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Transformation 1st ed. 2020 Edition
Mathias Guenther
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Human-Animal
Relationships in San
and Hunter-Gatherer
Cosmology, Volume I
Therianthropes and Transformation
Mathias Guenther
Human-Animal Relationships in San and Hunter-­
Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I
 Mathias Guenther

Human-Animal
Relationships in San
and Hunter-Gatherer
Cosmology, Volume I
Therianthropes and Transformation
Mathias Guenther
Department of Anthropology
Wilfrid Laurier University
Ontario, ON, Canada

ISBN 978-3-030-21181-3    ISBN 978-3-030-21182-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21182-0

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For Daniel and Stephan
 Preface

This book is written to fill two gaps in anthropology, in two of the disci-
pline’s research fields, the one in hunter-gatherer studies, specifically its
subfield of Bushman studies, the other in the more recent field of what
some refer to as “The Anthropology of Ontology” (Scott 2013) and oth-
ers have dubbed the “New Animism” (Harvey 2006: xi)—as opposed to
its “Old”, evolutionary rather than relational, predecessor, pace Tylor.
These two fields at present exclude each other, in terms of ethnographic
substance and theoretical discourse, to the detriment of both. This book
sets out to bring the relational ontology paradigm to San studies, and vice
versa, to the respective research fields’ benefit.
This goal is all the more apposite in that hunter-gatherer studies and
relational ontology have been linked from the start, back in the 1990s.
This is when the “ontological turn”, which has since then been taken
in socio-cultural anthropology generally and is part of an even wider—
posthumanist—turn across Western thinking generally, was first taken
in Amazonian studies, among such hunting people as the Achuar,
Araweté and Avila Runa, by Philippe Descola, Eduardo Vivieros de
Castro and Eduardo Kohn, the three leading voices in Amazonian
studies (Costa and Fausto 2010). Through the influence of another
leading voice, Tim Ingold, studies of relational ontology were under-
taken at around the same time in the Subarctic, from northern
Scandinavia, through Siberia (Brightman et al. 2012; Halbmayer 2012)
to North America, where ethnologists such as Adrian Tanner, Harvey
Feit, Robin Ridington, Colin Scott and Robert Brightman had worked
on relational and cosmological aspects of hunter-prey relations even

vii
viii PREFACE

before the 1990s. The influence is evident in these ethnographies of

another Subarctic researchers, Irven Hallowell, who a generation
before, in an essay on Ojibwa ontology that has since become a foun-
dational article in relational ontology, conceptualized the “non-human
person” (or “other-than-human person”), thereby widening the field
of social relations—and the concept of both society and of culture—
beyond humankind (1960). A similar recasting of “animism as rela-
tional epistemology”, that acknowledged Hallowell’s influence, was
the theme 20 years ago of a then seminal and now classic Current
Anthropology article by Nurit Bird-David (1999: S71), which situated
relational ontology among a number of hunter-gatherer-horticultural-
ists in southern Asia.
Yet, the ontological turn, for all of its paradigm-shifting effects on the
study of hunter-gatherers during the last and first decades of the previous and
present centuries, all but by-passed the Kalahari, amongst whose hunting-
gathering people ethnographers were wont to examine the human-animal
relationship not in social, cosmological, mystical fashion but instrumentally
and strategically, as a meat-on-the-hoof resource, cherished—more so than
plant—for its high caloric yield and thus a key concern of the “foraging mode
of production” and its modus operandi, “optimal foraging strategy”. This
cultural-ecological, theoretical-­materialist bent in San studies was especially
marked and engrained in San studies, with the San, ever since the path-break-
ing “Man the Hunter” conference in 1966 (and conference volume with the
same title edited by the two conference organizers published two years later),
and as a result of a large number of high-quality ethnographic writings on the
San. The effect of all of this was to render this foraging group one of the two
(alongside the Aché) textbook case of the optimal forager, whose “immediate-­
return” subsistence economy was seen to afford people “affluent” lifeways.
When Amazonian and Subarctic hunting became considered in social-­
relational and cosmological terms rather than instrumental-alimentary ones,
in the 1990s, the materialist paradigm continued to inform research in San
studies (albeit, not exclusively so, especially through the “Revisionism
Debate” this field generated, in terms of political economy and World Systems
theory, both paradigms the discursive links of which to relational ontology
are no closer than they are to optimal foraging).1
I set out in this book to show that San worldview and lifeways are in fact
also, at the ontological level, the way people conceive of, perceive and

1
For elaboration on these points see Guenther (2015: 281–82, 302–9; 2017: 3–4).
 PREFACE ix

experience their interaction with animals, along with other beings of their
(preter)natural world, pervaded with relationality and intersubjectivity
(and have done so in the past, on the basis of ethnohistorical and archaeo-
logical evidence largely on southern San that will be marshalled). In filling
this gap in our understanding of San ethnography and culture I will also fill
the gap in ontological anthropology, which has excluded these southern
hunting people from its neo-animistic purview. Apart from adding new
insights to the relational ontology perspective in anthropology, this study,
of “San-imism”, also underscores the important insight that animism is not
some monolithic schema or cosmologico-religious complex but something
diverse and multiplex, structurally varied, ecologically and historically con-
tingent. Indeed, as I will also argue, one such included in many and varied
animisms of people and cultures of this world are Westerners.
I have recently dealt with these issues in two exploratory articles on
relational ontology in the context of San cosmology and lifeways, namely
“‘Therefore Their Parts Resemble Humans, for They Feel That They Are
People’: Ontological Flux in San Myth, Cosmology and Belief ” (in
Hunter-Gatherer Research (2015) and “‘The Eyes Are No Longer Wild:
You Have Taken the Kudu into Your Mind’: The Supererogatory Aspects
of San Hunting” (in The South African Archaeological Bulletin (2017).
These articles provided the impetus for this book, with some encourage-
ment from colleagues and friends. It adds to, as well as expands and com-
plements, what is presented, more or less provisionally, in these two articles.
The ethnographic base of this book consists of both my own field work
and of ethnographies by other Kalahari anthropologists, as well as of eth-
nohistorical sources, both published and archival. Given the quantity and
variety of all of this source material, most of the contemporary and histori-
cal San linguistic groupings of southern Africa are referenced in this book.
(See Map 1 for their distribution over southern Africa, and some of their
Khoe- and Bantu-speaking neighbours.)
Most of the archival sources consist of unpublished /Xam texts from the
Bleek/Lloyd archive. They are referred to by the notational system used by
Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd that differentiated between interlocutors,
informants (by the first, Roman numeral), and by the notebook number and
its page number(s); for example L VIII.—4, p. 6365 rev. (Lloyd, /Hanǂkasso,
notebook 4, page number 6365, back of page). These archival text references
can be readily looked up in University of Cape Town’s open-access digitalized
Bleek/Lloyd archive (“Digital Bleek and Lloyd”, lloydbleekcollection.cs.uct.
za). The identifying Roman numerals for the other two key narrators are II
for //Kabbo, V for Diä!kwain; for the two majn !Kung informants, !Nanni
x PREFACE

Map 1 Distribution of Khoisan- and Bantu-speaking groupings of southern Africa

and Tamme the identifying numerals are XI and XII. For more information
on the /Xam informants, see Bleek and Lloyd (1911: vi–xvii), Deacon and
Dowson (1996: 11–43), Guenther (1989: 25–29), Lewis-Williams (2000:
32–33) and—for the most comprehensive account—Bank (2006a).
In addition to these mostly anthropological sources I draw on the writ-
ings, rich in quantity and quality, of scholars from a number of other dis-
ciplines who have worked in the field of Khoisan studies (many of them
drawing on the Bleek/Lloyd archive). These are archaeology, rock art
 PREFACE xi

studies and history, as well as folklore and cultural studies, art and literary
criticism. The interdisciplinarity of source material has also left its imprint
on the content and scope of this book, which, in Vol. II, moves from the
San to their Khoe- and Bantu-speaking neighbours in southern Africa, to
the Inuit of the eastern Arctic and to the two cultures of the West.

