In Love With Animals

On the Animal Fables

By : W. Glyn Jones

It would be wrong to say that there is a tradition in Denmark for animal fables. Nevertheless, in a curious - but quite deliberate - way, Vagn Lundbye´s Dyrefabler (1994) (Animal Fables) open up a huge literary and cultural perspective, with views back to Danish Romantic literature and the illustrations of that age, and throwing light on vast changes in human perception, from the sentimental views of the mid-nineteenth century to the mixture of compassion and exploitation of the late twentieth.
   In 1844 (dated 1845), the otherwise minor poet Hans Vilhelm Kaalund published 50 Fabler for Børn (Fables for Children) which have since become a children´s classic in Denmark - most Danish children will have learnt at least one of them by heart at school. These fables in turn related back in time to a collection translated from the German of J. W. Hey by the much more important Romantic poet Christian Winther. In his version, Winther used the same illustrations as the original German. The illustrator of the Kaalund fables, meanwhile, was Johan Thomas Lundbye, who in fact was the present writer, Vagn Lundbye´s, great grandfather´s brother! The circle is thus complete.

Man and animal
The connection between the two volumes, and the radical difference in outlook, is brought out right at the beginning of Vagn Lundbye´s book. Kaalund´s fables - which are mainly centred on domestic animals - start by asserting that "observing the behaviour animals is a pastime" and applying a clearly anthropocentric view in its further observation that some animals are useful, while others give pleasure. Vagn Lundbye takes issue with this. His introductory poem, Dyrejeg (The Beast Within), establishes the kinship of man and animal, while the direct parallel to the earlier volume comes in the second poem, with its clear echo of Kaalund: "to be enclosed is a terrible pastime". This thought then stands at the centre of Vagn Lundbye´s animal fables, with their plea for respect and freedom for the animals found in a zoo, for, it says in one of them, if a zoo is a Noah´s Ark, then Man represents the sins that have made such an ark necessary. And if the echo from Kaalund´s fables is not sufficiently clear (which it is to any Dane!), it is repeated in the third of Lundbye´s poems, Gnukalven (The Gnu Calf), which shares its first line -"Calf, you stagger about as though you are drunk" -with Kaalund´s Spædekalven (The Baby Calf), except that Kaalund´s calf needs its mother, whereas Vagn Lundbye´s needs a zoo keeper!

The blessing of cages
There is a clear echo here, as there is, too, in the case of Lundbye´s poem about the dead fox and Kaalund´s about the slain duck, both of which have a last line more or less in common: Kaalund´s: "Oh, savour your blessings, all you who have mothers" being replaced with Lundbye´s: "Oh, savour your blessings, all you who have cages". Kaalund´s sentimental poem about the duck that has been killed by a hunter, lying stretched out on the ground while her ducklings seek shelter under her wing, is replaced with a much more brutal picture by Lundbye: His urban fox (i.e. one living in unnatural surroundings in any case) has been struck by a taxi, and seeks refuge in the zoo where the other animals, imprisoned in their cages, say that there, at least, he would be safe. There is biting irony in the presentation, of the fox, an animal in freedom even if in an unnatural habitat, that can only find safety in the zoological prison.
   It is not the only one to find an unwanted safety in the prison. There is a particular pathos about Ravnen (The Raven), not least, perhaps, since the raven is itself native to Denmark. In Scandinavian mythology, the ravens Hugin and Mugin are famed as Odin´s messengers, a splendid and honourable task and according to the text, the raven was present at the Crucifixion. In mythology it is often a messenger of death. Now, it is simply kept in a cage in the Zoo - though it is still able to predict death, whether that of a friend, or of you yourself. Even imprisoned, then, it retains its power of prophecy stretching back into antiquity.

