, p. 9). So, there is a close connection between plants, human history, and time. The sociologist Norbert Elias sees time as a symbol that allows humans to relate different occurrences to one another and to circulate them in social contexts. Hence, time is not objective, but related to the human perception and therefore part of the human world, the above (Elias 1988, pp. XVII–XVIII). In Elias' view, the conceptual differentiation of time ran parallel to the process of civilization, so that time became second nature of humankind (Elias 1988, pp. XVII–XVIII). In line with this idea, the speaker of Sahl's poem "Die Zeit" (Time) asks whether time originated with the stars or was invented by humans (Sahl 1991d, ll. 1–3). Leaving human society could thus also be understood as leaving the human concept of time behind. This is what happens when the speaker moves to a sphere before time in the poem. Time, meaning historical time, has no part of the non-human world of the text.

Despite this rejection of human concepts, the poem also contains references to the religious motifs. Moving underground means for the speaker to leave the world of being—which is also described as 'the damnation of completion' ("Verdammnis der Vollendung", (Sahl 1991e, l. 23) in "Das tägliche Pensum" (Daily Workload), another of Sahl's poems—and enter the world of becoming, where only beginnings exist ("Hier gibt es nur Anfänge" (Sahl 1991b, l. 21)). It is the territory of germ, hope, and premonition ("Keim, Hoffnung, Ahnung" (Sahl 1991b, l. 8)), where things are in their primordial state ("Urzustand der Dinge" (Sahl 1991b, l. 9)), waiting to take shape ("wartend,/Gestalt anzunehmen" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 9–10)) and to formulate themselves ("sich selbst/zu formulieren" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 10−11)). This seems to align with Genesis and imagine a prelapsarian state of becoming, of complete harmony and immortality. Transience first came with tasting the fruit of knowledge, because knowledge and eternal life were incompatible in the Bible (Krauss and Küchler 2003, p. 71). The speaker seems to have moved back to a position of the 'not yet', which is before the 'now' of the post-paradisiacal time, the usual deictic center. Again, the speaker's position cannot be located on the deictic axis of time that existed pre-migration. It is therefore a state even *before* identity, because it has not yet been articulated what the parameters of that would be. This means, it is a state *before* definition through human language and a logocentric image of the self.

This position *before* is neither present, nor past, nor future, but a state of continuous preparation, akin to a primordial time, in which beings are preparing to come into existence. Some scholars, like Anette Streek-Fischer, compare prelapsarian existence to the early stages of the development of the human self (Krauss and Küchler 2003, p. 93; Streeck-Fischer 2014, pp. 12–13). According to a psychoanalytical perspective, the process of becoming a conscious person means setting boundaries. At a young age, an infant cannot differentiate between him- or herself and surrounding objects, or as Sigmund Freud would say, between ego-libidio and object-libidio (Freud 1975, p. 66). When toddlers learn to differentiate between the self and the other, they learn to see themselves as separate from their environment. In a similar way, Genesis tells the story of establishing boundaries and separation (Krauss and Küchler 2003, p. 93). Therefore, this time *before* designates both the state of an individual before self-awareness and the time *before* humankind was banned from Eden.

The unusual phrase of "formulating oneself" ("sich selbst/zu formulieren" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 10–11)) highlights the fundamental role of language in the process of becoming and defining, in the conceptualization of the self and the development of the human self. This is not only the case because it occurs in a poem and the speaker would not exist without words, but because language also affects the (symbolic) order of the non-fictional world. Julia Kristeva says,

The symbolic order—the order of verbal communication, the paternal order of genealogy—is a temporal order. For the speaking animal, it is the clock of objective time: it provides the reference point, and, consequently, all possibilities of measurement, by distinguishing between a before, a now, and an after. If *I* don't exist except in the speech I address to another, *I* am only *present* in the moment of that communication. (Kristeva 2000, p. 255)

Within the poem, on the level of events, the speaker is cut off from the present in a pre-linguistic state and is thus outside of the symbolic order and also outside of a logocentric order of humankind. This is the case even though the speaker is a textual subject on the level of presentation, as it is voicing the poem and presents itself in language.

The temporal transformation on the level of events is mirrored on the level of presentation.<sup>12</sup> The voice begins to speak in the present tense (Sahl 1991b, ll. 1–21), talking about the underground world that is connected to the *before*. In the middle of the poem, the speaker switches to the subjunctive mood (Sahl 1991b, ll. 22–44), asking what would happen if it could no longer bear staying underground and would leave the realm of becoming ("Reich des Werdens" (Sahl 1991b, l. 40)) in order to return to the realm of that which has become ("das Gewordene" (Sahl 1991b, l. 41)). But toward the end of the poem, the speaker decides that he will never return, never try again, that he will stay with his head below ground and remain blinded in the dazzling brightness of the "not-yet" ("entschlossen, nicht mehr zurückzukehren,/es nicht noch einmal zu versuchen,/mit dem Kopf unter der Erde,/[ ... ] blind in der blendenden/Helligkeit des/Nochnicht" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 45–52)). This sphere of the "not-yet" cannot be located on a linear time axis but remains in a sphere that is beyond the measurement of time, that is before its beginning. The speaker is at a point of time undoing itself "Zeit, die sich aufhebt" (Sahl 1991f, l. 5), as it says in Sahl's poem "Der Schnittpunkt" (Point of Intersection).

#### *2.3. Physiological Structure*

Based on these movements, a third shift emerges: the textual subject has not only moved to a different world and left linear time, but it has changed species designation, too. The speaker's characterization is vague, as not many details about the identity of the voice are given. In addition, there is no explicit addressee; no sign of an audience within the poem. The poem is constructed as the monolog of a diegetic animal, which is an animal that has an actual place in the diegetic universe

<sup>12</sup> Hühn and Schönert state that in lyric poetry, as well as in narrative texts, there is a "fundamental distinction between the level of events and the level of presentation—between incidents which we take as the primary, basic material and the way in which they are mediated in the text" (Hühn and Schönert 2005, p. 4).

and is not only used in a metaphorical way (Borgards 2016, p. 226). Taking the mole as the speaker of the poem gives him a voice, specifically the first-person individuating I. It is possible to read the mole as an allegory for the estrangement from the world through migration, displacement, and exile. Yet, the poem also depicts an actual metamorphosis from a human being into a mole when taken literally.13 There is evidence that a change of species took place, when the speaker reports that he had to hide himself away underground because he had to escape the human world ("die Gesellschaft der Menschen, der ich entlief" (Sahl 1991b, l. 37)). The verb "entlaufen" in German is used for pets that escape from their owner, so the choice of words suggests that the speaker has actually left humankind. Also, human beings are not able to live under the earth like animals and plants can. From a human standpoint, the ground is reserved for burying the dead; it is the place for one's final rest. This is probably one of the reasons why moles are associated with death in popular belief; even more so as molehills resemble burial mounds (Bies 2006, p. 55). But at the same time, soil is associated with fertility. Especially for vegetal life, it is the place where life begins. This corresponds once more with the prelapsarian image, in which life and death meet. For the speaker it is a place to start a new life. In order to survive, his spatial migration requires a physiological assimilation. That means that the speaker has to modify his bodily functions, as well as the everyday routines and habits, to survive in these non-human surroundings.

Becoming a mole and converting to the animal world is a fundamental change of the deictic *origo* by transforming the "I" that presumably centered around a human speaker once. This metamorphosis is not only an external phenomenon, but has an existential impact on everyday life. The speaker lives underground in the characteristic habitat of a mole and does mole-typical things like raising mounds, clawing, grubbing, and digging ("Hügel aufwerfend,/kratzend, grabend, wühlend" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 48–49)). This confirms that the mole is a diegetic textual animal, not only a semiotic textual animal, meaning that in the logic of the text the mole appears to be a real animal, not a human person metaphorically designated as a mole. These behavioral depictions strengthen the notion of the actual biological being and problematize a reading of the mole as merely an emblematic metaphor or allegory. Also, there is no word of comparison that would give a signal for a simile, unlike in Sahl's poem "Die Auster" (The Oyster), in which the speaker addresses an oyster with the phrase: "To be like you" ("So sein wie Du" (Sahl 1985, p. 148)), before the speaker describes their potential life as an oyster; or Sahl's novel *Die Wenigen und die Vielen* (*The Few and the Many*), in which the narrator describes an exile who lives *like* a mole ("Er lebt wie ein Maulwurf" (Sahl 1959, p. 169)).14

The reader is carried off to the world of the mole, a mythical place, where wonderful flowers are created and the juices of apples, pears, and plums are pre-tasted ("Hier unten werden die wunderbaren Blumen/entworfen, die Säfte für die/Äpfel und Birnen und Pflaumen vorgeschmeckt." (Sahl 1991b, ll. 18−20). The underground world is depicted as a sphere of creation and becoming that seems to be harmonious and carefree. But it is a fragile peace. The speaker formulates his worry about a collapse of this world, caused by the inability to change it; an inability to awaken the slumbering, to tease a cricket's chirping out of the silence, or to raise the blue ecstasy of the lilac trees out of the wasteland ("kann,/das Schlummernde nicht aufwecken,/dem Schweigen nicht einmal das Zirpen/einer Grille entlocken kann oder der Einöde den blauen/Rausch der Fliederbäume—" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 29−33)). The speaker needs something to do; he needs to have an impact on his surroundings and affect change (Sahl 1991b, ll. 26–33). Furthermore, he needs to communicate with the other living beings, the plants and animals, to ensure him that he is part of a lively sphere (Sahl 1991b, ll. 29–33). Physiology is

<sup>13</sup> In Sahl's poem "Gedichte schreiben—oder was davon noch übrig blieb" (Writing Poems—or What Was Still Left of It), printed a few pages before "Der Maulwurf", it says "Ich mache mich selbst zum Gedicht./Ich bin eine Begebenheit./Ich finde statt./Ich passiere." (I make myself into a poem./I am an occurrence./I am taking place./I am happening. (Sahl 1991g, ll. 61–64)). That seems to be an instruction in and taking the word seriously.

<sup>14</sup> "Der Maulwurf" is not the only literary piece by Sahl that has an animal as narrator. In *Memoiren einer Katze* (1957; *Memoirs of a Cat* (Sahl 2012)), the titular cat is the focalizing subject.

literally what keeps one alive, which is, metaphorically spoken, more than only bodily functions and physical appearance. The speaker appears to be like an obstetrician who helps bring things to life in order to ensure his own livelihood. A collapse therefore would mean a life-threatening situation (Sahl 1991b, ll. 23–25). The metamorphosis from a human being into an animal not only means a change in physiological appearance but also in psychological understanding of the I in the deictic *origo*.

Another potential reason for a collapse of this world could be the speaker's longing to go back to the human world. The unreliability of the speaker, which is given in any first-person monological stance, as Hühn says (Hühn 2015, pp. 173−74), reveals itself by showing that the identity of the voice is unclear and that the mythical underground world might not be (as perfect) as it is described. This is because there is a threat, whose consequences are not explicitly named (Sahl 1991b, ll. 22–33), and also because the speaker is not allowed to long for leaving, which turns the supposedly paradisiacal place into a prison (Sahl 1991b, ll. 34–44). In addition, the speaker does not explicitly describe what caused his flight from the human world or what might happen upon his return, so that many blind spots remain for the reader. What is clear is that the identity of the speaker is not stable and that another transformation might be possible in the fictional reality of the poem. Yet, the speaker chose to remain underground as a mole along with other animals and plants.

While other subterranean living beings in the poem, for instance the grubs, are dreaming of a transformation that will allow them to enter the upper world (Sahl 1991b, l. 12), the focalizing speaker decides not to re-enter the upper, that is the human, world. The mole stays in the animal world in order to see whether there is an opportunity for a different life that has *not-yet* come ("Nochnicht" (Sahl 1991b, l. 52)). In another poem of the volume, "Der Verwundbare" (The Vulnerable),—one that is not clearly voiced by an animal, though the speaker had to leave his kind, too—there is a similar ending, but with a differing notion. It says: "Man hat mich aus der Art geschlagen,/jetzt will ich in sie zurück und/finde sie nicht mehr". (My kind was beaten out of me,/now I would like to return to it and/cannot find it anymore. (Sahl 1991h, ll. 12–14). This phrasing suggests that violence is involved in the process of leaving one's kind. The transformation was forced upon this speaker, not chosen, and in addition, his attempt to return fails. But in "Der Maulwurf", the metamorphosis into another species was self-imposed ("mir selbst auferlegte" (Sahl 1991b, l. 34)), even though the speaker says that he *had* to withdraw below the earth's surface ("in das ich mich zurückziehen mußte" (Sahl 1991b, l. 7), which suggests that it was not entirely voluntary. The speaker therefore does not return and remains underground. The "not-yet" bears hope and hopelessness at the same time. It carries the bright promise of a possible return on the one hand. On the other hand, this return is delayed to an indefinite moment in time that is never to come. Even if the possibility of return is one of brightness ("blind in der blendenden/Helligkeit" (Sahl 1991b, ll. 50–51), the speaker seems to be afraid of it, since it is blinding, and the ending feels like an obituary of a lost future ("Nekrolog auf eine verschollene Zukunft" (Sahl 1991i, l. 36)), as another of Sahl's poems puts it.

The shift from a human to a mole is visible on the outside, but also affects the speaker's way of perception, everyday routines, and the communicational sphere. Even though it is the same I that is speaking, it is displaced on the axis of person: through the shift, something irregular happens, since it is not typically possible to have an animal in the center of a speech act, at least in an anthropocentric view. In addition to the spatial and temporal transformations, the direct effects of this change on the speaker, on his body and way of life, are powerful signs for the shifts in every sphere. Although there still are the axes of space, time, and person, and the speaker is still in the deictic center, one can clearly see that the reference points of all deictic expressions have changed. On every deictic level the speaker is displaced. Still one question remains unanswered: why the choice of a mole? In the final section of this article I will try to find an explanation.

#### **3. The Mole Across Texts and Time**

As the analysis shows, the three examined transformations regarding space, time, and species affiliation have an existential impact on the speaker. The spatial migration, leaving linear time, and the metamorphosis into an animal locate the speaker in a different position on all deictic axes. When supposedly established categories come into motion, it causes a crack in the stable construction of the world. Carl Einstein, a fellow exiled writer, defined literature itself as such a fundamental transformation ("dichtung als verwandlung" (Einstein 1986, p. 26)) and art as a metamorphosis of being ("Metamorphose des Daseins" (Einstein 1996a, p. 247)). Bettina Englmann, who wrote about the poetry of exile, explains that art in the way Einstein saw it is able and tasked to negate and break with social conventions for the purpose of making new realities visible (Englmann 2001, p. 121). In order to achieve a new reality, which is a new image and a new form of humans and the world, one has to shatter the traditional concept of the self and the idea of stability, as well as a continuously progressing history (Englmann 2001, p. 123).<sup>15</sup> This is exactly what the poem does when the speaker leaves the human world and transforms into a mole. Through mimetic ability, the viewer of art can, if one follows Einstein, construct unstable realities, which means that art is a potential way to generate new and multiple realities (Einstein 1996b, pp. 404–5). Art should therefore not only depict but *be* a reality (Einstein 1996b, p. 258). The refusal of consenting to the world as it is—especially given the reality of Nazi Germany—plays a crucial role in the literature of exile, as Englmann points out (Englmann 2001, p. 128). In Sahl's poem, the profound impact of migration, displacement, and exile on a person's life becomes clear, as it affects all aspects of existence. The following section addresses how this is specifically related to the mole.

The traditional symbolism of moles in European literature is an antitype to human self-awareness, embodying human deficiency (Stierle 1982, p. 104). Because moles stay in the dark and were wrongly believed to be blind, they have, at least since the Renaissance, symbolized the opposite of progress and knowledge, as light was associated with truth and wisdom, to enlightenment, and the dark was related to lies and lack of knowledge (Stierle 1982, pp. 105–8). But even before that, moles have been regarded not only as ignorant, but also as troublesome. Since Greek and Roman antiquity, there has been a widespread notion that moles are ravenous and responsible for the death of plants because they would eat the roots (Stierle 1982, pp. 103–4; Bies 2006, pp. 51, 61). That is why they are considered vermin or a pest in some European countries. However, there have been a few defenders of the mole in history as well. One of them was Johann Peter Hebel, who in *Schatzkästlein des rheinischen Hausfreundes* (1817; *Treasure Chest of the Rhenish Family Friend*) included a piece that is named "Der Maulwurf" (Hebel 1961), like Sahl's poem, in which he explains that not the mole but the grubs as well as other types of larvae are actually responsible for the damaged plants, while the mole is a predator who is after grubs, not roots. In Sahl's poem it is not the mole either who is responsible for the death of plants, but linear time in the upper world (Sahl 1991b, ll. 4–5). In addition, the mole does not seem to be an aggressor, but rather the one who is threatened (Sahl 1991b, l. 7). The poem therefore does not invoke the negative image that is often associated with moles, and I am therefore turning to another aspect of the metaphorical understanding of moles.

As I showed in the first section, Sahl's collection of poems is embedded in a political and socio-historical discussion about the Second World War that is specifically against fascism. In this context, it is relevant to take a closer look at the image of "the mole" in the field of politics because its semantic history might be reflected in the poem. During the 1848 revolution in Germany, the term "Wühler" (literally burrower, synonym for a mole and other little burrowing mammals) was a common insult for democrats and members of separatist groups (Burkhardt 2001, pp. 59, 66–67). More and more, it was used as a stigmatizing nickname for the radical democratic left, who retaliated with the strategy of adapting the insult and turning it into an ironic self-designation (Burkhardt 2001, p. 63). Giving this strategy, one could say that the speaker of the poem even goes one step further: he not only *adapts* the designation, instead he literally *becomes* a mole. Thinking with Einstein, this metamorphosis then means that the poem is not only depicting a mole-like existence, but instead creating a mole-existence

<sup>15</sup> Englmann refers to Carl Einstein (Einstein 1996b, p. 242).

as an inner textual reality. It becomes even likelier that the speaker might be read as an exile and member of the democratic left when taking into account the following development of the image of the mole.