Waterloo, ON, Canada Mathias Guenther

References
Bank, Andrew, ed. 2006a. Bushmen in a Victorian World: The Remarkable Story of
the Bleek-Lloyd Collection of Bushman Folklore. Cape Town: Double Storey Books.
Bird-David, Nurit. 1999. ‘Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and
Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology 40 (Supplement): S67–S92.
Bleek, Wilhelm H.I., and Lucy Lloyd. 1911. Specimens of Bushman Folklore.
London: George Allen & Co.
Brightman, Marc, Vanessa E. Grotti, and Olga Ulturgasheva, eds. 2012. Animism
in Rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, Animals, Plants and Things in
Contemporary Amazonia and Siberia. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Costa, L., and C. Fausto. 2010. The Return of the Animists: Recent Studies of
Amazonian Ontologies. Religion and Society: Advances in Research 1: 89–109.
Deacon, Janette, and Thomas A. Dowson, eds. 1996. Voices from the Past: /Xam
Bushmen and the Bleek and Lloyd Collection. Johannesburg: Wits University Press.
Guenther, Mathias. 1989. Bushman Folktales: Oral Traditions of the Nharo of
Botswana and the /Xam of the Cape, Studien Zur Kulturkunde No. 93.
Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden.
Guenther, Mathias. 1999. Tricksters and Trancers Bushman Religion and Society.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Guenther, Mathias. 2015. ‘Therefore Their Parts Resemble Humans, for They
Feel That They Are People’: Ontological Flux in San Myth, Cosmology and
Belief. Hunter-Gatherer Research 1 (3): 277–315.
Halbmayer, Ernst, ed. 2012. Debating Animism, Perspectivism and the
Construction of Ontologies. Special Issue of Indiana 29: 9–169.
Hallowell, A. Irving. 1960. Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View. In Essays in
Honor of Paul Radin, ed. Stanley Diamond, 19–52. New York: Columbia
University Press. (Republished in Stanley Diamond, ed. Primitive Views of the
World: Essays from Culture in History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1964.)
Harvey, Graham. 2006. Animism: Respecting the Living World. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Lewis-Williams, David J. 2000. Stories that Float from Afar: Ancestral Folklore of
the San of Southern Africa. Cape Town: David Philip.
Scott, Michael. 2013. What I’m Reading: The Anthropology of Ontology (Religious
Science?) Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 19: 859–872.
 Acknowledgements

In the process of this far-reaching project, I have engaged with the ideas
of many scholars, both through their writings and in person. Many of
these researchers are recognized in the introduction—the section on inter-
disciplinarity—and here I again acknowledge the quality of their scholar-
ship and the intellectual stimulation I have derived thereof in my own
work, over the years and decades.
I especially acknowledge the many colleagues and friends whose ideas
and counsel I have been able to draw on with respect to this project in
discussions, both at home in Canada, or at various conference or guest
lecture venues in other countries, and in southern Africa. The former, in
alphabetical order, are Leila Baracchini, Alan Barnard, Megan Biesele,
Laird Christie, Ute Dieckmann, Thorsten Gieser, Jean-Guy Goulet, Erica
Hill, Bob Hitchcock, Rockney Jacobsen, Dean Knight, Tihamer Kover,
Frédéric Laugrand, Megan Laws, Jenny Lawy, Richard Lee, Chris Low,
Andrew Lyons, Harriet Lyons, Junko Maruyama, Bob McKinley, Mark
Münzel Elisabeth Marshall Thomas, Ingrid Thurner, Thomas Widlok,
Rane Willerslev, Sandra Woolfrey.
Before turning to the long list of colleagues from Africa, I acknowledge
three special debts of gratitude. They are to Pieter Jolly and Neil Rusch of
the University of Cape Town, for inviting me (in October 2017) to accom-
pany them on a field trip to the Northern Karoo, the home territory of //
Kabbo, /Hanǂkasso, Diä!kwain and the other /Xam story tellers from
whom Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd obtained their—and the world’s—
treasure trove of /Xam myth and lore. Apart from viewing many rock art
sites that derive from ancestral /Xam hands and specific features of the

xiii
xiv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

landscape that are referred to by the story tellers in one or another tale,
this visit afforded me a feel for the landscape—the /Xam !kau:xu, or
“hunting ground”. Another debt to my two hosts and travel companions
is that they gave me permission to use some of their images (photographs
and rock art tracings).
At the occasion of that trip to South Africa I also visited David Lewis-­
Williams, who had invited me to Witwatersrand University’s Rock Art
Research Institute (of which he is the founder), as well as showed me
around its exhibition at the Institute’s Origins Centre museum. I have
admired David’s work on San religion, mythology and art ever since I first
became acquainted with it when reading and reviewing his path-breaking
Believing and Seeing almost four decades ago. I was eager to discuss my
current project with him at the occasion of my visit (which, as expected,
was most fruitful).
The third debt of gratitude is to the late Irene Staehelin, founder and
spiritus rector, as well as initial funder, through her Swiss-based UBUNTU
Foundation, of !Khwa-ttu, a San culture and education centre which,
quoting from its mission statement, “celebrates San culture, present and
past, for a better future”. This NGO has been able to do all that and more,
in the 20 years of its operation. I have been fortunate to be associated with
!Khwa-ttu on a couple of occasions. One was in 2011 when Irene invited
me (along Megan Biesele) to assist in setting up a museum exhibition on
/Xam cosmology, around the theme of “The Mantis and the Eland”. It
was the discussions, planning and research on this project, and head-long
delving into the /Xam archive, that spawned this book project. Irene, who
died early this year (2019), has drawn a number of other San researchers
to !Khwa-ttu, to assist and consult, with the salutary effect of making and
keeping them aware of problems and issues about the San people that are
more real and urgent than so much that “academics” think and write
about in academe’s ivory tower.
Colleagues in southern Africa who provided valued input to my project
over the past few years are Sam Challis, Josè Manuel de Prada-Samper,
Janette Deacon, Janet Hermans, Jeremy Hollmann, Mary Lange,
Willemien LeRoux, Al Morris, Alicia Mullen, Richard Northover, John
Parkington, Riaan Rifkin, Pippa Skotnes, Andy Smith, Larissa Swan,
Carolyn Thorpe, Helize van Vuuren and David Witleson.
Special thanks to David Pearce and David Witleson of the Rock Art
Research Institute for their assistance in procuring permissions for some of
the rock art images; to Maude Brown of Kuru Development Trust for the
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv

same assistance with respect to the contemporary San art; to Pam Schaus
for drawing the map; to Stephan Guenther for producing four of the rock
art tracings (nos. 3.15, 3.18, 3.21, vol. I, 4.1, vol. II); to Brittany Ostic
and Daniel Guenther for assistance in copy-editing, to Mary Al-Sayed and
Linda Braus at Palgrave Macmillan, New York, and Beth McAuley and
Lesley-Anne Longo at The Editing Company, Toronto, for their assis-
tance in editing the manuscript and getting it in ship-shape condition for
the printer.
 Contents

1 Introduction: “… some subjective identification … which I

failed to understand more deeply”  1

2 Therianthropes 19

3 Transformation in Myth 49

4 Therianthropes and Transformation in San Art 95

5 Transformation in Ritual161

6 Animals in San Dance and Play: Between Mimesis and

Metamorphosis203

7 Transformation and Hunting223

Appendices269

References275

Index295

xvii
 Note on Orthography

All San (and Khoe Khoe) languages include clicks within their inventory
of consonants (Guenther 1999: 11). The four that are best defined, pho-
netically and phonemically, and that appear throughout this book when-
ever vernacular words, terms and expression are cited are:

1. The dental click (/), produced by placing the tip of the tongue
against the back of the upper incisors, creating a sound similar to
what we transcribe as “tsk, tsk” (the vocalization used when gently
chiding a child).
2. The lateral click (//), produced by placing the sides of the tongue
against the sides of the upper row of teeth, creating the sound a
rider makes when urging his/her horse on to greater speed.
3. The alveolar click (ǂ), produced with the tongue pressed against the
bony projection on the roof of the mouth (alveolus).
4. The cerebral (or alveopalatal) click (!), produced by placing the
front of the tongue against the roof of the mouth, behind the alveo-
lus, creating a “cork-popping” sound.