Jaguar in January
The raven shares the fate of so many others of the animals and birds, in that it is unable to fulfil itself. Its particular tragedy is underlined by the fact that it actually belongs to these climes. But what, then, of the snow leopard, pleading for a little cold in the heat of summer, or the jaguar in January, longing for something warmer - "But there they´re coming with food. Up we get, I´m ready, a jaguar in January"! And if the animals are not longing for something warmer or colder, they are still longing - for their freedom, like the ant-eater for ever going round in circles round the same tree stump and reflecting that it is best not to think of anything, but to be as industrious as the ant. Or the duck-billed platypus reflecting on its peculiar half-animal half-bird shape, but ending with "I fly out into the world in longing for pain". Longing is clearly a central theme in these fables. But so is the author´s respect for all his animals and birds. As the mother hen, in another fable sharing a first line with one of Kaalund´s, says to the chicken wanting to know when it will grow into a bison: "Even space in all its vastness is less than your brain". Kaalund´s "moral" is less cosmic, and he simply shows the anthropomorphic mother comforting her chicks.

The illustrators
These last two fables are accompanied, like the others, with suitable illustrations which, closely wedded to the texts as they are, underline the fundamental difference in attitude and ethos in the two ages they represent. In Kaalund´s fables the illustrator is Johan Thomas Lundbye, and in Lundbye´s, John Olsen. In each case they fit like a glove, with Lundbye´s being realistic-sentimental and Olsen´s being more vibrant, at times impressionistic, and always far less sentimental. In the case of the "chicken" fables, this difference is very clear indeed. Johan Thomas Lundbye shows a mother hen crouching under a threatening cloud, looking anxiously, at one chicken, while the other has already sought refuge under a wing. There is eye contact between the worried but unruffled mother hen and the chicken talking to her - as so there should be in the tradition of good nineteenth-century relations between mother and offspring. John Olsen, on the other hand has a mother hen less at rest with herself, while her chickens in this case, each under one wing, are looking out at the world they are questioning. Right in the foreground there is the head of a third chicken - and this one is looking at its mother. Instead of the static look of human concern on the face of the mother hen in the older illustration, there is nervous movement in the modern drawing. The two drawings, as parallel as the fables they illustrate, clearly represent the difference in mood between the two volumes of poems. That difference is even more powerfully brought out in the illustration accompanying the fable entitled Burhøns (Battery Hens), where John Olsen has splendidly caught the forlorn look of battery hens which Vagn Lundbye portrays as leading dreary lives and pleading to be recognised as more than mere ovaries.

Kierkegaard´s tree
Vagn Lundbye´s collection of fables (60 in all) is bigger than Kaalund´s, and the perspective is far greater, far bolder, far more disturbing. It is not surprising that in his vision Lundbye brings in a poem referring to Johannes V. Jensen, the great proponent of Darwinism in 20th century Danish literature (to whose poems Digte 1906 (Poems 1906) Lundbye has already made reference in his own similarly titled Digte 1977 (Poems 1977)); but it is more surprising to find Sophus Claussen entering into the volume (though in a poem reminiscent of Claussen´s style), as it is to find a poem put into the words of the tree in which Søren Kierkegaard, once played. Most surprising of all, however, is the poem entitled "Even Jesus Was an Animal Like Us" - not the piece of blasphemy the title might suggest, but an extension of the introductory, poem´s idea that all living creatures have life in common, that they all merit the same respect, and that Jesus himself showed that respect for animals.

Safe and miserable
On the whole, Lundbye´s zoo animals are safe, well looked after - and pretty miserable: the lamas and condors and snakes are washed all over, and even the lion´s teeth are brushed. But the tiger pleads finally to be given a worthy death, not put down with a fatal injection: "let the law of the jungle have the last word, to kill is to be free". And if this puts an unnatural animal life into perspective, so, too, does the poem on the cow in the zoo - the only place where the town child is likely to see one; and the child asks whether it is dangerous. One is left with the feeling that modern times have indeed the wrong perspective.
   For all the concern expressed, there is a good deal of humour in these poems, and a splendid amount of amusing word play deriving either from cognate meanings or cognate sounds. Despite their linguistic subtleties they are easily accessible - also to children, even if not written exclusively for them, as were Kaalund´s fables; these are completely different from anything else that has been written in Danish for many, many years: indeed, they are unique. In their message they are a plea for dignity and consideration and, in their way, a complaint that modern society has drifted so far from natural life. They, are bound to strike a chord in many readers today, and it is little wonder that they have already become a modern classic.

This article was first publish in Danish Literary Magazine 8/1995