by Barry Lopez
HENRY V iii.7.162
And now loud–howling wolves
Arouse the jades
That drag the tragic melancholy night.
2 HENRY VI iv.i .3
As salt as wolves in pride.
OTHELLO iii.3.404
Thy desires
Are wolvish, bloody, starved, and ravenous.
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE iv. 1.138
—JOHN BARTLETT, A.M.
from A Complete Concordance of Shakespeare
The fabulous literature of the Northern Hemisphere in which the wolf appears is, obviously, enormous. It is tempting at first to peruse such collections for insights into what people knew of wolves at different times and places, but as G. K. Chesterton wrote, in an introduction to Aesop, “The lion must always be stronger than the wolf, just as four is always the double of two … the fable must not allow for what Balzac called ‘the revolt of the sheep.’ ” The wolf character, then, is more or less consistent. What is revealed by collections of fables is the political and social satire of an age, and which figures in history were taken for wolves in their time. Thus a Russian fable by Ivan Krilov, “The Wolf in the Kennel,” which appeared in 1812, has a gray-coated wolf after a man’s sheep, clearly the gray-coated Napoleon who had just invaded Russia.
The wolves met with in fable, however, were not actually stock characters. In the hands of various fabulists they were slightly different, according to the author, his intent, the audience he was writing to, and so on. So the wolf we find in Krilov shows more force and intelligence and is more rapacious. In a dark and excessively didactic collection by the Jewish writer Berekhiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, which appeared in the thirteenth century, the wolf is more sinister, more fundamentally wicked. In La Fontaine the wolf has more character and self-awareness than he does in earlier collections. Edward Moore, an eighteenth-century English dramatist, created in his fable “The Wolf, the Sheep, and the Lamb” a consciously evil, murderous beast who bargains with a sheep for her lamb, whom he takes as his bride. The lamb lives in terror as her husband slaughters sheep for his meals. Hunters almost shoot him one day and he accuses his lamb bride of treachery in setting them on his trail, which she has not done. Finally, in a rage he says: “Thou traitress vile, for this thy blood/Shall glut my rage, and dye the wood.”
The fables we call “Aesop” today represent an oral tradition that, like the chapters of the Physiologus, was set down by more than one author. The earliest collection of Aesop we know of is one in iambic verse by the Latin poet Phaedrus. The earliest Aesop in Greek is one from the second century by Babrius, but it shows the effects of his having lived for a while in the Near East. The influence of fable collections from India, called the Fables of Pilpay or Bidpai and taken from the Panchatantra and the Hitopadesa, and stories of the Buddha in animal form from the Jatakas, show up more clearly in Aesopian collections after 1251, when Arabic versions of the Persian were finally translated into Spanish and Hebrew and, later, into Latin and other vernacular languages. (The jackal of these stories was grafted onto the wolf tradition in Aesop.) The fourth-century Roman poet Avianus based his very popular verse collection on Babrius, however, so the Eastern influence in collections of Aesop was fixed rather early, and there is some reason to treat the wolf of fable as therefore universal.
Whether Aesop ever lived at all is a matter of conjecture. He is thought by some to have been a freed slave who lived in Greece about 600 B.C, a man who used his fables to criticize indirectly the injustices of his day. Today few people in the Northern Hemisphere have not heard of him.
WOLF FABLES OF AESOP
THE DOG AND THE WOLF
Discouraged after an unsuccessful day of hunting, a hungry Wolf came on a well-fed Mastiff. He could see that the Dog was having a better time of it than he was and he inquired what the Dog had to do to stay so well fed. “Very little,” said the Dog. “Just drive away beggars, guard the house, show fondness to the master, be submissive to the same rest of the family and you are well fed warmly lodged.”
The Wolf thought this over carefully. He risked his own life almost daily, had to stay out in the worst of weather, and was never assured of his meals. He thought he would try another way of living.
As they were going along together the Wolf saw a place around the Dog’s neck where the hair had worn thin. He asked what this was and the Dog said it was nothing, “just the place where my collar and chain rub.” The Wolf stopped short. “Chain?” he asked. “You mean you are not free to go where you choose?” “Much,” answered the Wolf as he trotted off. “Much.”
THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
One very hot day a Lamb and a Wolf happened to come on a stream at the same moment to quench their thirst. The Wolf was some distance upstream but called out asking to know why the Lamb was muddying the water, making it impossible for him to drink. The Lamb, quite frightened, answered as politely as he could that he could not have muddied the water as he was standing downstream. The Wolf allowed that that might be true. But he claimed he had heard the Lamb was maligning him behind his back. The Lamb answered, “Upon my word, that is a false charge.” This irritated the Wolf extremely and drawing near the Lamb he said, “If it wasn’t you then it was your father. It is all the same anyway!’” And so saying, he killed the Lamb.
THE WOLF AND THE MOUSE
A Wolf stole a sheep and retired to the woods to eat his fill. When he awoke from a nap he saw a Mouse nibbling at the remains. When the surprised Mouse ran off with a scrap, the Wolf jumped up and began screaming, “I’ve been robbed! I’ve been robbed! Stop this thief!”
THE SHEPHERD BOY AND THE WOLF
A Shepherd Boy was watching his flock near the village and was bored. He though it would be great fun to pretend that a Wolf was attacking the sheep, so he cried out Wolf! Wolf! and the villagers came running. He laughed and he laughed when they discovered there was no Wolf. He played the trick again. And then again. Each time the villagers came, only to be fooled. Then one day a Wolf did come and the Boy cried out Wolf! Wolf! But no one answered his cal. They thought he was playing the same games again.
THE WOLF AND THE HUNTER
A hunter killed a goat with his bow and arrow and, throwing the animal over his shoulder, he headed home. On the way he saw a fine boar. He dropped the goat and let fly an arrow at the boar. The shot missed the heart and the boar fatally gored the hunter before he too expired.
A Wolf caught the smell of blood and found his way to the scene. He was beside himself with delight at the sight of all this meat, but he decided to be prudent, to start with the worst of it and finish with the softest, most delectable pieces. The first thing he determined to eat was the bow string. Taking it in his mouth, he began to gnaw. When it snapped the bow shaft sprung and stabbed the Wolf in the belly and he died.
THE WOLF AND THE CRANE
One day a Wolf got a bone stuck in his throat. He was unable to dislodge it and so be went around asking for someone to pull it out. Finally a Crane offered to help. He stuck his long bill down the Wolf’s throat and extracted the bone. When the Crane aske for a reward, the Wolf said, “You are lucky I didn’t bite your head off. That’s all the reward you get.”
THE WOLF HELPS THE DOG
A Dog, grown old in the service to his master and thought to no longer be of any use, was going to be turned out to finish his days alone. One day the Dog met a Wolf to whom he told his plight. The Wolf took pity and between them they devised a plan. The Dog would return to his master’s residence and shortly thereafter the Wolf would attack the sheep fold. The Dog would drive him out and they would feign a ferocious battle, and the Wolf would be driven off. Thus would the Dog be redeemed in the eyes of his master.
Things went just as they had planned. The Dog was welcomed back, praised for his fierce loyalty and bravery, and promised food and a warm hearth until the day he died.
A week later the Wolf returned, asking the Dog for a return of the favor. The Dog was only too delighted to sneak
him in to a banquet that evening where, by lying quietly beneath the tables, he could gorge himself royally on scraps from the table. This went very well, nothing suspected, until the Wolf had too much to drink. He began to sing in a loud voice. The master of the house discovered him, and, surmising the ruse, booted both Dog and Wolf out the door.
THE WOLF AND THE SHEPHERDS
One evening a wolf passed near a sheep fold and smelled mutton cooking. He drew close and peered through the bushes. A lamb was roasting over the fire and the shepherds were discussing the good quality of the meat. It if was me that had done this, thought the Wolf, they would be after me with sticks and stones and curses.