xix
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 /Xue transformed into a !kan-a fruit-bearing tree. (Bleek and
Lloyd 1911: 309) 57
Fig. 3.2 /Xue transforming into a !naxane plant. (Image
NLLB_D_!n029), (“Digital Bleek and Lloyd”) 58
Fig. 3.3 /Xue as a fully transformed !naxane plant. (Bleek and Lloyd
1911: 292) 59
Fig. 3.4 /Xue’s transformation into a //gui tree. (Bleek and Lloyd
1911: 308) 60
Fig. 3.5 /Xue’s transformation into a !kui tree. (Bleek and Lloyd 1911:
209)61
Fig. 3.6 Tamme’s cartoon of /Xue and his wife transforming during a
spousal dispute. (Bleek and Lloyd 1911: 325) 65
Fig. 3.7 Orpen’s Drakensberg rock art copies. (Cape Monthly
Magazine, 1874, foldout) 73
Fig. 4.1 Prototypal San therianthrope. (Jolly 2002: 86, with
permission)99
Fig. 4.2 Non-antelope therianthropes. (Jolly 2002: 87, with permission)
Top row: baboon therianthrope, KwaZulu-Natal; elephant
therianthrope, Western Cape; lion (?) therianthrope, Lesotho;
wildebeest therianthrope, Western Cape; hippopotamus (?)
therianthrope
Middle row: snake therianthropes, Eastern Cape; rhinoceros (?)
therianthrope, Lesotho; ostrich therianthropes, Western Cape
Bottom row: baboon therianthrope with human hunting
equipment, Lesotho; cow or bull therianthrope, KwaZulu-Natal  100

xxi
xxii List of Figures

Fig. 4.3 Elephant therianthrope, Drakensberg. (RARI, with

permission)101
Fig. 4.4 Fantasy therianthropes. (Jolly 2002: 89, with permission)
Top: snake and imaginary tusked creature, Eastern Cape
Bottom: eland-horse, Eastern Cape 102
Fig. 4.5 Chimerical therianthrope. (Jolly 2002: 93, with permission) 102
Fig. 4.6 Chimerical therianthrope from Apollo 11 shelter. (Rifkin et al.
2015: 120, with permission) 104
Fig. 4.7 Human-­headed therianthrope, Drakensberg. (RARI, with
permission)105
Fig. 4.8 Antelope women. (Eastwood and Eastwood 2006: 138, with
permission from RARI) 106
Fig. 4.9 Transforming therianthrope, human to antelope (?).
(Woodhouse Collection, Special Collections, University of
Pretoria, with permission) 108
Fig. 4.10 Transforming therianthrope, antelope to human (?), Storm
Shelter, southern Drakensberg. (RARI, with permission) 109
Fig. 4.11 Transformation scene of a man into the eland (skin?) he is
carrying on his back. (Jolly 2002: 91, with permission) 110
Fig. 4.12 Photograph of Fig. 4.11, in the context of the group scene it
is part of. (Jolly 2015: 217, with permission) 111
Fig. 4.13 Kaross-clad human-antelope transformation. (RARI, with
permission)112
Fig. 4.14 Transformations scene, some of the beings wearing animal
skins. (Jolly 2002: 91, with permission) 113
Fig. 4.15 Transforming chimera. (Eastwood and Eastwood 2006: 125,
with permission from RARI) 114
Fig. 4.16 Transforming wildebeest-men. (Eastwood and Eastwood
2006: 124, with permission from RARI) 115
Fig. 4.17 Antelope-human transformation in process. (Photo by Jolly
(2015: 212), with permission) 116
Fig. 4.18 Tracing superimposed on Fig. 4.17 116
Fig. 4.19 Transformation into a bird. (Jolly 2002: 94, with permission) 117
Fig. 4.20 Photograph of Fig. 4.19. (Jolly 2015: 216, with permission) 118
Fig. 4.21 Phases of transformation, Amis gorge, Upper Brandberg.
(Redrawn from Pager 1989, plate 60) 119
Fig. 4.22 Transforming “trickster”-hunter, Upper Nuwarib, Brandberg.
(Source: author’s tracing) 120
Fig. 4.23 Therianthrope and eland tracks, Drakensberg. (RARI, with
permission)122
 List of Figures  xxiii

Fig. 4.24 Stow’s copies of therianthropes. (Digital Bleek and Lloyd,

image files Stow_015 & Stow_017) 124
Fig. 4.25 Vetkat Kruiper’s therianthropes. (Lange 2011: n.p., with
permission)126
Fig. 4.26 “Old People”, Qoma. (Kuru Art Project Archives, with
permission)129
Fig. 4.27 “Gemsbok and Birds”, Qoma. (Kuru Art Project Archives,
with permission) 130
Fig. 4.28 “Untitled”, Thamae Setshogo. (Author’s photograph with
permission)131
Fig. 4.29 “Birds and a Tree”, Dada. (Author’s photograph, with
permission)132
Fig. 4.30 Qwaa and Dada (L) at work. (Author’s photograph) 132
Fig. 4.31 Qwaa’s lion-shaman climbing ghudabe tree. (Author’s
photograph, with permission) 134
Fig. 4.32 “Jackal, Springhare and Ostrich”, Qwaa. (Kuru Art Project
Archives, with permission) 137
Fig. 4.33 “Naro men and animals from long ago”, Qwaa. (Author’s
photograph, with permission) 138
Fig. 4.34 “Naro men and Kalahari creatures”, Qwaa. (Author’s
photograph, with permission) 139
Fig. 4.35 “Disco dancing”, Dada. (Author’s photograph, with
permission)140
Fig. 4.36 “Guitars, pots and bottle”, Dada. (Author’s photo, with
permission)142
Fig. 4.37 “Man, bows and arrows and huts”, Dada. (Author’s
photograph, with permission) 143
Fig. 4.38 Pods, beads, birds, Dada. (Author’s photograph) 144
Fig. 4.39 San hut with painted canvas as weather-proofing, D’Kar,
June 1996. (Author’s photograph) 145
Fig. 4.40 “Birds and plants”, Dada. (Author’s photograph, with
permission)146
Fig. 4.41 Chimeras and fantastical beings, Qwaa. (Author’s photograph,
with permission) 147
Fig. 5.1 ≠Au//ei trance dancer wearing hornbill beak. (Source: Gentz
1904: 158) 173
Fig. 5.2 Giraffe and eland, Tsodilo Hills, Botswana. (Source: author’s
photograph)175
Fig. 6.1 /Xam dance rattles made out of springbok ears. (Source: Bleek
and Lloyd 1911: 244) 211
xxiv List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Eland hunt, driving the eland to home base. (Source: Harris
1852: 75) 226
Fig. 7.2 ǂAu//eisi running sandal. (Kaufmann 1910: 1423) 240
Fig. 7.3 Stow’s Bushman putative rock art painting of a disguised
ostrich hunter. (Source: Stow 1905: 96) 248
Fig. 7.4 Stow’s source for above painting. (Source: Moffatt 1844:
frontispiece)249
Fig. 7.5 Ostrich hunter’s disguise. (Source: Farini 1886: 330) 250
Fig. 7.6 Iconic “Bushman” cultural tableaux depicted on South West
Africa stamps. (Source: internet) 253
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction: “… some subjective

identification … which I failed to understand
more deeply”

Almost 50 years back, in an article on Namibian! Kung (Ju/’hoan) Giraffe

Dance, Lorna Marshall cited an informant’s remark about the dance which
struck her as enigmatic and puzzling: “We sing it for the tail, it begins at
the tail, the way it waves it” (Marshall 1969: 364). The reason she was
perplexed was the discrepancy between what the trance dancer’s remark
suggested—that “the !Kung may think that the sounds or gestures are in
some way imitative”—and what was, in her considered opinion based on
her ethnographic understanding, actually transpired at the dance—that
“the dance steps are definitely not pantomime.” Marshall notes that the
latter, mimicry of animals, was something the !Kung sometimes practised,
with uncanny effect, in ludic dancing or when silently and stealthily
approaching a hunted animal, but it was “definitely” not a component of
the curing dance, notwithstanding her dancer-informant’s comment. She
adds the caveat that, “nevertheless, a dancer may occasionally move his
head or shoulders almost imperceptibly, in such a way as to suggest the
movement of an animal’s head,” suggesting thereby that there is in fact an
element of mimicry, involuntary to the dancer, insinuating itself on her/
his body as (s)he dances the Giraffe Dance, and almost imperceptible to
the ethnographer.
Thirty years later, in the chapter on the trance dance in her magnum
opus on Ju/’hoan religion (1999), Marshall cited the same informant’s
statement on the Giraffe Song, along with another dancer’s statement that