German linguist Armin Burkhardt notes that the term "Wühler" lost its function as a political keyword at the end of the 19th century, and an increase of the metaphorical usage of the mole in political and philosophical writings began instead. The combination of a threatened and hidden existence, as it also appears in the poem, makes the mole a popular metaphor in critical thought. The Shakespearean phrase "Well said, old mole," uttered in a conversation between Hamlet and the ghost of his father, was widely known and formative for the image of the mole in the German context. Immanuel Kant, Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel famously refer to it, often in political contexts.16 For instance, in his analysis of the February revolution in France, Marx adapts Shakespeare's phrase when he writes: "Brav gewühlt, alter Maulwurf" (Well burrowed, old mole! (Marx 2009, p. 196)). Marx's *Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte* (1852; *The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon*), which he wrote when he was in exile in London, contains a mole as a symbol for the revolution that does its subterraneous work invisibly.17 Hegel used it in his *Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie* (1892; *Lectures on the History of Philosophy*) as an explanation for the spirit:

It goes ever on and on, because spirit is progress alone. Spirit often seems to have forgotten and lost itself, but inwardly opposed to itself, it is inwardly working ever forward as Hamlet says of the ghost of his father, 'Well done, old mole'—until grown strong in itself it bursts asunder the crust of earth which divided it from its sun, its Notion, so that the earth crumbles away. (Hegel 1974, pp. 546–47)18

One can see the revolutionary potential of the mole metaphor, which stands for radical change that is yet to come and that is in the process of becoming, inside of the existing world, mostly unnoticed. This understanding aligns with the mole in the poem, who has a self-imposed task (Sahl 1991b, l. 44) that might be dangerous (Sahl 1991b, ll. 23–25) and that works towards an event that is to come (Sahl 1991b, l. 52).

As this short exploration illustrates, the mole has often been used as a symbol or metaphor in political and revolutionary contexts, where it represents an attentive observer who has a distinct sensitivity for seismographic vibrations. Taking into account that "Wühlarbeit", which could be translated as mole work but also as subversive activity, was used in NS-language for opponents of the regime (Brackmann and Birkenhauer 1988, p. 207), the choice of the mole in Sahl's poem suggests, so I argue, not only the connotation of migration through transgressive shifts in space, time, and species, but that of exile. The mole's activity in hiding invokes the notion of exile and, given the history of the trope of the mole, perhaps even subversive activity such as resistance. Sahl describes human-animal-transformations not only in this poem, but also in his memoir, when he says, "Die Asseln, die Käfer, die Regenwürmer, die Würmer, die einmal aufrecht gingen und Menschen waren wie ich, Verstoßene, Umherirrende, in der anonymen Landschaft des Exils" (The woodlice, the beetles, the earthworms, the worms that once walked upright and were human beings like me, outcasts, wanderers, in the anonymous landscape of exile (Sahl 1990, p. 13)). In Sahl's poem, animal metamorphosis can be considered an image for going into exile, another form of migration by leaving the human world behind.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

<sup>16</sup> For detailed analysis see e.g., (Krell 1981, Kant pp. 157–58, Hegel pp. 158–63, Nietzsche pp. 163–65), and (Stierle 1982, Kant p. 110, Hegel pp. 114–18, Marx pp. 118–20, Nietzsche pp. 121–23).

<sup>17</sup> For a broader analysis of the mole in Marx's writings and in the political left see (Opitz and Pinkert 1979, pp. 74–99; von Beyme 1999).

<sup>18</sup> For a broader analysis of the mole in writings by Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche see (Krell 1981).

#### **References**


© 2018 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## *Article* **"And in That Moment I Leapt upon His Shoulder": Non-Human Intradiegetic Narrators in** *The Wind on the Moon*

#### **Karin Molander Danielsson**

School of Education, Culture and Communication, Mälardalen University, Box 883, 721 23 Västerås, Sweden; karin.molander.danielsson@mdh.se

Academic Editor: Joela Jacobs Received: 9 January 2017; Accepted: 26 March 2017; Published: 30 March 2017

**Abstract:** Non-human narrators, by definition anthropomorphized, fill different functions in literature, and have different effects, not always positive for the species that is utilized, for example to voice a human political concern. However, many animal studies scholars agree that anthropomorphism, while inadequate, may be the best way we have to get to know another species. Animal characters who tell their own, autobiographical, stories are particularly interesting in this regard. Eric Linklater's children's novel *The Wind on the Moon (1944)*, raises posthumanist questions about human–animal differences, similarities and language, especially through its engagement of several non-human intradiegetic narrators. In a novel with surprisingly few other forms of characterization of the non-human characters, their own detailed narratives become a highly significant means of access to their species characteristics, their consciousness, and their needs. In an analysis of these embedded narratives using Genette's theory of narrative levels and functions, as well as intersections of speech act theory and cognitive narratology, this article exposes an otherwise inaccessible dimension of characterization in Linklater's novel. It argues that the embedded narratives, in contrast to crude anthropomorphism, are in fact what enables both a verbalization of the character narrators' otherness, and a connection and comprehension between species. In other words, these non-human narratives constitute what might be called (with Garrard) examples of critical anthropomorphism.

**Keywords:** non-human narrators; intradiegetic narration; Gerard Genette; anthropomorphism; Eric Linklater; *The Wind on the Moon*; direct speech; characterization; posthumanism; inter-species comprehension

#### **1. Introduction**

"And when I was hungry I went hunting, and that was the loveliest thing in life, to go hunting in the moonlight, and feel your blood like quicksilver in your veins" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 100). The voice telling the story from which this excerpt is taken belongs to a puma, an important non-human character in Eric Linklater's classic children's novel from 1944, *The Wind on the Moon*. This novel, otherwise told by a heterodiegetic narrator, is scattered with a number of embedded narratives in direct speech, (usually between one to three pages in length) told by various characters. The examples that interest me, and that will be discussed here, are embedded narratives by two non-human characters, the Puma and the Falcon, whom I will treat as intradiegetic narrators, using a term from Gerard Genette (Genette 1988), and William Nelles (Nelles 1997), among others. Apart from the fact that these embedded narratives are lengthy and very noticeable in the text, there are two circumstances that make them interesting from a theoretical point of view: The first is that unlike the human characters, the animal characters are not focalizers. Neither are their cognitive functions, actions or

reactions interpreted or discussed by the narrator or by the characters. This places a large importance on their narratives, since they provide the otherwise missing link: access to the minds of these characters by means of direct speech. The other circumstance is that unlike many other talking animals in literature, these characters are not speaking a human language, but "the language of animals" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 76) which (through magic) the human characters have also acquired. It is an important plot device that the child protagonists know this language, because this enables them to listen to and understand the non-human animals, which gives the children the knowledge and help that they need in their adventures. As the children gain this ability, so do we, the readers. Because we understand what they say, we understand what they mean, and how they justify their species-specific actions; in other words, through their embedded stories, they are characterized as cognizant, sentient beings. In this article I argue that *The Wind on the Moon*, through its non-human intradiegetic narrators, draws attention to, and negotiates the human–animal boundary in an interesting way, creating an inter-species connection that evokes, in the words of Bernaerts et al., "a double dialectic of empathy and defamiliarization (Bernaerts et al. 2014, p. 69).

In what follows I will first give a brief introduction to the novel and its context, and then outline some recent ideas about anthropomorphism and the significance of non-human animal narration, before I present the narratological elements and concepts that are central for my subsequent analysis of the levels and functions of non-human intradiegetic narration in *The Wind on the Moon*.

#### **2. Eric Linklater's** *The Wind on the Moon*

*The Wind on the Moon* is a long children's novel that is somewhat difficult to ascribe to a certain genre. It was published in 1944, during the war, but like in many children's books published at this time, the war is not visible (Hunt 1994, p. 129), other than as a threat that calls the protagonists' father abroad, and starts the adventures. Like many children's books, it has didactic undertones but the message is not the usual insistence on good behavior, but rather a universal right to freedom of body and mind, regardless of which species you happen to belong to. While it has important animal characters, it is not primarily an animal story, but it adheres, in perhaps unexpected ways, to some of the traditions of animal stories. For example, there are magical transformations of humans to animals that recall pre-Christian myths and tales, and the parts of the story where animals express their desire to be set free from the zoo are similar to the Victorian animal tales, such as Anna Sewell's *Black Beauty*, that gave voice to the suffering of animals (De Mello 2013, p. 2). For a novel written well before the posthuman turn in philosophy and literature, it is remarkably posthuman in the way it proposes, in the words of Jacques Derrida, "a multiple and heterogenous border of this abyssal rupture" (Derrida 2008, p. 31) that is, a destabilized and non-binary human–animal distinction.

Although human–animal transformations and talking animals in children's literature often indicate the fantasy genre, this novel is however also largely realistic in its representation of both human and non-human characters, and especially in discussions of their behavior and their living conditions. This is thus not a case in which, in the words of Cary Wolfe, "the discourse of species, and with it, the ethical problematics of our relations to non-human others, [can be] be treated largely as if species is always already a counter or cover for some other discourse" (Wolfe 2003, p. 124). Although some of the objectives of humans and non-humans in this novel converge, (notably freedom from confinement), these different non-human animals also speak rather eloquently for their species-specific needs.

The protagonists are two pre-teen human sisters, Dinah and Dorinda, who, when their father goes abroad, create a series of adventures to brighten up their dull school days. At one point they ask the local witch for help to frighten the people of their village, Midmeddlecum. With a magic draught, they turn themselves into kangaroos, a species chosen as much for its ability to carry objects (such as the bottle with the remains of the magic potion) in its pocket, as for its size and agility. This exemplifies the ease with which this novel negotiates anthropomorphism and defamiliarization, in a fashion similar to many of its more famous forerunners by Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame and Lewis Carroll, discussed by David Rudd (Rudd 2009). Unfortunately, the children's plan to strike fear

into the villagers is foiled when they are captured and taken to the local zoo. Here they meet other inmates of the zoo, the Puma, the Falcon, the Giraffe, the Bear, and many others. They also realize that the bottle with the magic potion has fallen out of Dinah's pocket, and that they now seem destined to remain kangaroos for the rest of their lives.

#### **3. Talking Animals and Anthropomorphism**

An unexpected result of the girls' transformation is that they now understand "the language of animals, as well as English, and they had learnt it without any trouble to themselves. This was very gratifying when they remembered the weary hours they had spent with Miss Serendip, trying to learn French" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 76). The fact that all non-human characters in the story speak the *same* language is interesting in several ways. It is easy to see how a plot involving zoo animals (many different species at close quarters) can be advanced by this maneuver; most importantly, it enables them to plan and execute their escape. It could also be seen as the result of a reductive view of the human–animal distinction, an issue I will address and refute in what follows. It also calls attention to the relationship between language and consciousness and the well-known philosophical dilemma which lingers everywhere in the background of this novel, namely how non-humans and humans may connect with, and comprehend each other.

Kari Weil discusses this as "the tragedy of language" which ensues "when we acknowledge that there is another consciousness there ... that we desperately desire to know through language" (Weil 2012, p. 9), something which has often been seen as the major if not the exclusive hindrance to inter-species comprehension. Language, spoken or written, is after all how we humans primarily communicate, and language is especially privileged in literature, so a literary representation of non-human consciousness has to grapple with this. In fiction, the solution sometimes is to let the non-humans speak a human language, as for example in C.S. Lewis's Narnia series (1950–1956), and in Kafka's "A Report to an Academy" (1917). Kari Weil, however, in a discussion citing Spivak's "Can the Subaltern Speak?", uses Kafka's story as an example of how non-humans learning a human language equals a problematic form of assimilation. As Weil points out: "Language is at the core of Kafka's critique of assimilation as a process that gives voice only by destroying the self that would speak ... [I]f they learn our language, will they still be animals?" (Weil 2012, p. 6).

A related problem is Wittgenstein's claim that "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him" (quoted in Cary Wolfe, (Wolfe 2003, p. 44)). Wolfe, in a discussion of several philosophers' writings on this observation, quotes Vicki Hearne, who appreciates the fact that Wittgenstein's claim shows that this is a problem for us, not for the animal. Wittgenstein's lion, "regarded with proper respect and awe, gives us unmediated knowledge of our ignorance" (Hearne, quoted in (Wolfe 2003, p. 45)). In *The Wind on the Moon*, the non-human animals do not have to assimilate, but neither are the humans faced with their ignorance, at least not immediately. In the more pragmatic and comedic manner of children's literature, the transformation of the girls into kangaroos automatically opens their ears not only to the fact that the animals talk, but also to what they say, and to what they can learn from them.

The "language of animals" perhaps suggests *The Jungle Book* (1894) (Kipling [1894] 2012), where the animals of the jungle are able to communicate with each other, and with Mowgli who has been raised by the wolves. However, unlike the situation in *The Jungle Book*, which opens with wolves and jackals speaking to each other, we never hear the animals in *The Wind on the Moon* talk until the girls are introduced to a llama and realize that they are able to understand what she says (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 76). Speech and understanding are thus accentuated in Linklater's novel, in a way they are not in Kipling's.

This also turns the girl protagonists in *The Wind on the Moon* into translators and mediators between the non-human characters and the readers, because it is the fact that the girls are able to understand the non-humans that enables the readers to do so. It also creates, I would argue, a reason for readers to take an interest in the non-human characters, because as soon as they talk, (and we understand them) they are identified as cognizant subjects with interesting and educational things to say. In this novel, then, the problems of assimilation and asymmetry are skirted (if not resolved) by letting the human protagonists (and by association and imagination the readers) use a language common to all non-human species. The kangaroos Dinah and Dorinda retain their human minds and their individual traits even though they eat and speak like kangaroos: they get bored without books to read or games to play, and are determined to change back to children as soon as the bottle with the magic draught is found. Similarly the other animals of different species are able to express their minds without assimilating, or adapting to human standards or forms of communication, and indeed without conforming to any reduced form of animality (cf. (Derrida 2008, p. 31 and passim.) On the contrary, the common language is what enables their expression of species-specific and individual characteristics.

The following scene shows with some clarity how a common language alters our view of non-humans. The sisters, (now kangaroos) are allowed to walk freely on the grounds of the zoo, and here notice for the first time the Puma and the Falcon in their cages.

They were both so beautiful that Dinah and Dorinda stood between their cages and could not decide which to look at first.

"Good afternoon," said the Puma. "Hail!" cried the Falcon. "How do you do?" said Dinah and Dorinda. (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 97)

As soon as the non-humans speak, they are transformed from objects under the sisters' gaze, to subjects in control of the situation. The sisters, too, change, from spectators to polite participants in a new social setting, and proceed to introduce themselves, as they would to adult humans, people of some significance. This key scene is then followed by extensive intradiegetic narratives by the Puma and the Falcon, (which will be analyzed in detail below), and by then we are already prepared to listen to these characters and learn more about them.

But even if we accept that language in fiction is a path to the recognition of consciousness and self-awareness in others, are not talking animals anthropomorphized, and is this not in general to their disadvantage? It is a concept loaded with negative connotations, and has in the words of Greg Garrard, "until recently been used exclusively as a pejorative term implying sentimental projection of human emotions onto animals" (Garrard 2012, p. 154). However, as Garrard also points out, a too one-sided view of anthropomorphism "risks making it impossible to describe animal behavior at all, so the problem is to distinguish between different kinds of anthropomorphism" (Garrard 2012, pp. 154–55). Garrard uses the term crude anthropomorphism for phenomena such as "disnification" (a term he takes from Baker's *Picturing the Beast*, 1993), and the term critical anthropomorphism for its scientific use, e.g., in ethology (Garrard 2012, p. 157). So, even though anthropomorphism, in the words of McFarland and Hediger, is "the natural human tendency to view an animal's actions in terms of our own conscious motives" (McFarland and Hediger 2009, p. 3) it is perhaps the only means we have to form any notion "of what takes place in the mind of an animal" (Washburn, qtd in (Bekoff 2002, p. 48)). Marc Bekoff, professor of biology and the author of many works on human–animal interaction, and on non-human cognition, underlines that being human,

we have by necessity a human view of the world. The way we describe and explain the behavior of other animals is limited by the language we use to talk about things in general. By engaging in anthropomorphism we make other animals' worlds accessible to ourselves and to other human beings. By being anthropomorphic we can more readily understand and explain the emotions or feelings of other animals. But this is not to say that other animals are happy or sad in the *same* ways in which humans (or even other members of the same species) are happy or sad. (Bekoff 2002, p. 48)

Bekoff thus underlines that the limitations of our human existence, our dependence on language for reasoning about the world, makes some anthropomorphism necessary, if not unproblematic. However, Bekoff is talking about understanding actual animals. Representations of talking animals in literature have often been used for purposes other than conveying animal consciousness. Lars Bernaerts et al. mention satiric, didactic, and ethical functions, (Bernaerts et al. 2014, p. 70), and Karla Armbruster notes functions such as providing an outsider point of view, or voicing social criticism of various kinds (Armbruster 2013, p. 18). Clearly, in most such cases, except perhaps in the voicing of suffering of animals, anthropomorphism is of little use to the animal thus represented, or to anyone wishing to reach some understanding of that animal's mind.

Even so, imagination is a key to understanding, as Thomas Nagel notes his famous essay, "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" (Nagel 1974) and fictional representation may of course have other purposes and qualities. Armbruster, for instance, suggests that, "a yearning to genuinely know the otherness of non-human animals runs through most, if not all, talking animal stories, as well as the motivations of their readers" (Armbruster 2013, p. 19). If that is so, the fact that these fictional animals share a language with us, does, perhaps paradoxically but in line with Bekoff's ideas, enable readers and other characters to infer the experiences and emotions of animals, and to appreciate their difference.

Derrida says of the (hypothetical) animal who speaks in the first person: "Whether it is pronounced, exposed as such, thematised or not, the I is always posed autobiographically. It refers to itself" (Derrida 2008, p. 56). I would suggest, that when fictional animals not only talk, but also become intradiegetic narrators, that is, when they get to tell their own autobiographical stories in their own voices, distinguishable from other characters and narrators, their otherness has an even better possibility to filter through to other characters and to the reader. Naama Harel also suggests:

The nonhuman narrators, who tell their own story in a way which is impossible outside the world of fiction, are indeed pronouncedly anthropomorphicized, [sic] yet they can still raise significant questions about nonhuman existence and its relationship with human existence. Anthropomorphic representation should not necessarily lead to anthropocentric interpretation, which excludes the nonhuman protagonists. (Harel 2013, p. 49)

In other words, fictional works with non-human character narration affords us a possibility to access subjects that would be otherwise inaccessible, and therefore deserve an effort on our part, to read them in good faith. Nagel, although of course ultimately pessimistic about our possibilities of ever understanding what it is like for another being to be it, makes the point that "even to form a conception of what it is like to be a bat (and a fortiori to know what it is like to be a bat) one must take up the bat's point of view" (Nagel 1974, p. 442). One way to enable that attempt, that leap of imagination, is to allow animal narrators to express that consciousness in a mutual language. Furthermore, if the text as a whole is, "both inviting the reader to identify with the nonhuman animal as a fellow living being and reminding him or her of the inevitable differences between humans and other species" (Armbruster 2013, p. 24), this places the burden of a nuanced interpretation more firmly on the shoulders of the narratees, and on the readers.

