Freedom, slavery or extinction

Reminded by Paul Evans's The Cave Horse of this from Thoreau's journal:

3 September 1851. I saw a man working with a horse in a field by the river, carting dirt; and the horse and his relation to him struck me as very remarkable. There was the horse, a mere animated machine — though his tail was brushing off the flies — his whole existence subordinated to the man’s, with no tradition, perhaps no instinct, in him of independence and freedom, of a time when he was wild and free — completely humanized. No compact made with him that he should have the Saturday afternoons, or the Sundays, or any holidays. His independence never recognized, it being now quite forgotten both by men and by horses that the horse was ever free. For I am not aware that there are any wild horses known surely not to be descended from tame ones. Assisting that man to pull down that bank and spread it over the meadow; only keeping off the flies with his tail, and stamping, and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves from time to time, on his own account — all the rest for man. It seemed hardly worth while that he should be animated for this... Now and forever he is man’s slave. [And] the more I considered, the more the man seemed akin to the horse...

'Once upon a time, there was a beautiful horse from Lascaux'

How to reconcile [the refined art of the mid to late Paleolithic] with the brutal practices of prehistoric hunters? How to consent to the arrow piercing the flesh of an animal, an imaginary murder committed by the artist? Before the revolution, hunting tribes from Siberia lived in conditions similar to those of the 'reindeer' era. Lot-Falk in Les rites de chasse chez les peuples siberiens writes: 'A hunter treated an animal as a creature at least equal to himself. Noting that an animal must hunt [sic] like himself, in order to live, man thought it had the same level of social organization. Man's superiority was manifest in the field of technology through his use of tools. In the sphere of magic, the animal was attributed with equal powers. Its physical strength, swiftness and perfected senses gave the animal a superiority highly praised by hunters. In the spiritual realm animals were credited with even greater virtues -- a close contact with the divine and with the forces of nature, which they embodied.' So far, we understand. The abyss of paleo-psychology begins with a bond between the killer and his victim: 'The death of the animal depends, to some extent, on the animal itself; it must consent to be killed by entering into a relationship with its murderer. That is why the hunter cares for the animal and tries to establish a close union. If the reindeer does not love its hunter, it will not bow to its death. Thus, our original sin and power are hypocritical. Only insatiable, murderous love explains the charm of the Lascaux bestiary.

-- from Barbarian in the Garden by Zbigniew Herbert (1962) quoted by Graeme Gibson


Related post: A bestiary of 25,000 years

Evil air, a frost-making stillness

Roger Cohen reports that things are getting so tight for New York bankers that one advised another he may even have to shoot the horses on his hobby farm upstate. The poor dear.

Puts me in mind of a scene in Michael Clayton, in which the hero finds a moment of respite when he approaches some horses high on a hill. I always wondered if its writer/director, Tony Gilroy, knew this poem by Ted Hughes.

In the fictional film, the horses embody -- perhaps -- something honest and elemental which is forgotten in the 'unreal' world of the city. For Cohen's real banker, by contrast, the horses are now an overhead, a liability to be liquidated.