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Guenther, Human-Animal Relationships in San
and Hunter-­Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21182-0_1
2 M. GUENTHER

hints not only at mimicry but also, squarely, at metamorphosis: “When a

man dances the Giraffe Dance he becomes a giraffe” (ibid.: 73). Marshall
continues to be puzzled about such statements, as “the dance steps are
definitely not intentional pantomime” and she rephrases her earlier caveat,
more strongly than before: “this suggests some subjective identification
on the part of the dancer.” To this she adds that it was an aspect of the
dance “which I failed to understand more deeply”.
The aim of this book is to continue where Lorna Marshall left off: to
“understand more deeply” what was intimated and tentatively suggested
by the ethnographer—and explicitly stated by her San informants—about
the elements of mimesis and metamorphosis in the San curing dance, by
placing the same within the wider context of San cosmology in which, as
I will demonstrate, these two processes of ontological transformation are
prominent.
When Lorna Marshall dealt with these aspects in her two articles, in the
1960s and 1990s, the study of San religion did not readily provide an
explanation for the dancer’s—or shaman’s1—ontological transformation.
The first article was situated within the zeitgeist of anthropological theory
of cultural ecology, a cultural-materialist paradigm (Guenther 2007:
371–74, 2017: 3–4) that paid little heed to the symbolic, ritual or mytho-
logical domains of San culture (let alone if approached with a phenomeno-
logical or ontological slant). As for the second of Marshall’s articles,
students did in the 1990s consider that domain; however, they did so in
the grips very much of the influential “trance hypothesis” which held sway
not only in San studies but in the study of shamanism generally, in the
contexts of ethnographic, ethnohistorical and prehistoric (Clottes and
Lewis-Williams 1998; Lewis-Williams 2002), not without criticism (Bahn
2003, 2010: 123–31; Dowson 2007). This paradigm led researchers of
San religion to focus symbolically and phenomenologically on how the
shaman-dancer intensifies and transcends his human self, through a psy-
chological experience of an Altered State of Consciousness, rather than
being transported out of this self into another, non-human being and sub-
ject, through a phenomenological experience of ontological transforma-
tion (or, as it were, of an Alternate State of Being). This is the focus of the
present book—on the modes and limits not of a human being’s human

1
As before (Guenther 1999: 7), I refer to the San trance dancer by this forever arguably
arguable term. See also Lewis-Williams, who concurs (2015b: 62).
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 3

consciousness, through trance, but on those of his or her humanness,

through transformation, especially vis-á-vis animals.
The now classic study of the San—specifically Ju/’hoan—trance dance
that focused on Altered States of Consciousness is Richard Katz’s Boiling
Energy (1982). The work was followed by a sequel of sorts a generation
later (with Megan Biesele and Verna St. Denis in 1997), which considers
the political implications of the dance and the ever more professionalized
dancers. The element of the dancer’s transformation, specifically into a
lion, was dealt with as well in this study (as will be seen later in this book,
which draws on Katz’s ethnography); however, its core concern was trance
and transcendence (see also Katz 1976) and their psychological and syner-
gistic effects on the trancer-curer and the participants and attendants at
the dance. The anthropologist-cum creative therapist and spiritual healer
Bradford Keeney’s studies on trance curing among the Ju/’hoansi of
north-eastern Namibia two decades later are likewise squarely focused on
trance and transcendence, in an analytical key that blends anthropological
cybernetics with New Age spirituality, through which transcendence and
transformation are transposed by the analyst into the loftily elusive domains
of God and Creation (1999, 2015, with Hilary Keeney).
Around the same time, in 1999, I published a book—Tricksters and
Trancers Bushman Religion and Society—in which I considered transforma-
tion of a person, a trance dancer, primarily in the psychological, Altered
States sense, into a transcended self, and secondarily in the ontological,
Alternate Species sense: his—the trance dancer’s—or her—menarcheal
girl’s—transformation into an animal, either a lion or eland (1999: 173–78,
182–92). Having revisited and expanded on this matter in two recent arti-
cles (2015, 2017), it constitutes the subject matter of the present book, on
San human-animal relations. A title I had considered for the book at one
time—and soon rejected for its cumbersomeness—was Therianthropes and
Transformations as its alliterative echo with the Tricksters and Trancers
reflects a certain degree of continuity, as well as complementarity. Both
books are treatments of the theme of ambiguity. The earlier book consid-
ered its pervasive hold on San social organization and values as well as on
ritual and belief, with the spotlight on the former cultural domain, via the
trance dancer/shaman and the initiand, and the latter via the trickster pro-
tagonist of myth. These social and cultural domains are seen to be linked
through feedback loops that sustain the anti-structural makeup of each. In
dealing with these linkages not so much conceptually as phenomenologi-
cally—that is, via experience and perception rather than cognition—the
4 M. GUENTHER

present project goes deeper: it grounds social-structural and cosmological-

mythical ambiguity ontologically rather than conceptually, in terms of the
continuity, rather than discreteness, of human and non-human beings.

Connective Cosmology and Mutable Ontology

This continuity, and the state of ontological mutability that derives from
it, is embedded within a cosmology of interconnectedness, of beings and
states that in so many other cosmologies are discrete—more or less and
never consistently, as we will see when looking at one of them (our own
Western cosmology, often dubbed “Cartesian” because of its penchant for
dichotomization). The South African archaeologist Sven Ouzman has
characterized San cosmology with the apt term “connective cosmos”
(2008: 219–22), a designation that resonates with South African poet
Antje Krog’s “interconnected world view” (2009: 184). Like Ouzman
(and Low 2014: 351), Krog sees “this interconnectedness with ‘the
wholeness of life’” (Krog 2009: 184), as something distinctively Khoisan,
which some of the other indigenous South African peoples, such as
Nguni/Sotho-speakers, “inherited from the First People population …
[of] southern Africa” (ibid., quoted in Wessels 2012: 187). In a connec-
tive cosmos—“a boundary-less universe whose entangled people and ani-
mals move across time and space” (Low ibid.)—ontological boundaries,
between species and worlds, are fluid and porous and beings and states are
not set each in their respective moulds and modes but interact with and
flow into each other.
Ontological mutability is manifested by hybrid beings and by transfor-
mation that brings them into and out of being, to varying degrees of
explicitness, from incipient stirrings of sympathy or attunedness to the
animal, through different forms of mimesis, to complete metamorphosis.
Like other researchers before me, I examined trance-induced transforma-
tion—“tranceformation”—into a lion, antelope or giraffe, in which trans-
formation can be at its most real to the person undergoing it and most
direct and discernible to those who watch it unfolding. In addition I con-
sider transformation outside the trance experience, in such cultural
domains and practices as mythology, art, initiation rites, ludic dancing and
hunting. These all display transformation in various phases, from incipient
to full-blown, fixed, in the form of a hybrid being, or in the process of
becoming one, at various phases of perceptibility on the part of the prin-
cipals or the participants. Such a proneness for transformation and onto-
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 5

logical inconstancy is given play in the context of a cosmology within

which ontological boundaries between human and non-human are porous.
The non-human that is central to this study is the animal (although, as
seen in the next chapter, that may also be trees, as well as other plants and
“things” of the hunting ground).
While some therianthropes—many of them inhabiting Myth Time—
may be constitutionally hybrid, others—some of them featured on rock
surfaces—gain their ontological hybridity through transformation, the
process that brings such ontologically ambiguous beings into being. The
process is elicited either through a being’s own volition or through the
agency and magical power of another being. This in San mythology is usu-
ally a trickster; in other mythologies the agent of transformation may be a
sorcerer or witch, such as Ježibaba in the Slavic transformation-tale
Rusalka, whose three therianthropic servants—a were-raven, a were-cat
and a were-rat2—are failed transformation attempts. Or he may be a mad
scientist—Dr Frankenstein comes to mind, or Dr Moreau, who, assisted
by his chimerical multi-species servant M’ling, populates his dreary island
with a dozen odd-like ontological oddities.
Transformation is therianthropic sui generis: in its transitional phase
between being A and being B, and, as we will see, even as transformed, the
latter being, in San mythology, will always contain in its beings the ele-
ments of the former, in varying measures. Transforming and transformed
beings, as well as the therianthropes of San myth and art, each retain ele-
ments of their original being, and through it, autonomy and identity, not-
withstanding the inroads of ontological alterity on the integrity of its
being. As will be seen, the same can be said of lion- or eland-transformed
humans in trance and initiation rituals; indeed, it applies even to hunters.
They are all therianthropes of a sort, with the anthro-morphic dose of
their being, somatically and mentally, proportionately higher than in their
theri-morphic kin-beings of myth, all the while retaining each element of
its species autonomy and integrity.
Therianthropes and transformation, the two fundamental manifesta-
tions of ambiguity in San cosmology, are thus conceptually and phenom-