In *The Wind on the Moon* there exists both a rather pointed invitation to the reader to empathize with the non-human characters, and a reminder of the difference. One example of the latter is the fact that human and non-human characters differ in modes of characterization, and in the representation of consciousness. The human characters' are often focalizers and their minds are regularly represented in indirect, and free indirect discourse: "Dinah wondered why there should be a light in his house" [indirect thought]. "Perhaps he was ill?" [free indirect thought] (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 84). In contrast, and even though some non-human characters have large and important roles to play, the animals are never focalizers, and the instances when non-human minds are represented, or non-human actions interpreted, in the extradiegetic narrative are very rare. One of those few examples is this, from a scene when the human protagonists come back, after some delay, to liberate the Puma from her cage: "Then the Puma turned her head, and her agate eyes, as if a lamp had been lighted behind them, shone suddenly with a wild joy" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 182). Even so, the Puma's joy is seen in her eyes, not expressed as a representation of her thoughts. This asymmetry in characterization suggests a reluctance on the part of the narrator to interpret non-human behavior in human terms, that is, to engage in simplistic, or crude anthropomorphism (Garrard 2012). However, since the Puma and the other non-human characters are allowed to express their minds at length in direct speech in a

common language, we get access to what they feel and think through what they say, and we are invited to empathize. This circumstance, apart from emphasizing the Puma's and other animals' ability to speak (and our ability to understand them) therefore highlights both defamiliarisation and empathy (Bernaerts et al. 2014).

In what follows, I will show how the direct speech events of the non-human characters in *The Wind on the Moon* call attention to themselves, both because they invite us to learn about and empathize with these cognizant characters, and because many of them constitute sizeable embedded narratives with interesting textual functions.

#### **4. Direct Speech, Character Narratives, and Narrative Levels**

Before I move on to the analysis of these narratives, I would like, first, to connect with at least some of the work that has been done on speech categories (such as direct speech) in literature, and then show how narrative levels or embedded narratives like the ones that interest me in *The Wind on the Moon,* may be analyzed. I became interested in direct speech because it is so conspicuous in *The Wind on The Moon*, as the predominant form of discourse associated with the animal characters.

In narratology direct speech is generally considered as mimetic, that is, a representation of an actual utterance, a "literal quotation" (Genette 1988, p. 50). Similarly, according to Leech and Short, the reporter of direct speech claims "to report faithfully *(a)* what was stated, and *(b)* the exact form of words which were used to utter that statement (Leech 1981, p. 320)". They also point out that apart from the grammatical differences such as verb tense and syntax, there is an equivalence between direct and indirect speech (Leech 1981, p. 320), in the sense that when indirect speech is offered, what we read is the narrator's report of the direct speech of a character. However, as Terence Patrick Murphy has shown (Murphy 2007), the equivalence relation between the indirect speech reported by the narrator in the narrative discourse, and the direct speech that we are to infer took place in the story, is in fact far from 1:1. Narrators have reasons for choosing one or the other reporting form, and the effect of their choice is considerable. Murphy argues for instance that by choosing what he calls monitored speech (indirect or free indirect speech) "the narrator thereby conveys that speech at one remove, potentially suppressing what makes that particular character's speech forms unique" and is thus able to "upgrade or downgrade typical speech forms of that character" vis-a-vis the ideology of the novel (Murphy 2007, p. 28). He also points out that without the reported direct speech of the characters, readers are unable to accurately reconstruct the scene with regards to who is present and participating in the conversation. Monitored speech thus becomes, not only a more economical (because usually shorter) way to express something less important, but a tool for selecting and controlling the effect of characters' utterances, and even their perceived presence in the scene (Murphy 2007, p. 29). It seems to me therefore, that direct speech offers a more direct access to the speaker's own ideology, speech forms, and grade of activity, than indirect speech, and that this makes direct speech a source of characterization and a point of access to the speaker's mind.

The view of direct speech as indicative of a character's mind is also indirectly suggested by other scholars. Jonathan Culpeper, for example, in theorizing how characterization can be inferred from textual features, states that "in literary texts an author can afford us such direct access into a character's mind through such devices as thought presentation or soliloquy" (Culpeper 1996, p. 336). Similarly, Lars Bernaerts, analyzing speech acts in *One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest*, claims that "A character's speech acts activate a particular nexus of character or personality traits and suggest a particular mental functioning" (Bernaerts 2010, p. 291). While, as Brian McHale points out, "the 'originality' of direct quotation in fiction is entirely illusory" (McHale 2009, p. 435), because it is also controlled by a narrator, this illusion is in many cases all we get. When, as in *The Wind on the Moon*, indirect discourse and direct or indirect characterization of non-human characters are almost non-existent, whereas character narratives in direct speech are conspicuously common, the latter do therefore invite an analysis into the speaker's mind.

#### *Humanities* **2017**, *6*, 13

Before I move on, I need to address a question of terminology. As mentioned above, direct speech has traditionally been considered mimetic, that is, non-narrated, and my designating examples of direct speech as embedded narratives, and the speakers as intradiegetic narrators, might therefore cause objection. Genette, however, suggests in *Narrative Revisited*, that dialogue should be seen as transcribed or quoted, by the narrator (Genette 1988, p. 43), and Nelles, citing Genette, declares that "I will view all quoted dialogue in this way, not as direct speech spoken by characters, but as spoken by the general narrator in the persona of a character" (Nelles 1997, p. 60). Nelles later states:

[A]ny discourse can be seen as a narrative, since, given the proper context, any discourse can imply a story. Following this reasoning, the difference between a character addressing a speech to a listener and a narrator narrating a narrative to a narratee is not quantitatively determinable. One could thus label any character whose direct discourse is presented a narrator. One definition of "embedded narrative" would then be "character discourse": all intradiegetic narrative is embedded narrative. (Nelles 1997, p. 122)

It could seem that this means that the direct speech connection to the speaker's mind would thereby be lost, but for the fact that the general narrator speaks "in the persona of the character" (Nelles 1997, p. 60). The way I understand it, this persona must include the character's consciousness. David Herman offers a good example of direct speech analyzed not only as a point of access to the speaking character's mind, but also as an embedded narrative, in his discussion of Joyce's "The Dead" (Herman 2007). He points out about "an embedded narrative told by Gretta" that "Rather than conveying bedrock facts about Furey, [her long-dead boyfriend] the story represents Gretta making her best effort to understand what happened, and during their interaction her attempt informs Gabriel's inferences about Gretta's mind" (Herman 2007, p. 254). In what follows, I try to do something similar, that is, I read character discourse as embedded narratives, told in the persona of characters, and therefore characterizing these characters as particular personalities with particular "mental functioning[s]" (Bernaerts 2010, p. 291).

The embedded narratives in *The Wind on the Moon*, told by non-human character narrators, can be analyzed following Genette's model in *Narrative Discourse Revisited*, 1988 (Genette 1988), in which he sees intradiegetic narratives as occupying different levels. Genette calls the embedding narrative the first or primary level, which may be told by an extradiegetic narrator as in *The Wind on the Moon*, or an intradiegetic and homodiegetic, (or character) narrator. Second level, (or embedded), narratives are always told by an intradiegetic narrator, like the Puma in *The Wind on the Moon*, who per definition exists in the embedding narrative and possibly but not necessarily in the story she tells.

Intradiegetic narratives can frame other intradiegetic (also called metadiegetic) narratives, in an ever increasing number of levels, as for example, in *The Wind on the Moon*, where the extradiegetic narrator of the first level introduces a story told by the character the Falcon, which, occupying the second level, in turn embeds the narration of another character, the Bantam Hen, occupying the third level. These inserted narratives can, according to Genette's revised theory (which was informed by that of John Barth) fulfil six different narrative functions (Genette 1988, p. 93). The first is the explanatory one, an analeptic narrative that explains parts of the same story (*fabula*) that we would otherwise have no access to: background facts, for example, which are common in *The Wind on the Moon*. The second is the "predicative function of a metadiegetic prolepsis" (Genette 1988, p. 93), like the witches' prophesy in *Macbeth*, and a few possible examples in *The Wind on the Moon*. The third, the thematic function, a story of similarity or contrast which develops a theme or motif, and the fourth, the persuasive or dramaturgical function in which the narrative, "perceived by the narratee, has consequences in the first action" (Genette 1988, p. 93), are both common in *The Wind on the Moon*, and will be seen in examples below. Function number five is distractive, like a story told while the characters wait for something else to happen, and number six is obstructive, like Sheherazade's stories which actually stop her from being killed.

#### **5. Intradiegetic Narratives in** *The Wind on the Moon*

So what do the non-human intradiegetic narrators say, and what can we and the narratees infer from these narratives? In this section, I will present a number of sizeable intradiegetic narratives, (length is, after all, a common feature of direct speech (Murphy 2007)) which will be analyzed with regard to Genettian function and to non-human characterization and cognizance.

#### *5.1. The Puma*

The first example introduces the Puma, and occurs soon after the scene quoted above, when the girls (now kangaroos) meet her and the Falcon for the first time.

"Don't you like being in a zoo?" asked Dorinda. The Puma's cage looked very comfortable, and behind it there was an outrun with bushes and a bare stony rise, and a little brook. The Puma was silent for a while, and then *she said*, "I used to live in a forest in Brazil, and in every part of the forest there was something new to look at. Every tree had a different shape and some were smooth as a young leaf, and some were rough and deeply crinkled. Their branches made pictures against the sky, and at night they became a fishing net and caught the stars like a shoal of little fishes. Flowers like trumpets grew upon the trees, sweet-smelling and among the huts of an Indian village were small brown children playing in the sun. There were long winding paths in the forest, I could run for fifty miles. There was a river, sometimes brown and swirly, sometimes clear and smooth. I used to lie on a branch above the water and look at my reflection in a greenish pool. And when I was hungry I went hunting, and that was the loveliest thing in life, to go hunting in the moonlight, and feel your blood like quicksilver in your veins. Not a bird wakes but you hear it. Not a leaf closes but you see the edge turn in. Nothing moves but you smell the wind of its movement. And you go like a shadow through the trees, and even your skin and your claws are laughing and alive." "I suppose a Brazilian forest is good in its own way," *said the Falcon*, "but I wish you could see Greenland" ((Linklater [1944] 2013, pp. 99–100), my italics).

As we can see, the Puma's narrative is a second-level narrative, marked by threshold markers, quotation marks and a reporting verb at the beginning and the end (when another intradiegetic narrator, the Falcon, takes over with another second level narrative). At least partly, the Puma's narrative belongs to Genette's first function, because it explains what kind of life the Puma used to have. It belongs to the story, the *fabula*, in as much as it tells us that she used to be a wild animal, not born in the zoo where we first encounter her. Her mentioning of the Indian children foreshadows (but does not exactly predict) a later explanation, of how she was captured by a human and sold to England. Then her narrative smoothly shifts gears into the third, thematic, function, telling a story of similarity or contrast. In this case, by contrast, it calls attention to the theme of mental and physical imprisonment as opposed to liberty of body and mind. This is done partly through an affirmation of the Puma's sensory faculties (visual, audial, olfactory, and kinesthetic) and through the introduction of certain motifs and metaphors that will return in the Puma's narratives, and that characterize her and distinguish her from the other animal narrators. The Puma is for example fond of all kinds of imagery, but especially similes: "smooth as a young leaf," "stars like a shoal of little fishes," "blood like quicksilver", and metaphors.

The contrast between the Puma's memories and her current situation is evident. She used to have a forest where "every tree had a different shape"; now she has an outrun with bushes. She used to have miles of winding paths; now she has a stony rise. She used to have a swirling river; now she has a little brook. The last part of her narrative details the joys of hunting, which is contrasted by how the Puma is described when the girl first sets eyes on her some pages previously: "a lovely animal, gleaming like gold, moving swiftly out of shadow into sunlight, out of sunlight into shadow" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 96), illustrating the restless pacing of a caged predator.

Later in the novel, we are reminded of the Puma's first narrative and "the loveliest thing in life," hunting, when the children, the Puma and the Falcon escape from the zoo and the Puma, for a short time, tries to live in the local forest. This is her first narrative in freedom, here considerably abbreviated:

"Children" said the Puma, "let me tell you this. You have done me the greatest service in the world. You have given me freedom, and I am grateful. You have given me life again. All last night I walked in the Forest with the smell of the trees and the rich ground in my nostrils, and the darkness was beautiful, the sky with a few stars looked through the branches ... I had not known there were deer in the wood until I caught the draught of their movement. So I turned and followed up the wind, and in the first dawning I found a stag going to drink ... Faster I went, fast and easy, till the morning air was whistling past my ears and the forest floor slid below my feet like a torrent racing down a mountain, and the labouring haunches of the stag came nearer ... I drew near-level with him ... and in that moment I leapt upon his shoulder ... and as the sun came up, I made my kill. For that glorious moment and the headlong chase in the morning, I thank you. For the life you have given me, thank you. For the freedom of today and the liberty of tomorrow, thank you" ... Both Dinah and Dorinda were somewhat horrified to learn that the Puma, so soon after regaining her freedom, had killed a deer. (Linklater [1944] 2013, pp. 193–95)

The first thing to notice, is perhaps the motif of inter-species connection and gratitude which is established here and which recurs repeatedly until the end of the novel. But it is also important to note the thematic and metaphorical similarity of this narrative to the first. The Puma's description of her surroundings evokes the original metaphor of the stars seen through the branches. Her running and enjoyment of the speed is elaborated on, as well as the physical sensations and sensory faculties involved in hunting, and the manner in which she finds her prey. In the first narrative she says: "Nothing moves but you smell the wind of its movement" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 100) and in the second, she describes an actual instance of this is in similar words: "I caught the draught of their [the deer's] movement" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 194).

With hindsight, the first narrative may be seen as "premonitory" or "prophetic" (Genette's second function) (Genette 1988, p. 93), which would place the two narratives in a prophesy–fulfilment relationship, and in a sense she relives her memories in the second one. I also, however, read the first narrative as explanatory (Genette's first function) telling the story of her former life in freedom, and as establishing a theme: the natural habitat, the freedom of movement and the swiftness of action distinguishing the normal life of a puma. The second narrative is also explanatory (telling the story of her first night in the forest) but more importantly thematic (Genette's third function), because it repeats and emphasizes the motifs from the first, and shows her new life as an attempt to reclaim a more normal kind of life for a puma, in stark contrast to her life at the zoo. It is not only a question of her now being unrestricted and therefore able to chase after prey, nor only her ability to exercise athletic skills, but the very *liberty she takes* in killing a deer. We see this in the girls' reaction, which in this instance originates as much in the fact that the Puma's prey is considered the property of the landowner, as in their being unused to such unconstrained glorification of killing. I will return to their reaction below.

This reading also encourages a heightened awareness (in the narratees and in the readers) of the Puma's sensory capacities, related in the first narrative thus: "Not a bird wakes but you hear it. Not a leaf closes but you see the edge turn in. Nothing moves but you smell the wind of its movement" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 100). In particular the sense of smell is repeated and emphasized in the second narrative: "the smell of the trees and the rich ground in my nostrils ... I caught the draught of their [the deer's] movement" (Linklater [1944] 2013, pp. 194). The Puma's superior sensory ability is also something which distinguishes her from the human characters and which is elaborated on later in

the same chapter, when she and the Falcon try to teach the girls how to use all their senses to notice everything that goes on around them<sup>1</sup> (Linklater [1944] 2013, pp. 198–99).

These excerpts also characterize the Puma through her choice of words, which are poetic, courteous and sensuous, and perhaps just a little old-fashioned, especially in the second quotation, where she pledges her gratitude to the children. Despite the fact that she is now free, and has a forest to run and hunt in, her happiness is somehow tainted with melancholy. Furthermore, the girls' realization that a puma might not be set free to live in an English, private, forest without "some awkward consequences" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 195) foreshadows the Puma's future return to imprisonment, and death.

This intradiegetic narrative in direct speech allows the Puma to express her otherness in a delicate play on estrangement and attachment (or, in the words of Bernaerts et al., defamiliarization and empathy (Bernaerts et al. 2014)). Her highly evolved senses, for example, which are characteristic of pumas but not of humans, are described in an elaborate language of similes and metaphors (denoting human sensitivity and intelligence) which helps us understand her and empathize with her, makes her less strange in spite of her otherness. In conclusion, in these two narratives, she becomes something more than the beautiful, non-human other the girls first notice; she develops into an accomplished and valuable character both different from and similar to us. Most of all, the contrast between the Puma's wistful tone in the first narrative, and her exultant gratitude in the second, helps the children and the readers understand the absurdity of keeping a character like this in a cage.

#### *5.2. The Falcon*

The Falcon is perhaps an even more important intradiegetic narrator, since he becomes the girls' spy and informant, the only one able to see and to report on what is going on, while the Puma and the girls are imprisoned, first in the zoo and then again in a later adventure, in the dungeons of the faraway country of Bombardy. Like the Puma, the Falcon gets to introduce himself, and to acquaint the girls and the readers with his specific Greenland falcon characteristics:

"I suppose a Brazilian forest is good in its own way," *said the Falcon,* "but I wish you could see Greenland. There is nothing in the world so beautiful as that enormous tableland, covered with snow, peaked and shining in the sun, cut by great ravines, and patched by blue shadows. I used to ride upon a breeze, a mile above it, in air like crystal, and on either side I could see a hundred mile of snow and sea, and icebergs shipwrecked on the beach, and the pack-ice moving, and the Eskimos in their kayaks, fishing. Then I would close my wings and dive like a bullet through the diamond sky, down to the little bushes and the glinting rocks ... Headlong down, the thin air screaming, then *crash*—wings out, head up, and halt two feet from the heather—when I struck swiftly, straight-legged, at a fine fat ptarmigan, too slow to escape, and dashed him to the ground. Ha! The delight, the swiftness, and the freedom!" "Freedom," *sighed the Puma*. "Life without freedom is a poor, poor thing" ((Linklater [1944] 2013, pp. 100–1), my italics).

As we can see, the Falcon's initial tale is very similar to the Puma's in certain respects. It fulfils Genette's explanatory, first function, in showing what his life was like before he ended up in the zoo, and simultaneously performs the third, thematic function. The enormous expanses of his former homeland and especially his birds-eye perspective in describing the snow covered tableland cut by ravines, contrasts with his life in captivity, and develops the motif of (lost) freedom. His narrative also introduces the Falcon's particular species-specific capacities: his ability to fly at high speed and with

<sup>1</sup> This is a fascinating passage of the novel that can be compared and contrasted with Donna Haraway's ideas on animal training as a way to facilitate communication without language (Haraway 2008), but here it is the animals who train the humans. However, this discussion falls outside of my scope for this article.

great precision, and his sense of sight, which is exceptional. Both of these abilities turn out to be crucial to the plot, which also makes this an example of Genette's fourth function, the dramaturgical one.