Babrius, Avianus, and Phaedrus were the fabulists of record into the Middle Ages, when more free-ranging adaptations and original collections began to appear. Marie de France was writing fables in 1175. William Caxton was publishing Aesop in English for the first time about 1480. Even Leonardo da Vinci was trying his hand at fables. Renaissance scholars began to take a serious interest in fables as literature and, by the beginning of the seventeenth century, hundreds of writers were supporting themselves in part by writing them. Among the more widely circulated works were those of John Gay in England, Gotthold Lessing in Germany, and—by far the best known and most widely imitated—Jean de la Fontaine in France. La Fontaine, interestingly, was writing at a time when French intellectuals were debating the idea set forth by Descartes that animals were beastly machines without souls while men were a separate, mysterious creation. La Fontaine disagreed strongly, which makes what he has to say about the wolf in his fables of more than passing interest. I will return to him in a moment.
In 1818, Thomas Bewick published a collection of Aesop in England that featured his own marvelous woodcuts—his wolves have stunning, huge eyes and enormous feet—and Bewick’s caricature of the wolf can serve as an example of the Aesopian character.
In spite of living in more enlightened times, Bewick wrote out of a tradition that was very strongly of the school of nature, not nurture, as befits the wolf of fable. His wolf was innately evil, irreconcilably and fundamentally corrupt, and not very intelligent. Interestingly, what passes for cleverness in Bewick’s fox is dishonesty in his wolf; and what for the fox is craft is for the wolf cheating. In the morals he appended to the tales, Bewick railed against ingratitude, against the lack of vigilance that lets despots come to power, against gullibility, and against impudence. The wolf serves him primarily as a symbol of impudence and corrupt power—despotism without a conscience. So, in “The Wolf and the Lamb,” he puts the blame for such brutishness to blood, writing in his moral that “men of wolfish disposition and envious and rapacious tempers cannot bear to see honest industry raise its head.” Which is one reason (in the story) why wolves kill lambs. It is their nature. At another point Bewick says the same of people, writing that certain groups, like wolves, have “blood tinctured with hereditary, habitual villainy and their nature leavened with evil.” (On the other hand, in “The Dog and the Wolf,” Bewick’s personal aversion to tyranny and enslavement did force him to give us a noble wolf. He writes there of the “true greatness of soul” that the wolf displays.)
Ivan Krilov, a contemporary of Bewick, was the greatest of the Russian fabulists. There is a statue of him in the Summer Garden in Leningrad which is as famous as that of Hans Christian Andersen in New York’s Central Park. Krilov’s wolves, mostly because Krilov was a masterful storyteller, are among the richest in fable, much more vigorous and frightening than the wolves of European fable; it is tempting to conclude that he either drew them from or contributed to the terrible Russian angst over visions of wolf packs in howling pursuit of sleighs on lonely winter nights. But Krilov had a sense of humor. One of my favorite fables is “The Wolf in the Dust.” A wolf anxious to steal a sheep from a flock approaches the animals from downwind under a cover of dust kicked up by the sheep. “Hey,” says the sheepdog with the flock, when he sees the wolf, “there’s no use your wandering around in the dust like that, it’s no good for your eyes.”
“I’ve got bad eyes anyway,” yells back the wolf over the noise of the sheep drive. “But they say dust kicked up by sheep is an excellent cure for it. That’s why I’m down here.”
Jean de la Fontaine grew up in Château-Thierry and was familiar with animals and the world of nature before he began writing. His fables were well-crafted poems, highly satirical and much copied. The literary critics of his time disparaged the fable as a literary form, saying its subject matter was far too prosaic to warrant poetic treatment. La Fontaine disagreed; eventually he was admitted to the French Academy. The bickering in Parisian salons over the merit of La Fontaine’s fables—their form, their morals, their satirical targets—precipitated discussion of one of the most hotly debated issues of the day: the nature of animals and their place in the universe.
By this time the pseudoscientific view of the bestiaries was waning and the science of natural history, benefitting from Francis Bacon’s cry for a scientific method, was on the rise. Hobbes, who wrote in England but spent much of his time in France, was saying that man was little more than a cog to be politically manipulated, a little machine. René Descartes was delineating animals as “beast machines,” creatures without souls and distinct from man. Rationalists of the time were creating a predictable and lifeless universe.