2
They were featured as such in the Met’s 2017 production of Dvořák’s fairy tale opera
“Rusalka”, staged by Mary Zimmermann. As playwright and producer a few years earlier of
an adaptation of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (2002), Zimmermann has a professional interest
in the mytho-magical and mytho-poeic phenomenon of transformation which is beguilingly
evident in her work on Rusalka.
6 M. GUENTHER

enologically linked: the one, therianthropes, the product of ontological

mutability; the other, transformation, its process. These two manifesta-
tions of ontological mutability lie at the basis of another conceptual and
terminological distinction, the one static, the other dynamic: that between
therianthropes—human-animal hybrid beings—and zoomorphs—beings
transforming into such (Skotnes 1996: 243), from either a human or an
animal form. We encounter both in San myth and art, as the embodiments
par excellence of ontological mutability. The latter is given the widest scope
phenomenologically for humans engaging with their expressive culture,
ritual and hunting, as animal-beings and as being-animal.
These two ontological concepts and experiences—and the process that
links them, transformation—highlight the non-human beings that hold
centre-stage in this study: animals. They are central also to this book’s
theoretical framework, animism (the “new” version), the core concept of
which, “anima” (“soul”), is semantically linked to “animal”. Animals are
front and centre also in San myth and cosmology. Animal stories are gen-
erated through the hunt, which provides an inexhaustible supply of narra-
tive to San story tellers, who, in retelling the hunt and the animals
encountered, through exciting or dangerous hunting endeavours or
because of uncanny, “counter-intuitive” behaviour on the animal’s part
rendering it beguiling and “attention-demanding”3 and transporting it
into the realm of legend and myth. The latter domain, the First Order of
Myth Time, was inhabited by the First Race, human or humanoid, along-
side and interacting with animal-beings, all with a penchant for transfor-
mation into one another’s kind. Other members of the First Race are
animals or hybrid beings that blend human aspects within their animalian
ontological makeup, creating multi-species chimeras or, more commonly,
human-animal hybrid beings. Such were-beings also appear on rock sur-
faces, most commonly as antelope-headed men or antelope-legged
women, transposing the theme of ontological hybridity from myth and
oft-told stories to art and onto frequently encountered, widely seen paint-
ings or engravings (Lewis-Williams 2002, 2015a: 149–72).
Therianthropes from Myth Time may be present also in the Second
Order, set in historic or present time, joining their hybrid counterparts
from that world, trance-transformed lion-shamans of the Ju/’hoansi and
≠Au//eisi of Namibia and Botswana or greed- and malice-transformed

3
The terms are Pascal Boyer’s (2001) and refer to what according to him constitutes the
evolutionary and cognitive basis for religious thought.
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 7

Hyena People of the Omaheke Nharo (Naro) of Namibia. Animal ­identities

are mimed and may be partially and fleetingly assumed in ritual or recre-
ational dances, by shamans, young and old women and men at initiation
rites and old and young at recreational dances. All of these animal experi-
ences, coupled with sightings and hunts of real animals, and killing and
butchering their carcasses, dividing and sharing, cooking and eating their
flesh, while, in the process “telling the hunt”, give prominence to animal-
others in San cosmology and experience.
All of this instantiates and endorses a cosmology of ontological mutabil-
ity of human and animal, relayed through widely told myths and widely
viewed images and embodied, either through mimesis or metamorphosis,
by the transforming and transformed shaman and somatically sensed by the
girl in her seclusion hut and the hunter when he stalks his poison-­wounded
prey and closes in on it for the kill. They did so back in the nineteenth
century, among the now vanished and vanquished /Xam of the Cape and,
it appears, notwithstanding processes of disenchantment in the intervening
generations, still in truncated fashion do, among contemporary Kalahari San.

Mimesis and Metamorphosis

These two terms crop up throughout this book, as they are the two
modalities through which San experiences ontological transformation.
How connected, phenomenologically, are these two processes? The expe-
rience of being-changing among the San suggests to me that they are in
fact connected, on an experiential continuum, with mimesis, as experi-
enced by San dancers and hunters (as well as some of the were-beings
featured in myth and art), a precursor to metamorphosis. While some of
the human-animal transformations of people from the real world are less
explicit and extravagant than those from Myth Time, they all, to varying
degrees, bring about an experience, more or less fleeting, of cross-species
blurring of identity and alterity. San cosmology recognizes, in myth, ritual
and hunting, this spectrum of ontological transformation, from “playing
at” transformation through pantomime to playing it out, experiencing it
through the morphing of identities. This process, as seen in most of the
following chapters, ranges from incipient to full-blown, partial to com-
plete, ephemeral to lasting, temporary to permanent.
Because transformation lies on so wide a spectrum and assumes so
many forms, ontological mutability becomes enrooted and implanted
within San cosmology, so much so that, using David Lewis-Williams and
8 M. GUENTHER

David Pearce’s words, “for the San transformations like these are part of
everyone’s thinking, if not their experience; they are part of life” (2004:
159). Indeed, in his study of the connection between hunting and rock art
that included a stint of field work with Namibian Ju/’hoan hunters in
2014, the Finnish artist and art historian Mikko Ijäs found animal trans-
formation, as connected to hunting and trance curing, “were all everyday
knowledge to them”, so much so that this researcher “found it striking
that these connections had not been made previously”4 (2017: 12).
A “connective cosmos” so premised on ontological mutability as to
make “transformations a part of life” raises phenomenological issues and
questions for an anthropologist or archaeologist, a folklorist or literary or
art scholar, trying to understand the world view, the values and beliefs, the
life- and being-in-the-world-ways of the people who subscribe to such a
cosmology. Much of the theoretical component of this book (in Vol. II) is
concerned with them.

Anthropocentrism and Anthropomorphism

Another conceptual pair that needs to be recognized in the context of this
study of human-animal relations, and to be distinguished, is that of
“anthropomorphism” and “anthropocentrism”. It brings into focus one
of the “us”-“them” distinctions that will be dealt with later in the book:
the Western and the San (and hunter-gatherer) perspectives on this matter.
The first, anthropocentrism, is deeply engrained in the Western mind
the intellectual and religious gatekeepers of which, Cartesian philosophy
and science and Christianity, assign a unique status to humans. This leads
to two seemingly paradoxical perspectives on animals—the one anthropo-
centric, the other anthropomorphic, expressed by the English zoologist-­
philosopher Charles Foster as “humans striding colonially around,
describing what they see from six feet above the ground, or about humans
pretending that animals wear clothing” (2016: 1). Anthropocentrists
either exclude animals altogether from any human sphere or they may
assign them to a lower ontological, moral and social stratum on the Great
4
I suggest some reasons for this elsewhere, prime of them theoretical and analytical blind-
sightedness of many San researchers by a perspective deriving from a cultural-materialist
paradigm (2017: 1–2). The Danish anthropologist Thea Skaanes, on the basis of recent field
work among the Hadza of Tanzania, found a similar bias among researchers of this iconic
African hunter-gatherer people, and, resulting from it, a lack of recognition of, and research
on, their “religious, ritual and cosmological complexity” (2017: 12).
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 9

Chain of Being. We see the latter tendency lexically exemplified in German

world view by the use of two sets of words for vital functions, human
ones—such as essen (eat), trinken (drink), gebären (give birth), sterben
(die)—and animal ones (fressen, saufen, werfen, verrecken, respectively).
Not only are these terms mutually exclusive but the latter are also employed
as insult terms by humans for members of their own kind they dislike or
look down upon. As for anthropomorphism, in its Western guise, in—if—
paying attention to animals and their behaviour, for instance “companion
animals” (i.e. pets), the Western tendency is to give these a human cast,
morphologically, mentally and behaviourally, thereby obscuring or deny-
ing animal’s autonomy, identity and integrity.
San world view, and other hunter-gatherers, does not hold so human-­
exceptionalist a view of animals. Its anthropocentrism is balanced by “the-
riocentrism”, through myth and lore that feature animal protagonists and
perspectives, and through a “becoming-animal” ability by humans in cer-
tain situations and to varying degrees of awareness. Such “zoomorphing”
also tempers San—and hunter-gatherer—anthropomorphism, as such
occasional ontological identity and species boundary dissolutions, such
experiential “becoming-animal” moments, put a check on humanizing
animals through species-solipsistic projection.