The Falcon's narrative also characterizes him as both different from and similar to the children and the Puma. He is different, because so obviously capable of feats humans can only dream of, but similar because of his speech, which is more straight-forward and rational than the Puma's, and includes a tone of youthful delight and energy, especially in the last few, incomplete clauses where he runs up exclamations. As with the Puma, the effect of this narrative, on the protagonists and the readers, is to convince us that this is a reflecting, feeling character who does not belong in captivity.

With the kangaroos' help, the Falcon is the first non-human to be let out of his cage. He flies off to search for the bottle with the magic draught that can turn the kangaroos back into girls. During the several days of his absence, the zoo inhabitants are shaken by the repeated theft of eggs from a pair of ostriches. When the Falcon finally returns, he has an interesting tale to tell, not only of the search, but also, unexpectedly, of the hitherto unidentified egg thief. But the Falcon starts by telling the kangaroos of his search for their bottle, which despite his efforts, initially has not gone well.

"And then, barely an hour since, I was quartering the field by the gate-keeper's lodge, for the tenth, or twelfth, or fourteenth time, though the light was going fast, when I saw, not the bottle, but a plump young rabbit, and I thought to myself, There's my supper. So I stooped upon the rabbit, but the light being bad I nearly missed, and I barely gripped him by the hinder parts as he was vanishing down the hole. I pulled him out, he was squealing like a baby, and as I pulled I could see, beyond him in the hole, the bottle that you lost. It was too deep for me to reach, but the hole is near the edge of the field, on the far side of the road, eighty yards from the gate-keeper's cottage, and so that you will find it easily, I have stuck in the soil behind it the rabbit's white tail." "What a clever thing to think of!" said Dorinda. "Poor rabbit," said Dinah. "A fat and tender rabbit," said the Falcon. "I enjoyed my supper very much". (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 143)

This narrative is an example of the explanatory first function since he explains that he has found the bottle and how; but it is also thematic, (the third function) because we recognize the motif of hunting and killing. In addition, it is an example of the dramaturgical fourth function: it will enable the kangaroos to find their bottle. It also characterizes the Falcon as energetic, rational, thorough, and quick of thought, as Dorinda points out, to her sister and to the reader.

Dinah's "Poor rabbit" reaction deserves a short discussion. This is one of several instances when one of the implications of the non-humans' life in freedom becomes apparent, namely that since they are predators, they need to kill other animals to eat. Another such incident is the one related above, when the Puma kills a stag (which takes place after the Falcon kills the rabbit.) Like most children their age, Dinah and Dorinda have never had to think about where their Sunday roast comes from, but in their communication with these animals, and as an effect of their friendship, they have to at least approach the issue. After learning that the Puma has killed a deer, they are at first horrified, and realize that setting her free has had had some "awkward consequences. And the longer she remained at liberty, obeying her instincts and satisfying her hunger, the more and more numerous the awkward consequences would be" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 195). After some consideration, however, they remind themselves that the Puma is their friend, and "there was no use having a friend if you were going to complain about everything that he or she did. You had to understand her point of view ... and as to her killing [a deer] now and then,—well, was that any worse than buying a leg of lamb which the butcher had killed?" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 195). This is an instance where a shared language is not enough to create understanding. The importance of seeing the non-human's point of view, (cf. (Nagel 1974)), and of the claims of friendship become explicit here, whereas the question about the ethics of killing for food is simplified into a realization that humans do that too. Although this might be seen as if the text avoids a potentially uncomfortable issue, I think we have to consider the time of writing. The novel was written in 1944, not only a time of war and scarcity of food, but also long before the lives of farm animals had entered public debate. Moreover, in keeping with the

ideology of the novel, the girls (and the readers) are once again given the lesson that non-humans are both similar to and different from humans, and that while their differences need to be respected, their similarities nevertheless make them possible to empathize with.

The Falcon's next narrative, which follows immediately upon the one quoted above, repeats the killing for dinner motif, here juxtaposed to another kind of killing. Like the other narratives, it also explains parts of the *fabula* that the girls and the readers would otherwise have been unaware of, and offers some characterization of the Falcon himself:

"Let me tell the story in my own way," said the Falcon. "It began when I killed, early one morning, a cock pheasant in a gaudy suit of feathers ... No sooner had I killed than a little *Bantam Hen came running from the farmyard calling*: 'Well done, Falcon! That was a very proud and dangerous bird ... We are grateful to you, Falcon, and we shall be still more grateful if you will kill another of our enemies'" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 144).

In this section, the Falcon first takes control of the narrative situation in his own, rational voice, and then proceeds to relate the direct speech of the Bantam Hen, a third level narrator, (signaled by threshold phrase, italicized by me, and double quotes).

#### *5.3. The Bantam Hen*

As we can see above, the Bantam Hen first boosts the Falcon's self-confidence, and then goes on to explain that the farmyard bantams have had eggs stolen by an egg thief, who has also been feasting on ostrich eggs. This narrative provides important explanations and solutions to a mystery which would otherwise have remained unsolved (Genette's first function); it includes the killing motif, and motifs of inter-species connections and gratefulness (the third function); and it is dramaturgical (the fourth function) because it provides information that will be acted upon by the narratees (the thief is a python from the zoo). Moreover, it also characterizes both the Bantam and the Falcon. The Bantam continues:

... but when that supply [of ostrich eggs] is finished, he will return to us, for eggs of one sort or another he must and will have. And therefore Falcon, I ask you, who are a brave and noble killer, to kill him as you have killed this naughty Pheasant, and save us Bantams from further loss and sadness (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 145).

The fact that the Bantam's speech is related by the Falcon, who gets a considerable amount of praise here, must not be forgotten. Even so, my reading is that the Falcon makes an effort to speak "in the persona" (Nelles 1997) of the Bantam, because the direct speech, with its deferent, prattling tone, both signals and expresses the differences between the Falcon and the Bantam. He is big and dangerous, and presumably capable of killing a much larger animal than the pheasant; she is a very small, domesticated bird, and apparently silly enough to approach a bird of prey who might as well attack her as listen to her. She is also mistaken in her assumption that the Falcon's killing of a pheasant also makes him a likely killer of the python. Even so, this scene actually both foreshadows and initiates the killing of the Python by the Bear in the zoo, and is thus an example of Genette's second and fourth functions.

Furthermore, the Bantam's difference from the Falcon, in size and understanding, underscores her vulnerability and the Falcon's deadly skills (Genette's third function). By reporting her "typical speech forms" (Murphy 2007, p. 28) as he heard them, the Falcon is able to convey not only the facts he learns from the Bantam, but also her exposed position, and her difference from him. This third level narrator's urgent message, and its significance for her and for the other characters, is thus conveyed without obvious distortion, but with a highlight on interspecies communication; the Falcon and the Bantam may both be birds, but one is a bird of prey and the other a domesticated fowl. The Bantam's narrative also underlines both Linklater's consistency in letting animal characters be characterized through their intradiegetic narratives, and the fact that character narrators control what is told, and how.

The novel has many more examples of non-human narratives like the ones I have discussed above, most of them told by the Puma and the Falcon in their further adventures with Dinah and Dorinda. The Puma's voice falls silent, however, when she is shot while attacking and killing the tyrant of Bombardy (who has kept her, the girls and their father prisoners). Her final words, directed at the girls, confirm the motif of freedom that she and the Falcon have expressed, repeatedly, since we first met her: "You have given me a little while of freedom. Have I repaid you?" (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 388) As it turns out, the Puma's killing of the tyrant, and her liberation of the girls and their father from the dungeons of Bombardy, have wider effects. After the girls are back in England again, the Falcon is the one who tells them what has happened:

But I have other news for you ... I flew back to Bombardy to see what happened after we left. There has been a revolution there. All the many prisoners whom that man kept in his dungeons have been set free ... They have buried the Puma in the garden of the house where she was killed, and set up a monument to her . . . (Linklater [1944] 2013, p. 407) .

This final intradiegetic, explanatory, narrative—which naturally evokes strong feelings of empathy with and grief for the Puma—is also the Falcon's goodbye, as he sets off for the icy expanses of Greenland.

#### **6. Conclusions**

In this article I have shown that Eric Linklater's novel, *The Wind on the Moon* (Linklater [1944] 2013)—a posthumanist text in its insistence on a non-binary human-animal opposition—on the one hand leaves most non-human characters under-characterized, but on the other gives them a voice by letting them talk, and narrate their own stories. I have also suggested that given our human limitations, we must perhaps allow ourselves to imagine a communication with other species that is language-based, even though we risk falling into the trap of crude anthropomorphism. As has been argued in both science and literature (Garrard 2012; Bekoff 2002; Armbruster 2013; Harel 2013), *critical* anthropomorphism, characterized by an ethical approach and respect for differences as well as similarities, might be our only hope to see at least some aspect of the world from the point of view of a non-human being.

Therefore, when the non-humans in this otherwise heterodiegetic novel get to tell their own stories in a language common to all animals, their speech, and their stories, invite analysis. With the help of Genette's (Genette 1988) theory of narrative levels, I have shown how the intradiegetic animal narratives present a wide range of explanations, thematic expansions and cues for further actions for the narratees. All of this not only advances the plot and enriches the reading experience, but also allows non-human characters to shoulder important narrative functions, and, in doing so express their own concerns in their respective voices. Although intradiegetic narration is by definition relayed by another narrator, narrations in direct speech like these can be recognized as quotations, spoken in the persona of the character (Nelles 1997) something which I argue provides significant instances of characterization, and insights into the consciousness of these characters (cf. (Herman 2007)). We learn for example what they enjoy, what they are good at, what they need to lead a good life. The non-human characters explain how different wild species are associated with different, specific, habitats and behaviors that a zoo, even if it looks nice to human eyes, can never provide or sustain. Through the intradiegetic narratives, this children's novel also raises the issue of killing for food, the value of friendship, and the universal need for freedom, all of them as something predatory animals and humans have in common. These intradiegetic narratives by non-human characters are therefore of significant value for inter-species connection, and comprehension between human and non-human characters, and for the reader trying to reach otherwise inaccessible insights into non-human characters' minds.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

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## *Article* **An Animal-Centered Perspective on Colonial Oppression: Animal Representations and the Narrating Ox in Uwe Timm's** *Morenga* **(1978)**

#### **Steffen Röhrs**

Deutsches Seminar, Leibniz University, Königsworther Platz 1, 30167 Hanover, Germany; steffen.roehrs@germanistik.uni-hannover.de; Tel.: +49-511-642-18222

Academic Editor: Joela Jacobs Received: 20 December 2016; Accepted: 4 February 2017; Published: 10 February 2017

**Abstract:** As a result of its topic and its narrative style, Uwe Timm's novel *Morenga* (1978) marks an important step in the development of postcolonial German literature. The main theme of the book is the bloody suppression of the Herero and Nama uprisings through the German army in South-West Africa at the beginning of the 20th century. With recourse to historical and fictional documents and by using different narrative perspectives, the text achieves a plurality of voices and thereby destabilizes a one-dimensional view on colonialism. The present article discusses the functions of the nonhuman animals appearing in *Morenga*. It is assumed that the animal representations are an essential part of the plot and underscore the criticism of colonial rule in a narrative manner too. The novel contains several descriptions of suffering animals and links them to the harm of the Herero and the Nama in order to point out the ruthlessness of the colonists. Moreover, the book features a story-telling ox, which initiates a reflection process about possible ways of narrating colonial history. The talking ox adds a specific animal-centered perspective on colonial oppression and raises questions about emancipation, self-determination, and the agency of the nonhuman 'other'.

**Keywords:** Uwe Timm; Morenga; African history; colonialism; postcolonial German literature; animal narratology; speaking animals; multi-perspective narration; animal agency

#### **1. Introduction**

As one of the first German novels, Uwe Timm's *Morenga* [1] <sup>1</sup> (1978, translated into English in 2003)<sup>2</sup> takes a decidedly critical perspective on the violent structures of European colonialism in Africa. The text reveals a dark chapter of the German past: it centers on the Herero and Nama genocide undertaken by the Colonial Troops ('Schutztruppe') in today's Namibia between 1904 and 1908. During an insurrection of different ethnic groups, about 10,000 Nama and between 24,000 and 100,000 Herero were killed by the German army or died of exhaustion and disease in concentration camps. Besides the crimes of the 'Schutztruppe', Timm's novel illustrates the cultural differences between the European traders, soldiers, and settlers and the natives in the so-called 'protectorate' of South-West Africa.

<sup>1</sup> The title refers to Jacob Morenga (or Marengo, 1875–1907), who was one of the African leaders and an important identification figure during the rebellion. Morenga was a child of a Herero mother and a Nama father. He is known as 'the black Napoleon' for his strategic skills and his resistance against the numerically superior German army. Today, Namibia remembers him as one of the country's national heroes.

<sup>2</sup> *Morenga* was translated from the German by Breon Mitchell, who received the Helen & Kurt Wolff Prize for Translation for his work on the novel. Apart from a few exceptions, I will use the English version of Timm's novel since its 'sound' and use of language are very close to the original.

Since *Morenga* provides a critical and also an innovative view on the history of colonization, it is cited as a postcolonial novel "avant la lettre" ([2], p. 407). By combining the fictional story of the German army veterinarian Gottschalk with counterfeit historical sources as well as real documents from the era of colonialism and Post-World War II historiography, the text creates a wide panorama of voices: "Ein wichtiger Effekt dieser Montagetechnik ist dabei, daß sie zu ständigen Perspektivwechseln führt, die in diametralem Gegensatz zur [...] erzählerischen und ideologischen 'Eindimensionalität' steht" ([2], p. 407: An important effect of this montage-technique is the change of perspectives, which contrasts a narrative and ideological one-dimensionality). With its collage-style, wherein the text includes a variety of documents from personal diaries to military dispatches, the novel stands out from common Eurocentric approaches to colonial history. There are many articles and monographs about the book's multi-perspective composition, which results from changing focalizations and the diverse attitudes expressed in the cited documents. An aspect that is analyzed in a few articles [3–5] but still deserves a closer look is an intradiegetic narrative of a speaking trek ox called Big-Red. This animal focalizer tells about the domestication of his oxen ancestors and describes the beginnings of European colonialism in Southern Africa, which were accompanied by oppressive structures for both humans and animals.<sup>3</sup>

According to Christine Ott, the animal representations in Timm's novel are not as well examined as the rest of the text (see [6], p. 14). This is all the more surprising since the book frequently refers to animals. Even though the ox is the only nonhuman character that receives his own point of view, *Morenga* outlines several other situations that concentrate on animals. The present article has two aims: firstly, I want to demonstrate that the novel pictures human encounters with different animals, especially ostriches, cattle, horses, and camels, to sensitize the reader to the negative impacts of colonialism and to the terror of the German warfare. The second purpose is to discuss the functions of Big-Red's narrative. In contrast to most former articles, I want to illustrate that the talking ox cannot simply be identified with a 'wild' culture or with the voice of the Africans. My thesis is that Timm establishes an ox-narrator to provide a specific animal-centered perspective on the loss of independence during the colonization of Africa. By lending the ox a voice within a puzzle of many other 'human' narratives, *Morenga* raises general questions about emancipation and self-determination. A contextualization of the ox-episode in present historiographical discourses, in turn, shows that the novel anticipates a recent interest in animal agency. The book understands the oxen as important actors in colonial processes and thereby starts a reflection process about animals as 'protagonists' in history. Overall, this article offers new impulses for a close reading of *Morenga* in the context of literary animal studies.

#### **2. The Oppression of Humans and Animals under German Colonial Rule**

The main plot of Timm's novel takes place during the rebellions of the Herero and the Nama, which were provoked by the repressive structures of German colonial rule at the beginning of the 20th century. Furthermore, the narration refers back to the start of European land-grabbing in Southern Africa about fifty years earlier. These subplots, which mainly occur in the "Regional Studies" chapters (see [1], pp. 88–114, 135–76, 213–47), open up a wider context in order to point out the economic and ecological consequences of the European influence in Africa.<sup>4</sup> While the main issue of the book is to illustrate the in*human* system of the military campaign against the natives, it is noticeable that it also turns toward the animals, which suffer from the colonial situation as well. In many cases, there are connections between these descriptions of oppressed animals and

<sup>3</sup> For better readability, this essay terminologically distinguishes between 'animals' and 'humans' although humans are actually mammals too.

<sup>4</sup> The chapter headings of the novel are statements of an omniscient narrator who knows about the illegitimacy of European colonialism. They should not be misunderstood since they are often named in a distanced and ironic way. Especially the long and meaningful titles of the 'Regional Studies' episodes are euphemistic and contradict the content of the chapters.

humans. For one thing, the animal representations reinforce a critical discussion about human dignity. Then again, they address the animals themselves to offer a more comprehensive view on the victims of colonization. Overall, *Morenga* pictures European colonialism as a history of violence for both humans and animals.

The chapter 'Regional Studies 2' stands out especially since it takes a closer look at the early human and animal victims of colonization in the middle of the nineteenth century. It explains the reasons for the extermination of the ostriches in the region of Bethany and thereby reveals the complex relations between European trading strategies and the devastating aftermath for the natives and the animal population. The chapter begins with the following description: "From time immemorial the ostrich, with its reddish neck and small, pop-eyed head, had roamed unmolested, grazing peacefully among the cattle herds. Until the day a rider appeared on the horizon and, galloping toward it with yells and whip cracks, got it running, though it had no desire to flee" ([1], p. 135). With two other hunters the rider finally chases the ostrich until it collapses and dies. Afterward, the narrative voice raises the crucial question, "Why was this bird, living peacefully and nourished solely on hydrous plants, forced to sacrifice its feathers?" ([1], p. 136). This question starts the tale of Klügge, a German businessman who comes to Africa in 1842 and who "specialized in buttons, pots, and pans, trading them for cattle, goats, and sheep" ([1], p. 145). Because the sale of these household objects is not as lucrative as he hoped, Klügge merges his business with the English trader Morris. To increase profits, the two men make plans to export cattle to St. Helena. Therefore, they develop a strategy to move the Nama "from stealing [livestock] when forced to for food, to systematic theft on economic principles" ([1], p. 148). In their calculations, alcohol plays a major role; by giving the Nama brandy as a payment, they manipulate the cattle trade and force the natives into subordination. This business plan—Morris and Klügge also sell gunpowder—sets off a deadly avalanche for both humans and animals. To satisfy their growing thirst for alcohol, the Nama have to sell more and more livestock to the Europeans. Thus, they start to raid and kill the Herero in order to steal their cattle, but the natives and their livestock do not remain the only victims; a few years later, as he wants to settle up with the Nama, Klügge notices the increasing demand for ostrich feathers in Europe. Meanwhile, the meat prices have fallen. Since the trader is "no longer willing to give out brandy on credit" ([1], p. 164), the Nama now have to find another way of paying him, namely they have "to chase every last ostrich in the region to death" ([1], pp. 164–65) to repay their debt. Before Klügge's life is told to the end, we can find a statement that refers back to the beginning of the chapter: "Two weeks later the last ostrich in the region around Bethany was killed and robbed of its tail feathers. The vultures circled in the sky" ([1], p. 165).

