Tip of the Wolfberg

Obviously it is not true that every second book is about crows or a wolf, but sometimes it seems like it to me (I include in these links only books I have definitely seen in bookshops in the last few months, or read recent reviews of).

They are both good animals - not as good as tuna or squid, but pretty good - but that fact is not enough to account for their current metaphorical dominance. They are both liminal, maybe? A wolf is on the edge of domestication? The crow is not quite a bird of prey, but nearly? Both are seen as intelligent (crows are wise, wolves raise humans in stories, and have pack law, and turn into werewolves) which separates then from other animals? Crows are widely symbolic of death, and so they stand at a door between worlds?

But why now? I'm sure that fashion will have something to do with it. But could it also be that we in the West acclimatised ourselves to being atypically secure, but then terror and savagery forced their way back into our everyday consciousness, and wolf-at-the-door and death-amongst-us images started to seem more appropriate? I, as could not possibly be more obvious, do not know.

Earlier this year, I watched a terrific play (by a friend of mine, lest anyone think that my biases aren't in the open) based on Saki short stories. A lot of early Saki is about a fragile, effete time of fashion and frivolity, but the stories soon start to focus on how his society's cultured veneer is thin ice over the raging waters of history, man's animal nature and the fearsome power of mixed metaphor. All kind of animals appear as symbols of disorder, from stags to a sort of killer stoat, but the wolves that are most often at civilisation's gate are wolves.

There's one story in particular, about two people meeting in a forest over which their families have squabbled since time immemorial. They get pinned to the ground by a falling tree, and they denounce each other as they yell to their men to come and save them and to slay the other. Eventually, they see eyes in the distance. Spent, one says that even if these are his men, he will release his enemy. His enemy says the same, bygones will be just that, and beer and roses. But the eyes are not human...

He's really good, Saki.