Interdisciplinarity in Khoisan Studies

As so many other works in the field of Khoisan studies (Solomon 2009,
2014), this book, too, draws on a number of disciplines other than anthro-
pology. The one most indispensable to this project is archaeology, espe-
cially the work of the many, mostly South African, archaeologists5 who
have dealt with aspects of San symbolic and expressive culture, especially
rock art. I draw, almost as much, also on the humanities, the prolific writ-
ings of folklorists, literary critics, historians, rock art specialists, art histori-
ans and art critics, as well as artists, poets and novelists, whose work is
defined and inspired by San oral literature, mythology and imagery and

5
Such as David Lewis-Williams, Janette Deacon, John Parkington, Pieter Jolly, Andy
Smith, Sam Challis, Mark McGranaghan, Sven Ouzman, Anne Solomon, Jeremy Hollmann,
Aaron Mazel, Francis Thackeray, John Kinahan, Thomas Dowson, Siyaka Mguni, Edward
and Cathelijne Eastwood, Geoff Blundell, Frans Prins, Andrew Skinner, David Witleson,
Larissa Swan, Alicia Mullen.
10 M. GUENTHER

who all have made important contributions to the field of Khoisan ­studies.6
As noted by one of these scholars, from literary criticism, the late Michael
Wessels, in an article-long interpretation of a seminal /Xam narrative—//
Kabbo’s haunting tale about a hapless member of the Early Race mistak-
ing a lion for a dog—his work on the article7 required him to “navigate
between the hermeneutics of a range of disciplines – folklore, mythogra-
phy, literary studies, anthropology, rock art studies, Khoisan studies”
(2013: 19). That such navigations can be fruitful and enriching for the
field of /Xam and Khoisan studies was evidenced in Cape Town in 2011,
at a multi-disciplinary conference convened by the South African artist
Pippa Skotnes and archaeologist Janette Deacon that celebrated the 100th
anniversary of Bleek’s and Lloyds Specimens of Bushman Folklore (Deacon
and Skotnes 2014).8
6
They are, inter alia, folklorists (Megan Biesele, Sigrid Schmidt, José Manuel De Prada-
Samper, Ansie Hoff), linguists (Roger Hewitt), literary critics (Duncan Brown, Helize van
Vuuren, Robert Thornton, Hermann Wittenberg, Michael Wessels, Elana Bregin), historians
(John Wright, Nigel Penn, Andrew Bank, Mohamed Adhikari), communication and cultural
studies researchers (Keyan Tomaselli, Mary Lange), rock art specialists (Patricia Vinnicombe,
Neil Rusch), art critics (Miklós Szalay, Nyasha Mboti, Jessica Stephenson, Leila Baracchini)
and artists (Walter Battiss, Pippa Skotnes, Mikko Ijäs), poets (Eugène Marais, Antje Krog,
Stephen Watson, Alan James) and novelists (Gideon von Wielligh, Peter J. Schoeman, Elias
Canetti, Laurens van der Post, Willemien Le Roux, David Donald). Having just recently read
the last-mentioned author’s recent novel Blood’s Mist (Donald 2009) and enjoyed it, I expand
on the same as it exemplifies the intellectual rewards of interdisciplinarity: The story, squarely
set within /Xam mythology and rock art, as well as colonial history, brings a fiction writer’s
eloquence and poignancy—along with a enlivening dose of literary licence—to descriptions of
a number of ethnographic or ethnohistorical features carefully researched and referenced and
annotated by the novelist. These factual features all add to the interest and relevance to this
work of fiction. Its relevance to this book specifically are the novel’s sections on a girl’s inner
experiences, of transition and transformation at her menarcheal rite and a shaman’s or hunt-
er’s experiences of Altered States and of tappings’ sympathy and presentiments, respectively.
An especially interesting ethnohistorical example for anthropologists is the description by the
novelist—who is also a University of Cape Town emeritus psychology professor—of the social
chemistry of invidiousness-fuelled incipient tension over inequality and autocratic leadership
of multi-band aggregations formed by dispossessed, scattered San people.
7
See also his Bushman Letters: Interpreting /Xam Narratives (2010), a hermeneutical,
literary monograph on the /Xam archive, in which Wessels engages explicitly with the soci-
ologist/linguist Roger Hewitt (pp. 121–50; see also Wessels 2009) and the anthropologist
Mathias Guenther (pp. 151–74; see also Wessels 2008).
8
Twenty years earlier, a conference on the same theme—the /Xam Archive—was con-
vened in Cape Town by the South African archaeologists Janette Deacon, John Parkington,
David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson, on a somewhat smaller scale (Deacon and
Dowson 1996). A similar multi-disciplinary /Xam-focused event was Pippa Skotnes’s influ-
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 11

What links these copious writings, from a wide range of disciplines, and
renders them complementary, is their common focus on a remarkable
archive of /Xam oral texts, collected in the 1870s by the German linguist
Wilhelm Bleek and his sister-in-law Lucy Lloyd. The Bleek/Lloyd /Xam
archive—recently included by UNESCO in its “Memory of the World”
register (UNESCO 2012: 328–31) and digitalized by Pippa Skotnes and
her co-workers at the University of Cape Town9—consists of over 12,000
pages of texts, annotated by the /Xam story tellers and their interlocutors
and partially translated. Formally, in terms of disciplinary affiliation,
housed in the humanistic disciplines of folklore, literature and linguistics
and the more or less exclusive subject matter of most of the writings of
these and related disciplines, anthropologists and archaeologists have also
drawn extensively on this sheerly inexhaustible font of textual material, in
studies on /Xam and San myth and lore, belief and ritual. And, most espe-
cially southern San rock art: in deciphering its elusive and enigmatic mean-
ing, the /Xam archive has been regarded as something of a “Rosetta
Stone” (ibid.: 331) and its many readings by archaeologists and anthro-
pologists are grounded in this archive. In the process these scholars have
also published and annotated hitherto unpublished story texts (Guenther
1989, 1996: 192–93, 179–80; Lewis-Williams 2000, 2018), a scholarly
endeavour that extended interdisciplinary cross-fertilization between these
two disciplines and the humanities.
My own “navigating” forays, in the context of this book, into both the
/Xam texts and into the humanistic literature around them, have been as
intellectually challenging as they have been rewarding. (Moreover, it has
emboldened me, in a comparative section on San and Western relational
ontology in Vol. II, to consider the treatment one or two Western novel-
ists and poets have given to metamorphosis, one of this book’s principal

ential and controversial (e.g. Butler 2000, Lyons 2018) Miscast exhibition in Cape Town in
1996 (Skotnes 1996). For a critical assessment of the theoretical impact of multi-disciplinar-
ity on Khoisan research, see Solomon (2014). Two multi-disciplinary conferences on San
(specifically /Xam) rock art and identity and Khoisan politics of representation were held in
1994 and 1996, respectively, in Johannesburg (Guenther 1995) and Cape Town (Bank
1998) and the South African Cultural Studies journal Critical Arts edited by Keyan Tomaselli
has published two multi-disciplinary special issues on San, one on their “recuperation” (by
popular media) in post-apartheid South Africa (vol. 9, no 2, 1995), the other 20 years later,
on San (self)representation (vol. 28, nos 3 and 4, 2015).
9
The digitalized archive is an open-access resource. A CD of the collection is appended to
Skotnes’s edited volume Claims to the Country (2007).
12 M. GUENTHER

concerns.) I can only hope that these forays, qua anthropologist, into lit-
erature, and literary criticism and other humanistic fields, will benefit /
Xam and San studies as much as have their forays into my disciplin-
ary domain.

Synopsis of Book
The two volumes of this book are complementary, the first being primarily
descriptive in tone and substance, the second discursive. The ethnographic
information of Vol. I is presented in anticipation of the arguments of Vol.
II, which in turn refers back to the preceding volume, grounding analysis
here in description there. Ideally, the two volumes should thus both be read.
However, each volume also to some extent stands on its own, the first
as an ethnographic monograph on San cosmology and ontology, the sec-
ond an anthropological study of ontological ambiguity or, as I refer to it
because of the inherent dynamic element of transformation, ontological
mutability. It does so in terms of what in the discipline is a standard, tried-­
and-­tested, two-pronged modus operandi for anthropological analysis.
The one mode is an in-depth study of a certain matter in one culture, the
one visited by and known to the writer on the basis of intensive and pro-
tracted ethnographic fieldwork that strives towards an understanding of
the visited people in terms of their culture. The other is comparison, in an
attempt to broaden the understanding gained on the researched matter by
the first study. In this book the latter endeavour, dealt with in Vol. II,
inherently, through its epistemological operation, refers to the San eth-
nography in Vol. I; however, in presenting new ethnographic information
on other cultures and peoples this part of the book also tells its own story.
Volume I deals with how ontological mutability is manifested, through
hybridity and transformation, via the imagination, in myth and lore, con-
veyed by storytellers as well as, more concretely and starkly, through
images produced by past and present-day San artists on rock surfaces or
canvas and paper. Also considered is how ontological mutability enters
people’s awareness not virtually, via the imagination, by means of stories
and images, but actually, through experience, in the lived world, specifi-
cally the real-life contexts of ritual, play and hunting. Each of these events
provides the principals and participants involved in them—trance dancers,
intiands, play dancers, hunters—moments at which being-change may be
experienced, either mentally (“feeling eland”) or bodily (“being eland”).
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 13