While the 'Regional Studies' chapters point out the devastating ecological impacts, which are triggered by the selfish motives of the colonists and their thirst for profits, the main plot relates to animals in the context of human warfare. The book contains many descriptions of wild and domesticated animals as two of the protagonists, Gottschalk and Wenstrup, are veterinarians of the German Colonial Troops. Their main task is to take care of the soldiers' horses during the insurrection of the Nama. Right from the start, Wenstrup is characterized as a critical person who is aware of the illegitimate methods applied by the German Empire. In contrast, Gottschalk's reason to join the 'Schutztruppe' seems to be a naive and romantic thirst for adventure influenced by his parents who are running a shop for colonial goods. Throughout the text, both veterinarians grow more scrupulous and begin to think of possibilities to improve the natives' situation. As we will see, Timm's novel discusses the two men's opportunities of resistance by picturing different encounters with animals.

The book repeatedly shows that most of the German soldiers do not distinguish between animals and humans when it comes to enforcing colonial rule in South-West Africa. During the uprisings, they arrest Herero and Nama and also seize cattle, sheep, and goats that originally belonged to the natives. These animals are in a poor condition, which catches the veterinarian's attention: "When Gottschalk asked how the livestock was used, [staff veterinarian] Moll said it provided meat for the troops. The rest simply died. [...] The cattle were a pitiful sight, totally emaciated, many injured by thorns or

bullets, with festering wounds. Bodies of dead animals lay scattered everywhere. The stench of carrion filled the air" ([1], p. 17). The Colonial Troops have also built a concentration camp for the conquered rebels. The description of the prisoners' situation—they are treated like animals—is reminiscent of the suffering livestock: "A large area next to the kraal had been enclosed with barbed wire. Sentries were posted in front with fixed bayonets. Beyond the fence Gottschalk could see people, or rather skeletons, squatting—no, something halfway between humans and skeletons. They huddled together, mostly naked, in the piercingly hot sun" ([1], p. 17). Moreover, "[s]omeone had lettered a sign and hung it on the fence: Please don't feed the animals" ([1], p. 18). This inscription corresponds to Captain Moll's sexist statement that most of the 'Hottentot' (Nama) women are "completely immoral, total animals" ([1], p. 17).<sup>5</sup> The cited passages are essential for the rest of the novel. By describing humans as well as animals in a related situation of starving, they have the function to raise questions about the status and dignity of humans in captivity. Gottschalk's discovery of the wounded and dying animals on the one side and the exhausted and dehumanized rebels on the other side also triggers his further character development. After spending some time working near the concentration camp, the veterinarian slowly loses his initial naivety and starts to wonder about the conduct of the own troops: "What upset Gottschalk was the absurd fact that human beings were starving to death while a few meters away cattle dropped to the ground and rotted away" ([1], p. 20). Even if he still cannot believe Wenstrup, who feels confident that the camps are part of a systematic plan to exterminate the natives, Gottschalk composes a two point petition to Captain Moll: "1. If used for food, the dead animals would not rot, thereby reducing the risk of plague for the Colonial Guard and the prisoners. 2. The lives of women and children would be saved" ([1], p. 20).

While most of the German officers believe in the use of the "hippo-hide whip, [...] an internationally recognized language" ([1], p. 82), which exerts violent control over the natives, Gottschalk's perception of colonial policy changes. On the one hand—and agreeing with Kora Baumbach—his overall development can be analyzed as a "scheiternder Versuch des *going native*" ([7], p. 93: failed attempt of going native): in the end, he still feels an unbridgeable cultural distance between the Herero and the Nama and the Germans. On the other hand, the veterinarian stands out from his comrades since he is "putting aside half his ration of army bread and then, when he thought no one was looking, passing it through the barbed wire to the Hottentots" ([1], p. 129). As Gottschalk becomes more and more uncertain if the implementation of colonial rule is justified, he also develops a specific feeling of compassion for animals that goes beyond the 'duty' of an army veterinarian. For example, he saves a sow from being slaughtered by comrades and rescues a "cow with strikingly long, shadowy lashes, light brown coat, and high withers" ([1], p. 127) by performing an embryotomy. While Lieutenant Dr. Haring thinks that the veterinarian wants to refine his surgical skills, Gottschalk replies, "he'd just done it. A Hottentot boy had come for help, that was all, the cow couldn't have its calf, it was going to die, and everyone would lose the milk" ([1], p. 127). Haring, in turn, counters with the question, "why one would want to dirty his hands with a cow in this country" ([1], p. 127). In doing so, Gottschalk attempts to find his personal way to help the Nama who need the milk and the meat to survive. At the same time, the cow-episode illustrates that the veterinarian struggles against his moral scruples; even if he fears the consequences of siding directly with the rebellious natives, he at least can justify the treatment of the local cattle herds according to his tasks as a veterinary surgeon.

*Morenga* does not stick to a unilateral reading of Gottschalk's character development and thereby offers a multifaceted approach to the opportunities of anti-colonial resistance. In the end, the text critically questions the veterinarian's individual form of 'rebellion' and its negative impacts on both animals and humans. Before Gottschalk ultimately quits his service and returns to Germany, he announces in front of a superior officer that "he no longer wished to take part in the slaughter of

<sup>5</sup> There are several other examples of German soldiers comparing Africans with animals for various reasons (see [1], pp. 10, 37, 40, 198).

innocent people" ([1], p. 323). With the term 'slaughter' he clearly criticizes the colonial regime and the downgrade of natives to dehumanized 'animals'. Nonetheless, his overall conduct does not change much, neither for the indigenous people nor for the animals. For one thing, the veterinarian recognizes "that he was helping maintain the circulatory system of force and terror" ([1], p. 208). Then again, he does not take the final step since he is not willing to desert or to support the 'enemy'. The passages in which Gottschalk supposedly 'rescues' certain animals disclose an ambivalent behavior towards the nonhuman victims of warfare too; while the veterinarian protects the animals from his *German* comrades, he has no concerns about the *natives* utilizing and slaughtering the cattle. A related episode, which shows that Gottschalk is trapped in contradictions, focuses on the veterinarian's task "to test the feasibility of camels as pack animals in German South West Africa" ([1], p. 257). Although he knows about the military plans to use the camels in order to fight the Nama, Gottschalk accepts the job of managing the experimental program. While he tries to calm himself with the idea "that every innovation brought to this land furthered its development and would benefit the natives one day" ([1], p. 258), we soon learn that "[t]hree years later, in 1908, the last rebels were tracked down and defeated in the Kalahari with the help of a German camel corps" ([1], p. 259).

In regard to his direct involvement in the military campaign, Gottschalk differs from Wenstrup. His veterinarian comrade is inspired by the anarchistic book *Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution* (1902) by the Russian philosopher Pjotr Kropotkin. This text, which is often cited in the novel, explores specific forms of cooperation including mutual aid in 'societies' of nonhuman animals as well as close relations between humans and animals. Kropotkin criticizes, for example, a social Darwinian understanding of the thesis that only the fittest, here seen as the strongest and most ruthless competitor, can survive. The radical interpretation of this phrase, which originally emerged in evolutionary theory, is also a specific colonialist way of thinking. Based on his lecture, Wenstrup sympathizes with the rebellious natives and in particular with the animals in the colony. He tries to act according to the following maxim: "There is a hell for animals, created and maintained by human society and institutions. [...] Freedom of choice and freedom of opportunity for animals too!" ([1], p. 126). At an early point of the novel, Wenstrup disappears. Although rumors circulate that he might have deserted, the book refuses to give a clear explanation of his motives and the veterinarian remains lost. Since Wenstrup's anarchistic type of resistance is not successful as well, *Morenga* ultimately presents a gloomy picture of a potential equality in colonial situations. In the end, both veterinarians fail since they cannot seriously endanger the colonial endeavor.

The novel focuses on the victims of colonial injustice and on the guilt of individual German soldiers in several other passages. In addition to the Herero and the Nama and their livestock, especially horses are the sufferers.6 'Schutztruppen' officer Captain Tresckow loses his mount during a battle and has to select a new one. As a replacement, he chooses "a somewhat bony but well-built black horse" ([1], p. 41) from the Cape Colony, but the mount kicks and rears up and the captain falls to the ground. After a second unsuccessful try, Tresckow declares the horse "as unfit for duty" ([1], p. 42) and has it shot, although it is otherwise completely healthy. Based on a previous case, Gottschalk's assumption is that the mount dropped the captain because it was not used to his strong aftershave lotion. The reason for Tresckow's harsh reaction, in turn, is his feeling of being humiliated in front of subordinates by a supposedly inferior being, especially since the horse allowed any other rider to mount it. The story of the unwilling animal is framed by reports about war crimes against helpless prisoners and an artillery attack on a village where over fifty Nama are killed. At first sight, there does not seem to be a direct connection between these narrative fragments. Nevertheless, we can easily link the descriptions; in this case, the vulnerable horse and the unarmed Nama are dead within just a few seconds due to a single command of a German officer. This is an example that it is not well-meant

<sup>6</sup> To illustrate the large number of horses which had to participate in colonial processes: there is data for the Second Boer War that during this conflict between 494,000 and 520,000 horses were used, about 325,000 of which were killed in 'duty' (see [8], p. 58).

statements but rather the specific combination of short episodes, which creates the book's critical perspective on the ever-present violence. *Morenga* resists giving direct moral commentary and yet assumes an ethical stance in order to deprecate injustice and violence against all beings. All things considered, the text effectively blurs the line between human and animal victims without trivializing one of the two sides.

#### **3. The Narrating Ox: Colonial History through the Eyes of an Animal**

Timm not only achieves a nuanced depiction of colonial oppression by discussing this topic on the level of content but also by choosing a specific form for his book. The overall narrative situation in *Morenga* is complex and not easy to characterize: we cannot identify a single character that connects the diverse storylines as a narrator, nor is there a 'typical' omniscient voice which knows or tells everything. Following the terminology of Gérard Genette, Stefan Hermes speaks of a zero focalization, which, in turn, does not correspond with an "autoritären Erzählgestus" ([9], p. 184: authoritarian gesture of telling). On the one hand, this zero focalization prevails in many parts of the novel; a heterodiegetic narrator gives us historical and cultural details that are not bound to a limited perspective. On the other hand, the narration often changes between different internal focalizations and, as a consequence, between diverse points of view with individual states of knowledge in each case (variable internal focalization). In this way, we learn more about the thoughts, feelings, and prejudices of different characters. In addition to the internal perspectives of the protagonists, the narration also contains excerpts from both real and made-up documents, such as newspaper articles, scientific studies, letters, diaries, and official military reports. To quote Herbert Uerlings, this concept of intertextuality leads to a diversity of speech, "einer formalen, sozialen, inner- und interkulturellen Vielfalt der Stimmen" ([10], p. 133: a formal, social, inner-, and intercultural variety of voices). Altogether, the distinct narratives establish a multi-perspective view on the situation in South-West Africa. As a result, the narration undermines a one-dimensional 'truth' of the colonial discourse.

Even though the reader gets used to this multilayered story-telling technique quickly, one narrative strand sticks out: it is the tale of a speaking draft ox called Big-Red. Big-Red, who appears in the chapter 'Regional Studies 1', is the lead animal of Gorth, a German missionary who travels the land with his ox wagon in 1852 in order to convert the natives to Christianity. On their way through the desert, Gorth walks beside the wagon and suddenly hears the voice of his animal companion. What follows is a short but meaningful intradiegetic narrative that is divided into two parts.

The first part of Big-Red's tale focuses on the domestication of his cattle ancestors and describes how "we came under the yoke" ([1], p. 106). The animal narrator follows the livestock back to a time when "the broad plains belonged to the cattle" ([1], p. 105). This independent way of life—Big-Red mentions that the herds were free and "went where they wished" ([1], p. 105)—is destroyed by Hurt-Knee, "the ancestor of all Hottentots" ([1], p. 105). Since Hurt-Knee is limping and cannot follow the cattle, he thinks up a strategy to force the animals under his will. For this purpose, he helps a suffering cow named Dotsy7 by removing a thorn from her hoof. Big-Red, who has a narrative 'connection' to his relatives and, therefore, the possibility to empathize with them, reports that the cow naively accepts this aid; she allows Hurt-Knee to milk her in return, but this form of mutual help quickly develops to a unilateral relationship, and Dotsy's male calf "soon found that there was no more milk in her udder" ([1], p. 105). Later, as the bull grows up, Hurt-Knee catches him and castrates him by biting off his testicles. Afterward, he ties him "to a tree, struck him with a whip and called out, Ox, until he responded to that name and stood quietly while Hurt-Knee sat on his back. Then Hurt-Knee rode off on the ox, while Dotsy followed the ox, the [other] bulls followed Dotsy, and the herds followed the bulls" ([1], pp. 105–6). In the end, Big-Red describes that the animals

<sup>7</sup> The descendants of Dotsy—for example White-Mouth, Long-Tuft, Big-Red, Christopherus, Fork-Horn, and Soft-Mouth—are named and appear throughout the novel (see [1], pp. 109, 141, 174, 214).

completely depend on their human 'leader': "Before long they couldn't find the springs any longer without Hurt-Knee, they forgot their directions and how to smell the rain. Cattle who had lost their way stood on the plains and lowed in fear" ([1], p. 106).

While the first passage illustrates the unequal interdependency between humans and animals, the second part of Big-Red's narrative relates to European colonialism and to the backgrounds of the 'cattle wars' between the Herero and the Nama. The ox gives us the information that hostilities between local ethnic groups existed before Europeans came to Southern Africa. Nonetheless, he explains that there is a causal relation between colonization and the following increase of violence: after "white men [...] from Holland" ([1], p. 108) begin to fight the 'Hottentots' in the south, these Nama, in turn, "kill and drive off the local Bushmen" ([1], p. 108) in order to settle the regions north of the Orange River. "But since the land conquered by the Namas had little rain and few springs, they couldn't keep large herds" ([1], p. 108). That is why the Nama move farther to the north and start to chase the livestock of the Herero, "the friends of cattle" ([1], p. 108). As Big-Red states, European traders even fuel these conflicts by selling guns, bullets, and powder to the different groups. A negative effect of this process for the animals is that cows and oxen increasingly become trading goods and therefore lose their status as sacred animals and respected 'friends' of the natives. As a consequence, they frequently end up in the slaughterhouses in Cape Town.

The narrative strand of Big-Red stands out since it is the only part of the book presented from the viewpoint of an animal.<sup>8</sup> It also shows stylistic differences: in contrast to other chapters and especially to the cited military documents, the ox-narration reminds the reader of a fairy-tale gone wrong. The second part of the narrative, for example, begins with the phrase "Long, long ago" ([1], p. 108), which alludes to the fairy-tale-opening 'once upon a time'. In some other passages, Big-Red unfolds the history of oppression in a 'biblical' manner (see [11], p. 89); the sentences are figurative, memorable, and often use a repetitive syntax ("Hurt-Knee rode off on the ox, while Dotsy followed the ox, the bulls followed Dotsy, and the herds followed the bulls" [1], pp. 105–6). Nevertheless, the episode might confuse the reader as it blurs the boundaries between realistic and fantastic representation methods. In this context, Axel Dunker claims that the narrative style of Big-Red is inspired by the magical realism of Latin American literature. He describes the effect on the reader as follows: "Die entsprechenden Passagen des Buches werden tatsächlich als 'fremd', als einer außereuropäischen, 'anderen' Tradition verpflichtet, empfunden" ([5], p. 49: The relevant passages are actually experienced as 'alien', bound to a non-European, 'foreign' tradition).

The animal narration differs from the rest of the novel in another respect. Big-Red participates in the story as a character and can be categorized as an intradiegetic narrator. At the same time, his descriptions of the cattle herds and the conflicts in Southern Africa are zero focalized. In other episodes we can either find a zero focalization on the events that are presented by a narrator that does not participate in the story or the perspectives are limited and connected to individual characters. The narrative of Big-Red, in turn, contains much information that goes beyond the presumed knowledge of such a homodiegetic narrator. This leads to the conclusion that the ox holds a representative voice; he does not only speak for himself but also for someone or something else. A characteristic feature of Big-Red's speech backs this assumption: in some parts of his narrative, the ox empathizes with his ancestors by telling their thoughts and feelings. For example, he conveys the experiences of Dotsy and her calf (see [1], p. 105). Big-Red also uses the personal pronoun 'we' which addresses all of his oxen companions: "Thus we came under the yoke" ([1], p. 106).

This narrative style and the impression that the ox possibly raises his voice for someone else have prompted different interpretative approaches. A short overview illustrates that most of them are human-centered and often simply ignore the ox's own viewpoint. The research primarily highlights

<sup>8</sup> The book gives a small hint that all three 'Regional Studies' chapters are possibly told by Rolfs, one of the native rebels (see [1], pp. 325–26). However, the changing focalizations as well as the stylistic and narrative differences between the individual chapters and subplots speak against this explanation.

a supposed allegorical function of the passage and thereby tends to link the animal narrator to the perspective of a 'foreign' culture or directly to the Herero and the Nama. Martin Hielscher argues that all three 'Regional Studies' chapters are part of a narrative strategy to circumvent the imperial and rational logic of colonialism, as they contrast with the "zitierten Dokumenten, authentischen Äußerungen und Aufzeichnungen der Militärs und Behörden" ([11], p. 86: cited documents, authentic statements, and records of the soldiers and authorities). Hielscher locates Big-Red within this narrative comparison of distinct discourses and attributes a representative function to him; in his view, the voice of the ox fills "eine Leere, die bleiben muss, weil die Unterlegenen ihre Geschichte noch nicht selbst erzählen können" ([11], p. 89: an emptiness which has to remain since the underdogs are not yet able to narrate their own history of oppression). In this context, Hielscher associates the talking ox with the oral traditions of the Nama and their 'sensual' perception of the world (see [11], p. 87). We find a similar argumentation in Kerstin Germer's exploration of narrative strategies in Timm's novels. Germer claims that the mythical and fantastical episodes of *Morenga* are an attempt "der nur unzulänglich zu fassenden afrikanischen Kultur eine potenzielle Stimme zu verleihen" ([12], p. 40: to lend the elusive African culture a potential voice). Christine Ott mainly follows these interpretations. She states that Timm could not rely on written sources of the oral historiography of the Herero and the Nama (see [6], p. 25). The speaking ox, in turn, represented these oral narratives: "Die Erzählungen des Roten Afrikaners [Big-Red] bieten einen solchen Zugang, wie ihn die Historiographie nicht vermitteln kann. In ihnen transportiert der Autor die Eigengeschichtlichkeit der indigenen Kultur, für die er die Rezipientinnen und Rezipienten sensibilisieren möchte" ([6], p. 81: Big-Red's narratives provide an approach which conventional historiography cannot offer. In these passages, the author transports the genuine historicity of the indigenous culture in order to sensitize the reader to it). At the same time, Ott questions if the ox-episode and the 'Regional Studies' chapters actually convey African history and oral traditions in an adequate way (see [6], pp. 26–31): "Das, was als indigene Eigenheit im Roman beschrieben wird, fußt möglicherweise auf einer klischeehaften Vorstellung des Autors von Afrika" ([6], p. 31: The supposed indigenous peculiarity, which is described in the novel, possibly arises out of the author's stereotypical picture of Africa).