The idea of Cartesian dualism was one of the most pervasive themes of the seventeenth century, and its reverberations in zoology today are practically as strong as they were in Paris in the 1640s. It held that if an animal has no soul—if an animal is only a machine—then our approach to forms of life other than ourselves can be irresponsible and mechanistic. It was precisely this view that came to dominate the biological sciences and to give men who were otherwise much admired, like Audubon, the ethical space to shoot fifty or a hundred birds just to make a single, accurate drawing. The mechanistic approach to wildlife, further, led biologists to a tragic and myopic conclusion: that animals can be “contained,” that they can be disassembled, described, reassembled, and put back on the shelf. This is an idea that is only now beginning to disappear in zoology.
La Fontaine disagreed violently with Descartes. He believed that animals not only had souls but were capable of rational thought. Montaigne, in a famous essay called “In Defense of Raymond Sebond,” had written with penetrating skepticism about the dogmatic assumptions of this time. One of the evils he attacked most vigorously was the complacency with which scientists like Descartes approached animals. Montaigne argued against the compulsive desire to do away with something by describing it, and he perceived correctly that if you took the mystery out of animals they became nothing more than curiosities. He thought such behavior not only stupid but pathetically arrogant.
But these were isolated voices.
The fable enjoyed a renaissance in the century after La Fontaine’s death before—a limited form to begin with—it exhausted itself as a form of social satire. It was replaced by longer beast epics like Gulliver’s Travels and the stories of Reynard and Isengrim, which had enjoyed wide circulation since the fourteenth century.
Ysengrimus, a Latin poem of some sixty-six hundred lines, was written in about 1150 by Nivordus of Ghent in Belgium. It was the first literary recording of what by then was a growing oral tradition, stories based on the long-standing feud between Isengrim the wolf, who stood for the lower nobles, and Reynard the fox, a peasant hero. The French Roman de Renart was the product of several thirteenth-century authors and was immediately popular. Reynard’s witty insults and subterfuge and his cavalier nose-thumbing delighted people who were oppressed. His scathing castigation of wealthy clergy and dull-witted nobility, of unpopular monarchs and political and ecclesiastical abuses, brought howls of approval. The story cycle usually began with Reynard’s summons to the court of the king, a lion, to answer charges made against him by Isengrim and others. Reynard defends himself with devious wit and well-placed flatteries. When he has charmed and ingratiated hi
mself with everyone but Isengrim, he volunteers for some adventure to prove his innocence. Off he goes and we subsequently see more of his guile and much of his cruelty. Isengrim is frequently killed in these stories.
Isengrim is forever Reynard’s fool, but the tales have an odd flavor to them today. Isengrim, for all that he is duped, basically tells the truth and tries to lead a moral life. He is also loyal. Reynard is guileful and arrogant, utterly without human warmth, amoral and violent. He gets away with it all in the beginning but in later versions he is punished for his treachery. In The Most Pleasant and Delightful History of Reynard the Fox: The Second Part (1681), wit and comedy give way to brutality and evil, and in the end Reynard is killed along with Isengrim. And in The Shifts of Reynardine, the Son of Reynard the Fox (1684), Reynardine is hung for his evil-doing.
The brief glimpses we catch in the Reynard stories of a wolf with whom we can sympathize recall the heroic werewolf in William of Parlerne and the sympathetic wolves that surface occasionally in folktales, usually as guides, often of children. They show warmth, compassion, and self-sacrifice, contradicting the ghoulish image of the ravening beast.
There were single stories of the wolf and the fox that in time became detached from the Reynard cycle, as well as original creations, so that today there are a large number of fox and wolf stories. In most of them Fox outwits Wolf by getting him to do something foolish, like sticking his tail in a hole in the river ice to catch fish, only to have it freeze there and break off.
The wolf of ethnic folktale is more varied than the wolf of fable and the Reynard stories. In the collections of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm he seems one-dimensional and predictable, but in other collections he is articulate, sagacious, vicious, silly, and endearing by turns. Often, as in a collection of Georgian (Russian) folktales called Yes and No Stories, the wolf is treated miserably by ingrates but nevertheless continues to help them. In a famous Russian story, “The Firebird,” the wolf helps the king’s youngest son find a firebird that has stolen his father’s golden apples. He secures a princess and a fabulous horse for the boy and protects him from his brothers, who want to kill him. Through it all the boy causes one problem after another, but the wolf stays by him.