How ontological mutability is experienced, as well as the impacts of this

inherently disjunctive and potentially disorienting experience on human
and personal identity and integrity, is elaborated on in Vol. II, as that vol-
ume’s primary concern. This is examined in the context of the San and
with reference throughout to the ethnographic information presented in
the other volume, in terms of epistemological, experiential and environ-
mental parameters, through which awareness of ontological mutability is
conveyed to and through the mind and the body and through being-in-­
the-world groundedness.
After this discussion, in Vol. II, the ethnographic ground and analytical
scope shift and expand, to how other people and cultures think about,
perceive and experience ontological mutability. This is done within a
loosely comparative framework referenced to the San. It considers three
cultural contexts, each broader in scope than the next, expanding the
number and kind of factors—structural, acculturational, historical, eco-
logical ones—that impinge on how people in different cultures engage
with animals. The first is the Bantu-speaking neighbours of the San with
whom some San groups have had contact for centuries, with mutual influ-
ences on one another’s cosmologies, mythologies and ritual practices and
their human-animal aspects. The second comparative context is another
hunting society, in another, remote and ecologically radically different
part of the world (Inuit of Canada’s eastern Arctic).
The third context, the one broadest in scope and vision, is Western cos-
mology, especially its post-Cartesian, posthumanist take on the human-­
animal nexus and animals’ personhood, being and umwelt. All this is quite
new and little-charted cosmological territory for anthropocentric, species-­
solipsistic Westerners and outside their epistemological and ontological
mainstream, raising fundamental questions and issues, about species identity
and autonomy and more generally, human beings and being human. For the
San, and other hunter-gatherers, such matters lie in their intellectual and
cosmological mainstream and within well-charted terrain. Thus a study of
their view of human-animal relations—of the kind here presented—may
provide Westerners, specifically the recent researchers, cognitive ethologists
and other Western “anthrozoologists” who have jettisoned the Cartesian
perspective, with helpful clues and insights in their new and novel, intellec-
tually recalibrated take on the age-old and universal question of what is human.
The book’s conclusion, in Vol. II, discusses critically the impact of the
relational ontology paradigm on San studies and considers epistemological
and ontological implications of the San (and hunter-gatherer) perception
of the human-animal relationship for Western ideas on the same matter.
14 M. GUENTHER

Outline of Chapters
The book’s seven substantive, ethnographic chapters (2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7,
in Vol. I) are on therianthropes and transformations, two manifestations of
ontological mutability that are conceptually and phenomenologically
linked. The theoretical and analytical issues and questions they raise,
mostly of a phenomenological cast, are dealt with in the four discursive
chapters that follow, in Vol. II (Chaps. 2, 3, 4 and 5). The last chapter of
Vol. II looks at the “animistic” reading of San cosmology considered in
this book comparatively. The conclusion deals critically with the impact of
the “ontological turn” on the study of the symbolic, religious and expres-
sive domains both of the San and of hunter-gatherers generally. This raises
“further questions and issues”, a concluding chapter’s staple.
Therianthropic beings are described in their full splendour in Chap. 2
(and then again in Chap. 4, as a motif in San art). The ontological hybrid-
ity and species diversity of Myth Time’s “Early Race” is evident in the /
Xam trickster /Kaggen and his multi-species extended family or band.
Therianthropic or chimerical ontological ambiguity may be manifested
with dazzling extravagance by some members of the Early Race, or, more
commonly, in subtly elusive and mentally beguiling fashion, among them
the First Race Elephants and Ostriches. Because myth time and historical
time are not exclusive temporal and ontological domains in San mythol-
ogy and cosmology, First Order therianthropes can also appear in the
Second Order, where they may live in remote areas of the veld or hunting
ground making occasional contact with human hunters or gatherers, add-
ing grist to the San mill of stories, as well as corroboration to their
World of Myth.
Transformation, and its many forms within San cosmology, is the sub-
ject matter of the five remaining substantive chapters. The first (Chap. 3)
examines these in the context of San myth, in what some San people refer
to as the First Order of Existence (or Creation). This inchoate world’s
most ontologically volatile and slippery denizen was the trickster, in par-
ticular the !Kung’s /Xué (/Xue) who, at moments of agitation, was wont
to undergo transformation upon transformation, at staccato pace, mutat-
ing his being the way a vexed and confused chameleon changes colour.
Two other transformation-prone beings of the First Order are the rain
divinity !Khwa and the lion (whom we will meet again in the chapter on
ritual, another arena within which this myth- and symbol-laden, human
being-linked animal becomes a daunting and haunting presence).
 1 INTRODUCTION: “… SOME SUBJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION … WHICH… 15

The therianthropes of myth and their ontologically unstable, at times

dazzling transformations are motifs not only of San mythology but also of
art, the subject matter of Chap. 4. Therianthropes display ontological
ambiguity to the greatest degree—of flamboyance, profusion and diver-
sity—in San rock art, and in a fashion that in some ways is different from
how these beings appear in myths. This raises the question, much debated
by writers in the field, whether or not the were-beings on the rock panels
are in fact the First Race of Myth Time and if not (the general consensus,
more or less) what the connection between the two might be. While basi-
cally moot, as the question cannot be posed to the artists who painted
centuries in the past, it is part of the examination of the therianthrope
motif in contemporary San art, the second component of Chap. 4. This
art is examined in the context primarily of the Naro and ≠Au//ei artists
at the Kuru Art project at the village of Dekar in western Botswana, on the
basis of field work I conducted on this project in the mid-1990s. The art
of two of the artists—Dada and Qwaa, their artist’s pseudonyms—is high-
lighted as it is informed with transformation, expressing the same in dif-
ferent ways, ranging from flashy to subtle. In examining how transformations
are worked out in images by these two present-day artists, and their own
commentaries on them, the images created by (pre)historic San artists—
some of them painting in colonial times and within similar life situations
and a shared world of belief—may perhaps become somewhat more
fathomable.
Chapters 5, 6 and 7 deal with transformation as it occurs to humans in
the Second Order of Existence, in the contexts, respectively, of ritual, ludic
dancing and hunting. Chapter 5 considers humans—of both genders and
generations, men and women, girls and boys—in ritual and liminal
moments during the trance dance and initiation rite, when, who and what
they are undergoes alteration and transition and through it, different
forms and degrees transformation. Ludic dances are the topic of Chap. 6;
its central focus is on how mimicry of animals, the dances’ principal theme,
enacted at times with dramatic histrionics and complex and realistic cho-
reography, that includes animal vocalizations and the use of animal para-
phernalia that heighten the realism, may evoke ontological identity
stirrings in the dancer, akin to transformation.
Another real-time human who is touched by transformation is the
hunter, the topic of Chap. 7. In the setting of certain hunting modes, and
at certain moments of the hunt a San hunter—as pre-industrial hunters
elsewhere in the world—may engage with this prey animal in terms of
sympathy and intersubjectivity. Moreover, his use of “hunting medicines”
16 M. GUENTHER

made from animal substances that are rubbed into cuts in his skin, and the
employment of animal disguises, especially the wearing of animal skins,
too, may contribute towards a hunter’s becoming-animal sense. It is also
noted that neither all hunting contains these supererogatory elements nor
that all hunters feel sympathetically attuned to or ontologically linked with
them, caveats that compound people’s ambivalence and ambiguity about
the human–animal connection.

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———. 2015b. Text and Evidence: Negotiating San Words and Images. South
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Johannesburg: Wits Press.
———. 2012. The Khoisan Origin of the Interconnected World View in Antje
Krog’s Begging to Be Black. Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern
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———. 2013. Story of a /Xam Bushman Narrative. Journal of Literary Studies 29
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 CHAPTER 2

Therianthropes

All things (that is living creatures) were once people …

/Hanǂkasso (Bleek 1936: 164)

Xam story teller /Hanǂkasso’s statement to Lucy Lloyd is as fundamental

a postulate about human and animal ontology to San cosmology as is its
reverse, Darwinian, counterpart to Western cosmology. Its clearest expres-
sion is found in the stories San tell about myth time, the First Order of
Existence, whose denizens, for the most part, were therianthropes, that is,
animals that “were once people”. As such, these people—the Early Race—
contained in their being, their First Order human’ness and elements of
their Second Order animal’ness. Humans and animals from both myth
and historical time are thus blended ontologically, explaining why, as we
will see in the second section, we also find therianthropes, of a mythic,
Early Race cast, in the Second Order of Existence.
In-between these two tempo-ontological realms, and partaking of ele-
ments from both, is a somewhat vaguely defined spirit realm. I will briefly
describe its nature and features, before turning to the two other ontologi-
cal domains and worlds, which are more clearly delineated in San cosmol-
ogy than their spirit realm, a shreds-and-patches amalgam of indigenous
and acquired features and notions.