Although the novel is siding with the natives, it is indeed remarkable that Timm mainly avoids narrating through the eyes of the Herero and the Nama. In an interview, the author mentions that an aesthetic of empathy would be a colonial act itself (see [13], p. 452). At first glance, the tale of the ox appears to be a possible approach to African history, while avoiding a direct and 'colonial' assimilation of the voices of the natives. In the German original version of the book, the presumed connection between the nonhuman narrator and the history of Africa even 'sounds' stronger since Big-Red's German name is "der Rote Afrikaner" ([14], p. 138: the Red African). At the same time, it is problematic to identify Big-Red with the perspective of the indigenous people for two main reasons: firstly, even though they are rare and short, we *can* find passages which internally focalize natives and illustrate the perception of African individuals (see [1], pp. 29, 58, 60–61, 74, 91, 97, 110, 154, 326). When Baumbach suggests that there are no explicit "Äußerungen der Indigenen über die Kolonialherren" ([7], p. 97: statements of the indigenous people about the colonial rulers) in the entire novel, it is simply not correct. In this regard, the novel cannot fully avoid empathizing with the natives' experiences. Secondly, an equation of the narrating ox to the Herero and the Nama would do justice neither to the humans nor to the animals. On the one hand, it would animalize the natives and thereby adopt a colonialist position, which radically disregards human dignity as well as African culture and history. On the other hand, it would trivialize the specific animal-centered perspective, which the novel undoubtedly includes.

In the following, I want to show that, with his representative voice, the trek ox does not primarily speak for the natives but, above all, for the animals. In doing so, I can build on Esther Almstadt who, as an exception, points out that the narrative clearly focuses on the animals' point of view: "An der Ochsen-Erzählung ist signifikant, dass den geschilderten Tieren nicht ausschließlich die Funktion zukommt, menschliches Verhalten zu bebildern. Sie demonstrieren vielmehr die Vorstellung, dass

auch die Tiere Opfer der Kolonisierung seien" ([15], p. 190: It is significant that the descriptions of the animals in the ox-narration do not only picture human behavior. They rather demonstrate that animals are victims of colonization too).

When we look at the oxen's human 'audience', it is interesting who is able and who wants to understand their language and for what reasons. At first we could assume that Gorth only hears his draft animal because of sunstroke. It is mentioned that the missionary never wears a hat. Another presumption is that the talking ox is nothing but a drug-related hallucination since Gorth begins to listen to him after smoking "a small pipe of dagga" ([1], p. 104). That this is a reduced view becomes clear as the novel itself criticizes these explanations of Gorth's "confused state of mind" ([1], p. 106): after a letter appears in which Gorth writes that "he'd finally learned the language of the oxen" ([1], p. 106), a debate arises about the possible reasons for his 'expansion of consciousness'. There is no doubt that the novel ridicules the rational explanation attempts of the German Missionary Society. In contrast to the perspectives of most European colonists, we can find several statements of Africans who claim that they are able to communicate with animals. While the Nama Lukas explains that he can speak "a language the cattle understand" ([1], p. 101),9 Gottschalk's former assistant Rolfs questions the skills of the German veterinarian because of his lack of empathy for the livestock: "You call yourself a cattle doctor and can't even understand what they say" ([1], p. 326). When Gottschalk performs the mentioned embryotomy—the suffering cow, Soft-Mouth, is actually a descendent of Dotsy—we also learn that he "understood nothing" ([1], p. 127) and solely hears a mooing animal. In addition to the natives and the missionary Gorth, it is surprisingly the German trader Klügge who ultimately learns to 'listen' to the oxen. Before he gets lost in the width of the desert, Klügge recognizes the harm he has done to both humans and animals; when Klügge's wagon master strikes their lead ox with his whip, the businessman "threw himself protectively across the animal and cried out: This is God's creature" ([1], p. 174). The text does not explain the trader's change of mind in detail, but the named episodes clearly contrast the 'limited' viewpoint of those who take part in the oppression of animals and those who try to empathize with the nonhuman 'other'.10

In this context, one might assume that *Morenga* just offers another anthropocentric approach to different ethnic groups and their disparate conceptions of the world, but it is an important feature of the text that it includes a perspective that explicitly attributes the *non*human animals the means to express themselves. The novel concretely refers to animistic and ethnological positions which question a strict dichotomy between culture and nature: "Viele nicht-westliche Gesellschaften anerkennen Tiere als konstitutiven Teil der Welt, [...] interagieren mit ihnen und schreiben ihnen personenhaften [...] Status zu" ([16], p. 292: Many non-Western societies recognize animals as a constitutive part of the world, interact with them and attribute personhood status to them). According to such an animistic view, the communication between humans and animals is not a "Phantasieprodukt, sondern eine ernsthafte Angelegenheit" ([17], p. 227: product of fantasy but a serious issue). The novel takes up this perspective in order to include 'inexplicable' approaches to speaking animals "die mit unseren westlich-abendländischen Vorstellungen in keiner Weise zu vereinbaren sind" ([16], p. 289: which are in no way compatible to our Western ideas). With respect to the special role that the cattle play for the Herero and the Nama, it is no coincidence that Timm chose an ox for bringing up this topic; through Big-Red's narrative, we learn that especially the Herero keep "holy cattle" ([1], p. 109), which are an integral part of their ancestor worship. Furthermore, we can connect the animistic way of thinking to anarchistic ideas, which imply an "Gleichsetzung von Mensch und Tier" ([15], p. 190: equation of humans and animals). Since the narrative of the ox indicates a possible "verbale Verbundenheit

<sup>9</sup> Lukas claims that, in addition to the language of the cattle, he is also able to speak and listen to "the fat-tailed sheep, the jackal, the antelope, the sand viper" ([1], p. 101). By mentioning the cattle in the first place, Lukas underlines their importance for the natives.

<sup>10</sup> While the novel clearly states that Gottschalk is not able to understand the speech of animals, unfortunately, we cannot find any proof that his anarchistic comrade Wenstrup, who demands equal rights for humans and animals, possibly could.

zwischen Mensch und Tier" ([15], p. 191: verbal solidarity between humans and animals), it provides an innovative and novel angle on colonialism "that can prompt humans to focus afresh on subjects that have been marginalized" ([18], p. 128).

It is an important characteristic of *Morenga* that this comparison of different worldviews does not lead to a naive appreciation of a 'near-natural' form of perception. As Uerlings states, the 'animal-friendly' culture of the indigenous people has its limits too. Their religious and cultural 'connection' with the livestock does not mean that they would not utilize or kill animals. On the contrary, during the conversation with his lead ox, Gorth experiences the animals' relationship with the natives as a harmful life of suffering (see [10], pp. 135–36). When Big-Red describes how Hurt-Knee brutally domesticates the "cow's calf, and bit off its balls" ([1], p. 105), he reveals a history of consistent subordination and exploitation of animals. Therefore, the book does not romanticize the supposed 'animal-understanding' African societies. At the same time, the narrative of the ox questions predominant patterns of thinking. In this respect, we can agree with former research; by lending the animal a voice, the text clearly criticizes the rational and objective explanatory approaches of the Western colonial discourse. Following ethnologist Lukasz Nieradzik, the history of livestock is not only a history of human violence. In fact, *writing* this history can be a violent act too (see [19], p. 122). A quality of Timm's novel is that it turns towards the domestication of animals without an authoritarian Western viewpoint. Even though every literary animal is bound to the perspectives of humans who ultimately produce the text (see [17], p. 233), *Morenga* succeeds in questioning Eurocentric as well as anthropocentric forms of rule and representation. Moreover, since the book establishes a *speaking* animal, which is capable of reflecting the history of oppression, it implicates "that ideas of an absolute difference between the human and the animal (and the superiority of the former over the latter) owe a great deal to the colonial legacies" ([20], p. 414).

Reflecting dissimilar forms of understanding and talking about the oxen's loss of independence is just one purpose of the episode. The other function is to give the animals a voice in order to point out their important role in colonial history and, in this sense, their specific historical agency. According to Actor Network Theory, agency can be understood as "the capacity to affect the environment and history" ([20], p. 415). This capacity is not limited "to the conscious, rational choices made by human individuals" ([20], p. 415). It rather means "an effect generated in multiple and unpredictable ways from a network of interactions between human, animal, and environmental actors" ([20], p. 415). A journey through literary history shows that it is a particular privilege of fictional texts "Tiere mit großer Handlungsmacht auszustatten oder sogar als vollgültige Subjekte zu präsentieren" ([17], p. 236: to equip animals with a specific form of agency or to even present them as fully valid subjects).

The animals occurring in *Morenga* reflect different content-related motifs. While the representations of horses and camels are primarily integrated into the criticism of human warfare, the speaking draft ox addresses another topic: we associate oxen with stock farming, trading, and, since they are essential means of transport, especially with colonial 'movements' like land-grabbing, resettlement, and missionary work. Big-Red's tale demonstrates that animals are important triggers for colonial developments which, in turn, mostly end up in injustice for the natives as well as the animals themselves. As the trek ox explains, the violent conflicts and the raids in the southern parts of Africa always involve the fight for the best feeding grounds for the cattle herds; for example, he says that the Nama tribes move into Herero-territory because they want to occupy the "thick meadows flowing with water" ([1], p. 108) in order to keep more livestock. Therefore, the ox-narration presents animals as reasons and motives for historical changes. As actors, the cattle also affect the economic situation and thereby the course of the fights (see [1], p. 109). The term "the great cattle war" ([1], p. 157), which is used in the second 'Regional Studies' chapter and sums up the different Herero and Nama conflicts in the nineteenth century, indicates the livestock's significant influence on the circumstances in Southern Africa too.

With regard to this animal-centered perspective on economic aspects of colonialism, we can link *Morenga* to current historical studies, which focus on the agency of nonhuman 'others' in historical processes. By characterizing the oxen as actors and, in general, as an important part of colonization, the novel reflects and anticipates the findings of an 'animate history' that questions the common position that animals are solely objects of history and its interpretations (see [21], p. 10). While most research firstly refers to the human parties that are involved in colonial experiences, German historian Gesine Krüger, in turn, underlines that the discourse has to be open to nonhuman animals for several reasons:

"Kolonialismus und Imperialismus bedeuteten nicht nur Herrschaft über Menschen, sondern waren zugleich in vielfacher Hinsicht Herrschaft durch und über Tiere. Ohne Tiere gäbe es keine imperialen Eroberungen. Tiere [...] sind Bedingung imperialer Prozesse, mit denen sie in vielfältiger Weise verflochten sind, die sie verändern und durch die sie verändert werden" ([22], p. 127: Colonialism and imperialism did not only mean rule over humans but rule by and over animals too. There would not be imperial conquests without animals. Animals are the requirement for imperial processes, with which they are interwoven in diverse ways. Imperial processes are changed by animals and influence them at the same time).

Using the example of horses and cattle, Krüger points out specific forms of agency which we can rediscover in Big-Red's narrative; especially at the North American, Australian, and South African 'frontiers', oxen (and horses) affected substantial economic and ecological changes. The import, export, and commerce involving these animals influenced the landscape and small-scale agricultural systems as well as global market structures (see [22], p. 140). Timm's speaking ox relates to these topics and illustrates how animals are interwoven with missionary work, trading, and, above all, with a spiral of colonial violence which has constantly increased since the middle of the nineteenth century.

In contrast to books that simply bring up such themes, *Morenga* deals with the agency of animals in a content-related as well as a narrative way. Due to this dual approach, which respects a viewpoint on and *of* animals, the novel anticipates the recent postcolonial interest in the perspectives of nonhuman 'others' (see [20], p. 417). With regard to the narrative situation, the novel does not entirely characterize animals as passive victims; the descriptions of Big-Red reveal that they are often downgraded to objects which do not have the opportunity to act independently, "aber im Erzählen wird der Rote Afrikaner zum Souverän seiner Geschichte" ([11], p. 89: but during his narration, Big-Red becomes a sovereign over his tale/history). Therefore, the text undermines a mere victims' perspective. By lending Big-Red his own voice, *Morenga* gives at least the oxen the means to 'emancipate' in a narrative manner.11 In this way, the book provides a reflected view on animals' agency since it respects their ambiguous position (see [17], p. 234). As participants in historical processes their status is not clearly evident; animals always appear to be subjects and objects at the same time, tied to complex structures of political and economic interests.

#### **4. Summary**

Analyzing animals in postcolonial literature and in (post-)colonial contexts in general can be a difficult undertaking. As Philip Armstrong states, "One reason might be the suspicion that pursuing an interest in the postcolonial animal risks trivializing the suffering of human beings under colonialism" ([20], p. 413). Uwe Timm's *Morenga* gives us a striking example that literary texts can provide a kaleidoscopic perspective on European colonialism, which focuses on both humans and animals. By centering on two veterinarians, the book takes up an innovative viewpoint on a military campaign, which not only is a genocide committed against the Herero and the Nama but also kills "more cows than had been lost in the last ten years" ([1], p. 209). With its different animal representations and the specific interest in the nonhuman 'protagonists' of colonial history, Timm's

<sup>11</sup> However, this is an opportunity for the literary ox, not necessarily for his real 'relatives' that are "under the yoke" ([1], p. 106).

novel turns towards a topic that has often been marginalized. This animal-centered perspective, in turn, does not trivialize the harm done to the natives. As a short passage in Gottschalk's diary illustrates, the book recognizes humans as well as animals as victims of colonialism: "Those who come after us will trace our passage through this land for years to come: the skeletons of dead animals, and the graves of those who have fallen, will serve as milestones along the way" ([1], p. 212).<sup>12</sup> Overall, the text draws a comprehensive picture of colonialism in order to reveal the far-reaching brutality of the soldiers, traders, and settlers in the 'protectorate' German South-West Africa.

In a moment of recognition, 'Schutztruppen'-captain Tresckow asks, "What sort of campaign is chasing off the enemy's oxen, shooting their women and children, and burning their homes?" ([1], p. 209). It is remarkable that *Morenga* refuses to give a rational or ethical answer to crucial questions like these. As an alternative, the novel establishes a multifaceted narration, which deliberately leaves opportunities for critical reflection. With its polyphonic style, the text problematizes colonial practice as well as Eurocentric forms of representation. The trek ox Big-Red is a significant part of this narrative technique; the talking animal effectively undermines conventional literary approaches to the colonial discourse and thereby triggers a discussion about possible ways of narrating African history. His intradiegetic narrative describes the beginnings of colonization, which ultimately lead to the violent oppression of both humans and animals under German colonial rule. It is a story about the loss of independence and, nevertheless, about rebellion, emancipation, and equation. In this regard, and since it implies animistic ideas, the tale of the ox is closely linked to the Herero and the Nama, but the novel does not simply equate the animal's perspective to the experiences of the natives. The animal narrator does not claim to tell the 'truth' about the history or culture of the indigenous people but rather speaks for the oxen themselves.

The animals' point of view forces us to "think outside inherited paradigms" ([18], p. 128). Relating to Uwe Timm's statement that a 'narrative empathy' would be a colonial act itself, we might be surprised that the author decided to empathize with an ox and that he lends a voice to the *non*human 'other'. At the same time, the story-telling animal represents a consequent and innovative postcolonial step as it opens up a new way of understanding the colonial past. Big-Red resists the perception that the marginalized could not express. In particular, his narration reveals an attitude toward the 'subaltern', which respects their importance for historical processes and thereby anticipates the recent ethnological and historiographical interest in animals as specific actors in colonial contexts. In this regard, *Morenga* is more than just one of the first postcolonial texts in German literature. Since it initiates a reflection process about the role of nonhuman animals in history, the novel can also be seen as an early literary approach to questions of animal agency.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank Guest Editor Joela Jacobs as well as Assistant Editors Jie Gu and Caitlyn Xi for the friendly contact and their support in preparing the submission. I also thank Hendrik Hellwinkel and Carolina Trutenau for their corrections.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

#### **References**


<sup>12</sup> In this specific passage, the German original version of the novel uses even more critical vocabulary: "Die Skelette der krepierten Tiere [perished animals] am Wege und die Gräber der Gefallenen sind die Meilensteine" ([14], p. 278).


© 2017 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

## *Article* **Animal Dystopia in Marie Darrieussecq's Novel** *Truismes*

#### **Päivi Koponen**

Department of Humanities, University of Turku, 20014 Turun yliopisto, Finland; pjkopo@utu.fi Received: 22 May 2017; Accepted: 23 August 2017; Published: 25 August 2017

**Abstract:** The article focuses on the contemporary French author Marie Darrieussecq's dystopian novel, *Truismes* (1996), that contemplates the differential boundaries between human and non-human existence within the scope of contemporary Western metaphysics. The novel challenges the anthropocentric conception of dystopia on the grounds that it is not only a *human* dystopia; the story centres on a female protagonist whose body begins to turn into a sow. In the novel's dystopian reality, non-human nature has only capitalistic value in relation to human needs, which has caused a large-scale ecological crisis. For the heroine, the dystopian cityscape is the antagonist that she struggles against; the story represents the sow-woman looking for a better place to live. By giving a narrative voice to an animal, Darrieussecq's novel urges the reader to identify with the non-human world. The article aims to come to an understanding of the agency beyond the human species. Further, it argues that agency constitutes an entanglement of intra-acting agencies; it is not an attribute of (human) subject or (non-human) object as they do not pre-exist as such separately. Consequently, human and non-human agencies are related to one another; humans are not only affecting the non-human world, but they affect each other in a very profound way. In this, the article contributes to the ongoing interrogation of human relations with non-human agency that is being actively conducted in contemporary Western scientific discourse. The concept of agency also allows participation in discussion about the current ecological crisis.

**Keywords:** agency; animal; dystopia; Marie Darrieussecq; human; non-human; Truismes

#### **1. Introduction**

To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence. Existence is not an individual affair. Individuals do not preexist their interactions; rather, individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating (Barad 2007, Preface).

The above extract is part of the discussion in which the complex entanglements between human and non-human existence are powerfully brought forth in contemporary Western scientific discourse. This article studies contemporary French author Marie Darrieussecq's first novel, *Truismes,* which challenges the differential boundaries between the human and the non-human world. Darrieussecq's novel places itself within a contemporary French literary field that is argued to be *en péril* ("in danger") because it means nothing but "formalism, nihilism, and solipsism" (Todorov 2007). The Bulgarian-French literary critic Tzvetan Todorov argues that instead of being what literature is meant to be—discourse about the world—literature has turned into a discourse about literature (Id). Similarly, the French literature Professor Antoine Compagnon claims that contemporary French literature has gone through *un long suicide fastueux* ("a long luxurious suicide"), having been unable to deal with questions concerning the meaning of human existence in the contemporary world (Compagnon 2007). Another French critic, William Marx, proclaims that literature is only capable of talking about nothing and becoming a nothingness about which nothing more can be said (Marx 2005). As the American feminist theorist Karen Barad reflects in general, "Language has been granted too much power. The linguistic turn, the semiotic turn, the interpretative turn, the cultural turn: it seems that at every turn lately every 'thing'—even materiality—is turned into a matter of language or some other form of cultural representation" (Barad 2007, p. 801). When it comes to the genre of dystopian fiction, one is more likely able to explore the connections between the speculative scenario and the actual condition of the real world, similar to the ways in which the American ecocritic Keira Hambrick argues in more general terms that environmental science fiction allows one to explore the possible outcomes of current ecological crisis (cf. Hambrick 2012, p. 130). Darrieussecq's dystopian novel challenges one to understand that the ecological crisis is not *only* a narrative representation, as it deeply affects the world. That is to say, in encountering the environmental issues, such as the ways in which human activities have already had a significant global impact on earth's biodiversity, ecosystems, and species extinction, that appear in Darrieussecq's novel, one is more able to become aware of the ecological crisis. And then, "[R]eaders may be less likely to feel immobilized by fear and eco-anxiety, and may respond favourably to the call-for-action espoused by the narrator, characters, or the author" (Ibid., p. 135).

*Truismes* is, as argued, a dystopia, which literally in Greek means "not-good-place," set in the future. To be more specific, Darrrieussecq's novel is based on classical dystopian fiction that portrays a human society of the future in which the agency of an individual or a group is restricted (Jacobs 2003, p. 92). However, *Truismes* is not only a classical *human* dystopia, as the novel centres on an animal. That is, *Truismes* is a story of a female protagonist whose body begins to turn into a sow. The heroine's physical appearance is not all that changes; she undergoes many psychological and social changes as well. The heroine begins to change slowly from a beautiful young woman into a deformed hybrid, and then into a sow, but the metamorphosis is never completed. The heroine stays a "sow-woman," which challenges the differential boundaries between human and non-human animal. It takes the heroine a long time to accept that she is a human *animal*. That is, the novel reflects the French philosopher Jacques Derrida's critical thought about the ways in which humans have distinguished themselves from other animals (cf. Derrida 2006). The novel's "animal question," meaning the ways in which the text questions human supremacism, is important because of the insights it provides about speciesism, but the text also brings forth the ways in which the ontology of non-human animals needs to be rethought (Koponen 2017; Lestel 2015).

The "animal turn" is a significant part of contemporary French literature, as problematizing the dualistic opposition between human and non-human animal is the recurrent theme of several contemporary French authors, including Marie Darrieussecq (born 1969), Marie NDiaye (born 1967), and Antoine Volodine (born 1950). The novels of Darrieussecq, NDiaye, and Volodine are centred on life that can no longer be recognized separately as either human or animal (Turin 2012; Simon 2015). Their novels are related to a variety of contemporary theoretical approaches, such as Actor-Network theory (following Michel Callon, Bruno Latour, and John Law), affect theory (Silva Tomkins), agential realism (Karen Barad), animal studies, assemblage theory (Gilles Deleuze and Manuela DeLanda), cyborg theory (Donna Haraway), ecocriticism, ecofeminism, new materialism, Object-Oriented Ontology (Ian Bogost, Levi Bryant, Graham Harman, and Timothy Morton), posthumanism, and transhumanism. Each of these approaches challenges the Cartesian dualism between (human) observer and (non-human) object of observation that still dominates Western metaphysics. For instance, Barad argues that "agency" is an entanglement of intra-acting agencies; agency is not an attribute of (human) subject or (non-human) object as they do not pre-exist such. Therefore, "We don't obtain knowledge by standing outside the world; we know because we are ... part of the world in its differential becoming" (Barad 2007, p. 185). This means that any "becoming" is a process in which human and non-human agencies are entangled (Barad 2007; Morton 2010). As the American feminist theorist Donna Haraway argues, "To be one is always to become with many" (Haraway 2008, p. 4). In Haraway's view, existence is always an entangled becoming, and there can be no pre-existence: "The partners do not precede the meeting; species of all kinds, living and not, are consequent on

a subject- and object-shaping dance of encounters" (Id). For Haraway, "Respect is respecere—looking back, holding in regard, understanding that meeting the look of the other is a condition of having face oneself" (Id). As she adds, "[T]he point is not to celebrate complexity but to become worldly and to respond" (Id). Similarly, for the English philosopher Timothy Morton, "[E]xistence is always coexistence . . . Nothing exists all by itself, and so nothing is fully 'itself'" (Morton 2010, pp. 14–15).

Darrieussecq's novel reflects the ways in which dystopian fiction is often characterized by a dualistic framework that has long justified, maintained, and perpetuated the oppression of non-human nature—-and that has also, in similar ways, justified, maintained, and perpetuated the oppression of marginalized groups, as the American philosopher Mark. S. Roberts argues about the history of animalization of both humans and animals (cf. Roberts 2008). As the Australian ecofeminist philosopher Val Plumwood puts it, "Dualism is a relation of separation and domination inscribed and naturalised in culture and characterised by radical exclusion, distancing and opposition between orders constructed as systemically higher and lower" (Plumwood 1993, pp. 47–48). Dualism results from a denied dependency on a dominated other; the relationship of denied dependency determines a logical structure in which the relation of domination shape the identity of both relata (Ibid., p. 41). Dualism is, thus, more than just a dichotomy. Plumwood claims that, "In dualistic construction, as in hierarchy, the qualities (actual or supposed), the culture, the values and the areas of life associated with the dualised other are systematically and pervasively constructed and depicted as contingent and shifting" (Ibid., p. 47). In a dualistic framework, the socially constructed concept of *humanity* has been used as a means of exclusion; human specificity has been constructed in contrast to the animal, most significantly since the rise of Western modernity, which separated human from nature and made the animal an object (Lestel 2015; Parizeau 2015, p. 163; Vilmer 2015). The dualism between humans and animals denies the very idea of specificity, as it opposes a concrete species, *the human*, to a concept, *the animal*, thereby denying the diversity of all animal species (Baratay 2015, p. 5; Burgat 2015, p. 53). That is, thinking dualistically does not only affect our view on the human species; it affects our view on other animals as well.

Non-human nature has long been seen as having only instrumental value in relation to human needs. As Plumwood argues, "It [nature] is seen as non-agentic, as passive, non-creative and inert, with action being imposed from without by an external force. It is non-mindful, being mere stuff, mere matter, devoid of any characteristics of mind or thought. It lacks all goals and purposes of its own" (Plumwood 1993, p. 110). Plumwood maintains that what defines nature is human superiority that contrasts systemically with nature in one of its many dimensions. As he puts it, "Nature, as the excluded and devalued contrast of reason, includes the emotions, the body, the passions, animality, the primitive or uncivilised, the non-human world, matter, physicality and sense experience, as well as the sphere of irrationality, of faith and madness" (Ibid., pp. 19–20). However, nature is one of the most complex words in the language (Williams 1985, p. 219). The Welsh academic, critic, and novelist Raymond Williams has argued that, "Any full history of the uses of nature would be a history of a large part of human thought" (Ibid., p. 221). In other words, defining nature depends on the historical context, in which the usage of the word reveals the complexity of human and non-human existence. For Williams, "nature" can refer to one of the following three definitions:


The definitions above show that nature can be conceived of as both something that includes and does *not* include humans. I do, however, want to call into question that non-human nature could be in *any way* excluded from human reality. Morton criticizes even using the word "nature" arguing that "Nature was always 'over yonder', alien and alienated. Just like a reflection, we can never actually reach it and touch it and belong to it" (Morton 2013, p. 5). It seems clear that the awareness of the ecological crisis has completely changed the ways we think about nature. As Morton puts it, "You can

no longer have a routine conversation about the weather with a stranger. The presence of global warming looms into the conversation like a shadow, introducing strange gaps" (Ibid., p. 99). With this, Morton means that the notion of objects of such massive scale and temporality that they exceed the perceptive capacities of humans and of which global warming is his example, challenges us to think about human and non-human relations more broadly (Morton 2013).

The novel's dystopian trope manifests, following the words of the British ecocritic and professor Greg Garrard, "the extreme moral dualism that divides the world sharply into friend and enemy" (Garrard 2004, p. 86). In my view, however, Darrieussecq's novel, in which comic and tragic elements seem mixed, also calls into question the distinction between "us" and "them" or "victim" and "evil." According to American rhetorician Stephen O'Leary, the apocalyptic scenario may be either comic or tragic: "Tragedy conceives evil in term of guilt; its mechanism of redemption is victim, its plot moves inexorably towards sacrifice and 'the cult of kill.' Comedy conceives evil not as guilt, but as error; its mechanism of redemption is recognition rather than victimage, and its plot moves not toward sacrifice but to the exposure of fallibility" (O'Leary 1994, p. 68). What is important is that Darrieussecq's novel implies that the "ecological thought" is often aestheticized, pastoralized, and simplified (cf. Morton 2010). As Morton argues, "Environmental rhetoric is too often strongly affirmative, extraverted, and masculine; it privileges speech over writing; and it simulates immediacy ... It's sunny, straightforward, ableist, holistic, hearty, and 'healthy'" (Morton 2010, p. 16). Morton's concept of "dark ecology" brings "ambiguity", "darkness", and "irony" into ecological thinking (Id). Accordingly, the novel's "ecological thought" is not that of creating a false immediacy to the pristine nature, but that of becoming fully aware of how human beings are connected with other beings (cf. Koponen 2017). This article asks how an understanding of the entangled intra-relation between humans and animals changes the anthropocentric notion of dystopia.

#### **2. Living under the Threat of Humans**

Darrieussecq has written several critical studies, short stories, plays, and novels in which a recurring theme is that of a heroine who cannot find her place in human society. *Truismes* is a story of a young female prostitute with a materialistic lifestyle who lives in a bomb-damaged, epidemic-ridden, and post-feminist Parisian-like city of the near future. There is a leading extreme right-wing party, Social-Franc-Progressisme, in the story. This party only allows a white man to lead the country. Their ideal of creating a homogeneous white nation means in practice that the defenders of human rights are locked in prison to "get rid of the rabble" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 100). It also means that all immigrants can be deported without due process, that the homeless and homosexuals can be brutally slaughtered, and that mental hospitals are burned down with people inside. In this kind of dystopian reality, non-human nature has only capitalistic value in relation to human needs, which has caused a large-scale ecological crisis. Darrieussecq's novel has also been conceived of as a dystopian satire of the 1990s rise of the French national party Front National (FN) (cf. Muirden 2008). Here, the novel ironizes the extreme ring-wing political forces, such as the Front National and its founding leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has been criticized for his anti-Semitic speeches. Incidentally, since Le Pen's daughter Marine Le Pen's election as the leader of the FN in 2011, the popularity of the anti-immigrant party has grown.

In Darrieussecq's dystopian novel, the lack of an individual's agency is explained in terms of oppressive societal control, as the English professor Naomi Jacobs claims, "The citizens of dystopia are gripped in a social formation so powerful, a web of control so densely woven, that at worst they do not even know they are not free" (Jacobs 2003, p. 92). To begin with, the story begins when the female protagonist sends a job application to a massive cosmetic chain. When she manages to get an interview, the chain's director sits her on his lap and paws at her breast, and she needs to give oral sex for receiving the minimum wage for a part time employment, which turns out to be prostitution. Yet, there is irony, since the heroine delights in getting the job with low benefits: "[E]t dans le contrat il était précisé qu'au moment du déstockage annuel, j'aurais droit à des produits de beauté, les plus

grandes marques deviendraient à ma portée, les parfumes les plus chers!" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 13). ["And the contract specifically said that during the annual inventory clearance, I would be entitled to some cosmetics. I'd have a chance at getting the most famous brands, the most expensive perfumes!" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 3)]. The female narrator's use of the exclamation point indicates her strong enthusiasm to get the job.

The heroine does not have any difficulties with post-feminist values, such as enjoying herself while working as a sex worker: "Ce n'était pas un mauvais métier. Il y avait quand même satisfactions" (Darrieussecq 1996, pp. 33–34). ["It wasn't a bad line of work. There were some satisfactions, after all" (Darrieussecq 1997, pp. 22–23)]. At the same time, she could just as easily stay at home as a housewife: "Sans doute que le mieux pour les jeunes filles de maintenant, je me permets d'énoncer cet avis après tout ce que j'ai vécu, c'est de trouver un bon mari, qui ne boit pas, parce que la vie est dure et une femme ça ne travaille pas comme un homme, et puis ce n'est pas les hommes qui vont s'occuper des enfants, et tous les gouvernements le disent, il n'y pas assez d'enfants" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 66). ["What is doubtless best for girls of today, and I venture this opinion on the strength of my extensive experience, is to find a good husband, a teetotaler, because life is hard and a woman doesn't work like a man, and you can't expect men to look after the children, and there aren't enough children, every government says so" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 52)]. The heroine's naïve voice reflects the ways in which the feminist ideology from earlier generations has disappeared. As the French critic Shirley Jordan puts it, "Darrieussecq ... appears to indicate that bodies of feminist knowledge have not percolated down to ordinary women: it is as if they were an irrelevance of history" (Jordan 2002, p. 146). In the words of the British cultural theorist Angela McRobbie, Darrieussecq's novel creates a "new form of sexual contract," which makes the heroine think that as gender equality is already once achieved and institutionalized, feminism is no longer needed (McRobbie 2009, pp. 3–8). The heroine seems to think that she has truly chosen "a life of her own" (Id). As McRobbie clarifies it, "[Y]oung women are endowed with capacity and are as a result expected to pursue specific life pathways which require participation in the workforce, which in turn permits full immersion in consumer culture" (McRobbie 2009, p. 9). That is, for the heroine, there is nothing remotely naïve about working as a sex worker, as she seems to be doing it for her own enjoyment.

However, working as a prostitute turns the heroine into an animalized object that does not hold any right to her own body: "Le directeur de la chaine me disait que dans la parfumerie, l'essentiel est d'être toujours belle et soignée, et que j'apprécierais sans doute très étroite des blouses de travail, que cela m'irait très bien" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 11). ["The director told me that in the boutique the most important thing was to look lovely and well groomed at all times. He was sure I would approve of the employees' uniforms, which were tight fitting and would look quite attractive on me" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 3)]. The scene points at the ways in which the normalization of pornographized culture makes the heroine try to fit an ideal of what a woman should look like by taking responsibility for her metamorphic body: "Je subtilisais les crèmes conseillées par les magazines et je les étalais soigneusement sur ma peau, mais rien n'y faisait. J'étais toujours aussi fatiguée ... En plus de développer une profonde graisse sous-cutanée ma peau devenait allergique à tout, même aux produits les plus chers" (Darrieussecq 1996, pp. 47–48). ["I swiped the products recommended by the magazines and smoothed creams carefully onto my skin, but nothing helped. I was just as fatigued ... Besides developing a thick layer of subcutaneous fat, my skin was becoming allergic to everything, even the most expensive preparation" (Darrieussecq 1997, pp. 35–36)]. What is relevant here is that the heroine becomes allergic to beauty products at the same time as she starts having an animal-like appearance. These lines invoke the context of animal testing and the English philosopher Jeremy Bentham's famous guideline for animal ethics, that is, "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" (Bentham in Vilmer 2015, p. viii). Yet despite her suffering, the heroine is an active subject that has a strong will to shape her body to human ideals of perfection, following the American feminists Susan Bordo and Naomi Wolf and their critical thought concerning the impact of popular culture (cf. Bordo 1993; Wolf 1991). The heroine's constant self-monitoring practices, such as her will

to stare at her own reflection in the mirror, reveal the ways in which she starts to look at herself being looked at, which evokes the English author, critic, and painter John Berger's criticism of the ways in which women are portrayed in visual images (cf. Berger 1990). The heroine's "hetero-narcissistic" erotic mirroring, a mirroring of the self as other, turns the heroine into an object of vision (Freccero 2015, p. 114). The sow-woman continuously looks at herself as a material being, which constitutes, as I see it, a critical comment on animals as machines without a conscious mind (Sahlims 2015, pp. 22, 24).

The director is not the only one who pays attention to the heroine's body; the novel's recurring motif is that of men ogling the heroine's "appetizing" body, which reveals the ways in which men are constantly oppressing the heroine: "Il fallait toujours qu'on se mette à quatre pattes devant la glace, et qu'on pousse des cris d'animaux. Les hommes sont tout de même étranges" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 44). ["We always had to get down on all fours in front of the mirror and make animal noises. Men are really strange" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 32)]. The extract implies that the novel's metaphorical trope is describing women as animal-like. In other words, the female protagonist who becomes a sow is seen from the beginning as an animalized other in a strongly patriarchal society, in which it is nothing but a post-feminist platitude—-or a *truism*—-that a young woman possesses value only in an instrumental sense. The novel reveals the ways in which a process of "objectification, fragmentation, and consumption" enables the oppression of both animals and women so that they are rendered being-less in a strongly patriarchal society. As the American animal rights activist and feminist Carol J. Adams puts it, "Objectification permits an oppressor to view another being as an object. The oppressor then violates this being by object-like treatment: e.g., the rape of women that denies women freedom to say no, or the butchering of animals that converts animals from living breathing being into dead objects. This process allows fragmentation, or brutal dismemberment, and finally consumption" (Adams 1990, p. 73). By way of clarification, Adams says, "Consumption is the fulfillment of oppression, the annihilation of will, of separate identity. So too with language: a subject first is viewed, or objectified, through metaphor. Through fragmentation the object is severed from its ontological meaning. Finally, consumed, it exists only through what it represents" (Id). The novel's name has, thus, an interesting onomatopoetic reference to two French words that are pronounced in almost the same way: *truism* and *truie*, a word that means a "sow"—-a term of female abuse in many cultures (cf. Muirden 2008, p. 230).

In the novel's dystopian reality, the heroine is in many ways being animalized, but she also becomes a *real* animal. It is clearly not a coincidence that the heroine starts losing her appetite for pork in the process of becoming-animal: "Je ne pouvais plus manger de sandwich au jambon, cela me donnait des nausées, une fois même j'avais vomi au square" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 21). ["I couldn't eat ham sandwiches any more, they made me sick, and once I even threw up in the park" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 11)]. She even starts having anxiety attacks about pork: "Eh bien quand j'ai vu les rillettes je n'ai pas pu me retenir une seconde: j'ai vomi là, dans la cuisine ... De toute la soirée je n'ai pas pu me calmer. Je tremblais, j'avais des sueurs froides qui empestaient dans tout l'appartement" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 53). ["Well when I saw the potted pork, I just threw up then and there, in the kitchen ... I was a nervous wreck for the rest of the evening. I was shaking, and the entire apartment reeked from my cold sweats" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 40)]. One interesting feature of Darrieussecq's novel is that the motif of pork is present in the heroine's life throughout the story. For instance, the sow-woman is forced to confront an animal slaughtering in finding a book passage in which a boar realizes his own death:

C'était un livre de Knut Hamsun ou quelque chose ... Ça me paraissait bien, à moi, comme livre, mais il y a une phrase qui m'a fait tout bizarre, ça disait, je m'en souviens encore par cœur: *« Puis le couteau s'enfonce. Le valet lui donne deux petites poussées pour lui faire traverser la couenne, après quoi, c'est comme si la longue lame fondait en s'enfonçant jusqu'au manche à travers la graisse du cou. D'abord le verrat ne se rend compte de rien, il reste allongé quelques secondes à réfléchir un peu. Si! Il comprend alors qu'on le tue et hurle en cris étouffés jusqu'à ce qu'il n'en puisse plus. »* Je me suis demandé ce que c'était qu'un *verrat*, ça m'a mis

comme une mauvaise sueur dans le dos. J'ai préféré en rire, parce que sinon j'allais vomir (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 105).

It was a book by Knut Hamsun or whoever ... Personally, I thought it was a nice book, but there was one passage that made me feel sort of shaky, it said (I still remember it by heart): "Then the knife plunges in. The farmhand gives it two little shoves to push it through the thick skin, after which the long blade seems to melt through the neck fat as it sinks in up to the hilt. At first the boar doesn't understand a thing, he remains stretched out for the a few seconds, thinking about it. Aha! Then he realizes he is being killed and utters strangled cries until he can scream no more." I wondered what a boar was; my back was beginning to feel all clammy. I decided to laugh it off, because otherwise I was going to throw up (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 87).

Hamsun's book makes the sow-woman realize that there is no difference between utilizing an animal product and having to confront the dead animal itself. The heroine then attempts to avoid eating meat that reminds her of her own transformation from a *living* animal to *dead* meat. However, the heroine's boyfriend, Honoré, is trying to maintain control over the metamorphic heroine by forcing her to eat pork: "J'ai failli me trouver mal quand Honoré a absolument voulu me faire gouter son pécari à l'ananas, mais j'ai réussi à prendre sur moi" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 59). ["I thought I was going to be sick when Honoré insisted that I taste his peccary *à l'ananas*, but I managed to control myself" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 48)]. For the heroine, the meat is the moment "when what remained hidden to us is opened up" (Broglio 2011, pp. 1–2). As the American philosopher Ron Broglio clarifies, "The animal's insides become outsides. Its depth of form becomes a surface, and its depth of being becomes the thin lifelessness of an object exposed. Meat makes the animal insides visible, and through sight the animal body becomes knowable" (Id). Consequently, pork refers to a corporeal breakdown in the distinction between what is the *self* and what is the *other*, following the Bulgarian-French feminist philosopher Julia Kristeva's thought about the human reaction to anxiety caused by the loss of the distinction between subject and object (cf. Koponen 2017; Kristeva 1980). I argue that in the process of becoming-animal, the heroine confronts what has always been there, which is to say, she discovers that she is a human *animal*.

And yet, the heroine realizes that she needs to act if she wants to avoid her own death as an animal. To clarify, the sow-woman's mother, who has become a wealthy farmer engaged in raising pigs and other livestock for food, wants to make extra money by killing her daughter: "Ma mère tenait un grand couteau à la main, une bassine en cuivre pour le sang, et du papier journal pour faire bruler la couenne. 'Là au fond', elle a dit ma mère. Elle a posé la bassine et le papier journal ... Ma mère en plus d'être un assassin était une voleuse, elle allait tuer un cochon qui ne lui appartenait" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 156). ["My mother was holding a large knife, a copper basin to catch the blood, and some newspaper for singeing the skin. 'Over there, in the back,' she said. She put down the basin and the newspaper ... Besides being a murderer, my mother was a thief; she was going to a pig that didn't belong to her" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 134)]. The mother's determinate action makes the previous encounters with animal slaughter personal, which becomes even stronger when the heroine finds out that her mother has a relationship with her former exploiting employer from the cosmetic chain. The mother's threat is the last straw for the sow-woman, who, after being suddenly transformed more into a human-like form, shoots first her former employer and then her own mother: "[J]e le lui ai arraché des mains. J'ai tiré deux fois, la première fois sur lui, la seconde fois sur ma mère" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 157). ["I tore the gun from his shaking hands. I fired twice: first at him, then at my mother" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 134)]. The tragicomic scene raises questions about an animal's agency by pointing at the ways in which animals are realized as lacking the rational capacity to act outside their biologically determined behaviour (cf. Koponen 2017). That is, animals may not act like humans, but that is not to be conceived of as a loss of agency.

#### **3. Looking for Better Place to Live**

The metamorphic heroine is going through a crisis of identity, which reflects Julia Kristeva's notion of the *sujet en procès*, which means both the "subject-in-process" and the "subject-on-trial" (Kristeva 2008). Kristeva makes a reference to the speaking subject that does not have a fixed identity but is in the process of *becoming*. One interesting feature of Darrieussecq's writing is that she uses a female narrator who writes her own story. In this, Darrieussecq makes her female narrator relate to the French literary tradition of *écriture feminine* ("feminine writing"). Here, she follows the theorizations of the Algerian-French feminist philosopher Hélène Cixous, for whom this concept refers to a way of feminine expression which is capable of resisting the history of *phallologocentric* discourse, that women have, in short, been denied access to the agency within the possibility of self-representation. Therefore, in Cixous' view, "Woman must write herself: must write about women and bring women to writing, from which they have been driven away as violently as from their bodies—-for the same reasons, by the same law, with the same fatal goal. Woman must put herself into the text—-as into history—-by her own movement" (Cixous 2010, p. 875). In writing in the tradition of *écriture feminine*, Darrieussecq is liberating her female narrators from phallologocentric discourse, enabling them to take agency in the process of constructing their identity.

In *Truismes*, Darrieussecq gives her female protagonist the chance to narrate her self-written story in her own voice. And yet, she calls into question the human way of perceiving the world by using the animal's voice: "Mais il faut que j'écrive ce livre sans plus tarder, parce que si on me retrouve dans l'état où je suis maintenant, personne ne voudra ni m'écouter ni me croire. Or tenir un stylo me donne de terribles crampes" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 9). ["But I must write this book without further delay, because if they find me in my present state, no one will listen to me or believe what I say. Simply holding a pen gives me terrible cramps" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 1)]. The metamorphosis allows the heroine to create new ways of expression. I see this represented in the heroine's relationship with language. In the process of becoming-animal, the sow-woman finds a contact with the mental hospital patients: "Je suis devenue copine avec pas mal de monde. Personne ne parlait là-dedans, tout le monde criait, chantait, bavait, mangeait à quatre pattes et ce genre de choses. On s'amusait bien" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 101). ["I became chummy with lots of people. No one talked in there, they all screamed, sang, drooled, ate on all fours and that kind of thing" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 83)]. The scene implies that the sow-woman is excluded from the human sphere on the grounds of lacking rational thinking. The heroine's lack of speaking skills constitutes, to my thinking, the ways in which she is not integrated into human life because she is not able to indicate to humans by a voice referring to human thought (Roberts 2008, p. 9). And yet, the scene questions the ways in which marginalized groups, such as mentally disabled people, have been animalized and stripped of their agency because they do not operate according to the laws of the dominant phallologocentric order, in accordance with the ways in which Roberts describes the process of animalization (cf. Roberts 2008). The heroine's lack of human language brings also forth the *muteness* of nature, which refers to the nature's inability to speak for itself via human language, similar to the German essayist, critic, and philosopher Walter Benjamin's claim that, "[N]aming implies the communicating muteness of things (animals) toward the word-language of man, which receives them in names" (cf. (Benjamin 1996, p. 70). The novel suggests that the fact that animals do not speak, at least in the sense that humans understand language, is not to be conceived of as a loss of agency, but rather as a condition that indicates another mode of existence (Burgat 2015, p. 54).

The heroine's muteness is in service to the portrayal of a dystopian world in which she lacks the capacity to question the ways in which humans have established the means of consuming nature to the point of depletion. As the French philosopher Michel Serres states, "Through our mastery, we have become so much and so little masters of the Earth that it once again threatens to master us in turn. Through it, with it, and in it, we share one temporal destiny" (Serres 1995, pp. 33–34). In the novel's dystopian reality, human acting over non-human nature is recognized as the problematic that the heroine needs to confront, as almost all animal life is destroyed: "Où avez-vous bien pu trouver

un cochon par les temps qui courent?" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 116). ["Where did you get a pig in this day and age?" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 97)]. The passage implies that the sow-woman belongs to a species categorized as endangered, if not extinct. In this, the novel challenges the vision of continuing human progress.

As the metamorphosis proceeds, the heroine regains her speaking skills every now and then: "Je pouvais articuler à nouveau, c'était sans doute d'avoir lu tous ces mots dans les livres, ça m'avait fait comme qui dirait un entraînement" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 105). ["I could speak again, probably from having read all those words in those books, so you might say I'd had some practice" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 87)]. In what follows, the heroine starts to express herself with a voice that reflects the American literary critic and professor Barbara Claire Freeman's notion of the "feminine sublime", which resists categorization. This is a condition in which the subject enters in a relation with an unrepresentable otherness that, almost without exception, is gendered feminine (Freeman 1995, pp. 2–3). As Freeman clarifies it, "The feminine sublime is not a discursive strategy, technique, or literary style the female writer invests, but rather a crisis in relation to language and representation that a certain subject undergoes" (Ibid., p. 2). For Freeman, the feminine sublime makes a reference to the categorical instability of a socially constructed body of writing that bears the traces of women's shared history of oppression (Ibid., p. 7).

The heroine's sublime voice involves taking up a position of respect in response to an incalculable otherness (Freeman 1995, p. 11). The heroine begins to realize that the non-human world is inseparable from her own being: "[L]'air, les oiseaux, je ne sais pas, ce qui restait de la nature ça me faisait tout à coup quelque chose" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 19). ["The air, the birds—I don't know, whatever nature was left—really affected me all of a sudden" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 10)]. The sow-woman's focus of attention reveals changes in her perception of the environment: "Je discernais de plus en plus en mal les fumées d'Issy, les couleurs de brouillaient. Tout ce que je voyais maintenant c'était le fond très rouge du ciel, et tout le reste était en ombres noires et blanches" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 75). ["Over by Issy, it was growing harder to make out the factory smoke, the colours were running together. All I could see now was the vivid red background of the sky, while everything else was light and dark shadows" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 60)]. In becoming an animal, the sow-woman's panoramic vision starts to increase, and gradually the limits of the city become blurred, which turn her attention toward the immense sky. That is, she is discovering, in a tangible way, that she has come into contact with a newly perceived environment in which she needs to find her place anew.

The heroine begins to feel "a violent, terrifying, delicious sense of solitude" over the dystopian city: "Il n'y avait plus rien qui me retenait dans la ville avec les gens" (Darrieussecq 1996, pp. 84–85). ["There was no longer anything to keep me in the city, among people" (Darrieussecq 1997, pp. 68–69)]. The novel's turning point is the moment when the sow-woman begins to imagine the future: "Moi le bout des rails, ça me faisait rêver. Je me suis assise au bord de la voie et j'ai essayé de réfléchir à mon avenir ... [J]e me mettrais à marcher le long des rails, parce qu'au bout il y avait forcement la campagne et des arbres" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 100). ["Well, looking down the tracks always started me dreaming. I sat down at the edge of the roadbed and tried to think about my future ... I'd set out walking along the tracks, because there had to be trees and countryside at the end of the line" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 82)]. The sow-woman is concerned with the future. She begins to expect that the current paradigm may be at an end, but what is important is that the heroine relies upon her will to survive within a new paradigm (cf. Seed 2000, p. 2).

For the heroine, identifying with the other animals allows her to escape the dystopian condition of the world: "Je me suis roulée dans mon odeur pour me tenir compagnie. Les oiseaux se sont tus. J'ai senti la nuit tomber sur ma peu. J'ai glissé du banc et j'ai dormi là, par terre, jusqu'à l'aube. Il y avait les rêves des oiseaux dans mes rêves, et le rêve que le chien avait laissé pour moi. Je n'étais pas si seule. Je ne rêvais plus de sang. Je rêvais de fougères et de terre humide. Mon corps me tenait chaud. J'étais bien" (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 85). ["I curled up in my smell to keep myself company. The birds fell silent. I slipped off the bench and slept there, on the ground, until dawn. In my dreams were

the dreams of the birds, and the dreams the dog had left for me. I was no longer so alone. I didn't dream about blood any more. I dreamed of ferns and damp earth. My body kept me warm. I was just fine" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 69)]. The heroine's focus remains no more in her own physical appearance; the sow-woman starts to identify with the non-human world, which makes her adjust her orientation toward an ecocentric perspective. The sow-woman begins to enjoy herself within *wild* nature, which here refers to what seems to be free from human activity (Freeman 1995, p. 155). This becomes apparent in the passage below:

Je ne suis pas mécontente de mon sort. La nourriture est bonne, la clairière confortable, les marcassins m'amusent. Je me laisse souvent aller. Rien n'est meilleur que la terre chaude autour de soi quand on s'éveille le matin, l'odeur de son propre corps mélangée à l'odeur de l'humus, les premières bouchées que l'on prend sans même se lever, glands, châtaignes tout ce qui a roulé dans la bauge sous les coups de patte des rêves (Darrieussecq 1996, p. 148).

I'm not unhappy with my lot. The food's good, the clearing comfortable, the young wild boars are entertaining. I often relax and enjoy myself. There's nothing better than warm earth around you when you wake up in the morning, the smell of your own body mingling with the odour of humus, the first mouthfuls you take without even getting up, gobbling acorns, chestnuts, everything that has rolled down into the wallow while you were scrabbling in your dreams (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 135).

The sow-woman moves on from thinking of herself as being part of the wild nature to enjoying her life within the cityscape (cf. Koponen 2017). Consequently, the sow-woman is not truly able to find her place among other species: "Même dans la forêt avec les autres cochons, ils me reniflent souvent avec défiance, ils sentent bien que ça continue à penser comme les hommes là-dedans. Je ne suis pas à la hauteur de leurs attentes. Je ne me plie pas assez au travail de la race, et pourtant c'est moi qui les ai débarrassés du principal péril qui les guettait" (Darrieussecq 1996, pp. 150–51). ["Even when I'm in the forest with the other pigs, they often sniff me suspiciously, sensing that human thoughts are still going on in there. I'm unable to rise to their expectations. I don't conform enough to porcine discipline, yet I'm the one who routed the chief danger that threatened them" (Darrieussecq 1997, p. 128)]. For the heroine, the other pigs are not other animals but "strange stranger." Morton defines the notion in respect to animals as follows: "This stranger isn't just strange ... Their strangeness itself is strange. We can never absolutely figure them out. If we could, then all we would have is a ready-made box to put them in, and we could just be looking at the box, not at the strange strangers. They are intrinsically strange. Do we know for sure whether they are sentient or not? Their strangeness is part of who they are" (Morton 2010, p. 41). The heroine's wonderings reveal the ways in which other species are always *strange*, due to the fact that humans are not capable of completely reaching their inner being. That is, the novel calls into question the ideal of *going back to nature*, as there is no nature in which all humans or non-humans are not already engulfed.

#### **4. Conclusions**

*Truismes* is the most famous early novel of Marie Darrieussecq and was written in 1996. Through the novel, Darrieussecq depicts a dystopian vision of the world. Various dystopian elements, such as an extreme racism, sexism, and speciesism, are portrayed throughout the novel. In the novel's dystopian reality, non-human nature has only capitalistic value in relation to human needs, which has caused a large-scale ecological crisis. The dystopian background of the novel brings to mind the ways in which a dystopian fiction is often seen as a warning of human development in its many forms (Isomaa 2016). Bearing in mind the fact that humans have modified the Earth more in the past fifty years than the two centuries before that, this is clearly not an exaggeration (Delannoy 2015, p. 139). The idea of the "Anthropocene," a proposed geologic epoch, reveals the ways in which human activities have already had a significant global impact on Earth's biodiversity, ecosystems, and species extinction (Crutzen and Stoermer 2000). It can no longer be bypassed that

anthropocentric thinking, which implies a privileged separation of humans from non-human reality, has become highly problematic.

In Darrieussecq's dystopian novel, the ecological catastrophe is represented as something that has already happened, rather than as something in the future. The novel reveals the ways in which the heroine's agency is threatened by both the actions of other humans and by the large-scale ecological crisis. That is, humans affecting the non-human world and affect each other in a very profound way. In this, my reading of the novel is an attempt to contribute to the ongoing interrogation of human relations with non-human agency that is being actively conducted in contemporary scientific Western discourse. What is relevant is that Darrieussecq's novel gives the sow-woman the chance to narrate her self-written story in her own voice. By giving a narrative voice to the animal, the novel challenges the human reader to reflect on the transformation of anthropocentric orientation toward nature itself. And yet, the novel challenges the human reader to understand that the ecological crisis is not only a narrative representation, as it deeply affects the real world; the non-human world is not only the landscape surrounding humans, but that it is *in* humans, because humans and non-humans are all connected.

**Acknowledgments:** I would like to thank the journal's editorial staff for their careful reading of my manuscript and for giving useful comments.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflict of interest.

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**Seeing and Hearing Animal Narratology**

*Article*