© The Author(s) 2020 19

M. Guenther, Human-Animal Relationships in San
and Hunter-­Gatherer Cosmology, Volume I,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21182-0_2
20 M. GUENTHER

The San Spirit Realm

In San cosmology the First Order of myth and the spirit realm are two
different, but interconnected other-worlds, the one located in the mythic
past, before the historical and contemporary Second Order that followed
from the First. The spirit realm, while preternatural in a number of ways,
is also of this world, being located somewhere beyond the hunting ground
and accessible, by different pathways, to humans, especially shamans. It
may also be situated within the sky, rather than the veld, or somewhere
in-between, in lower-sky regions, the spatial-ontological domain within
which, according to the German anthropologist of religion Bernhard
Streck, preindustrial people tend to locate spirits—“Götter in Augenhöhe”
(gods at eye-level)—thereby rendering them ontologically ambiguous
“supernatural beings whose ancestry is neither unequivocally human nor
divine”1 (2013: 2062). A San instance is the G/ui (G/wi), among whom
the divine couple N!adima’s and N!adisa’s realm is just above the visible
sky, which the G/ui hold to be a stretch of well-watered veld with an
abundance of game (Silberbauer 1965: 51–2). The Ju/’hoansi, reportedly
also locate “God’s village” in the sky, which shamans reach by climbing to
it on “God’s ropes” that hang invisibly down from the sky (Keeney and
Keeney 2015: 26–32; see also Eastwood and Eastwood 2006: 126–29).
Wherever it is located, on the earth or the sky, or both domains or in-­
between in a low-sky region close to the earth, the spirit world has its own
geography which may contain such mystical features as a special tree or tall
termite hill—which may also be the god’s dwelling—both of which San
may regard as an axis mundi access route to the sky (Wagner-Robertz
1976: 541–42; Mguni 2006: 65–7). It includes also more worldly fea-
tures, veld animals and trees, water holes and river beds, along with grass
huts, small and big ones, including a European-style, two-story house, in
which lives the trickster god with his spirit-of-the-dead servants. These
dwellings may comprise a village, or even a small town with roads and
paths, goats and bakkies (pick-up trucks), stores and schools.3 Another

1
“übernatürliche Wesen die weder eindeutig menschlicher, noch göttlicher Abstammung
sind” (my translation).
2
For an examination of spirits in such terms—as beings “who are their own kind of real”—
in the context of Amazonian shamanic cultures, see Kohn (2013: 217); also see Münzel
(2013).
3
Some of the Naro informants from whom I received these accounts of the spirit realm
were closely associated with a mission station (of the Gereformeerde Kerk, a branch of the
 2 THERIANTHROPES 21

mode of moving to and through this preternatural domain is along invis-

ible spider-webs, along which the trickster and spirits may move. A variant
of these lateral web-strings is vertical “threads” that lead upwards, to a
spirit realm located not in the veld but in the sky, the region of the Second
Order within which some San situate the spirit domain. The inhabitants of
the preternatural spirit world consist of a number of enigmatic god-figures
that may or may not be the same spirit beings even though bearing a diver-
sity of other names. The other species of spirit being are the spirits of the
dead, along with ghosts, their initial incarnation, who may be encountered
hovering near grave sites (Thurner 1983; Marshall 1999: 5–27; Guenther
1999: 61–4; Bennum 2004: 250–6, 272).
Ontologically, these preternatural beings are ambiguous. They are
“souls or spirits … that have left humans whose bodies have died” to
Namibian Damara, a black people with Khoisan linguistic and cultural
affinities, amongst whom, as reported by Sian Sullivan, there appears to be
a more developed notion of spirit and of a spirit domain than the San,
their cultural cousins. As such, spirits, in Damara supernaturalism,

have ontological reality in the present: they are not simply people who lived
in the past … that require worship or regular social or ceremonial com-
memoration … [but] are understood more as specific entities that, through
pragmatic relationship practices, are greeted and called upon to intervene …
in the present, so as to influence outcomes. (Hannis and Sullivan 2018: 289)

This affords agency to Damara spirits. And as such—“agency-enacting

entities with ontological reality” (ibid.: 21)—they constitute another non-­
human being with whom Khoisan people share their world, along with the
animals who, among the Damara, may also be affected by spirits as these

South African Dutch Reformed Church) and their notions of the spirit world and its features
were influenced by their exposure, through an active evangelist-missionary, to Christian
notions, resulting in a syncretistic amalgam of features of the spirit realm that included the
Garden of Eden, “Addam” and “Effa”, “Jessu Kriste”, the Tower of “Babbel” and a hell-fire
in a dark, remote region of the Kalahari veld around which skulk shivering, cowering the
spirit avatars of “bad people” munching on flies. I have described these notions in some detail
elsewhere (Guenther 1989: 41–50; 1997: 203–11; 1999: 117–18). For a less acculturated
depiction of the domain of the gods and spirits of the dead (among Ju/’hoansi), see Marshall
(1999: 5–27); also see Thurner (1983: 304–5). For an account of the San spirit world that
focuses on the aspect of termite hills—as God’s house in the spirit world and “symbolic
wombs” of fat and spiritual potency within San cosmology, see Mguni (2006: 65, 2015).
22 M. GUENTHER

may direct their human-elicited interventionist agency towards animals

(especially lions).
A pan-Khoisan mythic-spirit being which is found in both the spirit
world and the mythic world is the trickster. A protagonist and culture hero
in the latter domain and a divinity—Keeper of Medicines and Spirit Keeper
of Animals—in the former, we find him in each of these two netherworlds.
Myths and stories tell of his roaming through myth time as well as today’s
veld and farms, and shamans seek him out, either in his spirit place or
whenever he contacts them (as well as initiands) within their ritual and
liminal space around the dance fire (or menarcheal hut). The domain, as
we will see presently, within which the trickster is most prominent and
most fully profiled is in the First Order of Existence, the World of Myth,
the inchoate nature of which he, and his many other First Race fellows,
recapitulate in their being.

The First Order and the Early Race

The dead and the living, men, beasts and gods, and rivers and sun, and
moon, dance through the regions of myths in a burlesque ballet of Priapus,
where everything may be anything, where nature has no laws and imagina-
tion no limit. (Lang 1901: 17)
No certain form on any was imprest;
All were confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest,
For hot and cold were in one body fixt,
And soft and hard and light and heavy mixt. (Ovid 1815: 23)

While the first passage by Andrew Lang refers primarily to Greek mythol-
ogy, this Victorian “Old Animist” (cum “Primal Monotheist”) also refer-
ences the Bushmen—specifically the /Xam—in his characterization of the
“regions of myth”.4 Lang’s depiction of the Myth World of the Ancient

4
As “a professional man of letters with primarily literary interests [who] was widely read in
folklore and related fields of anthropology” (Lowie 1948: 119), Lang had read all the then
available literature on Khoisan folklore, consisting of Bleek (1864, 1875) and Orpen (1874),
the former a summary of hitherto collected /Xam folklore texts, the latter a short article on
folklore texts from one Maluti /Xam informant. Lang drew on this recent ethnographic
information in his two-volume magnum opus Myth, Ritual and Religion (1887, 1901) in his
own discussion of “primitive religion”, including animism. Wilhelm Bleek’s characterization
of “the Bushman mind” as holding “an especially fertile genius for myth formulation”
 2 THERIANTHROPES 23

Greeks captures the flavour also of the San’s First Order, with the excep-
tion, perhaps, that in the /Xam—though not the Ju/’hoan or Nharo—
instance Priapus’ burlesque ballet was more restrained.5 I will return to
Lang—and his contemporary and compatriot Tylor—again briefly in Vol.
II (conclusion), which will note the difference between the New Animism
and the Old, into whose discourse Lang brought elements of San
myth and lore.
I have described First Order, or Myth Time, and its inhabitants, the
Early Race, in some detail elsewhere (Guenther 1999: 66–80), as a Primal
Time and Place of inchoateness, ambiguity and indeterminacy, inhabited
by beings who led ontologically, culturally and socially unstable existences.
Having recently re-read Ovid’s Metamorphoses (in preparation for the
present project), I was struck how the poet’s depiction in Book the First
of the Graeco-Roman version of Primal Time resonates with that of the
San. San Creation Time had the same central characteristic, of pervasive
and ceaseless ontological flux, with amorphous states and forms, “all
confus’d, and each disturb’d the rest.” Its effect on Creation Time’s beings
was that “every creature ended up being changed into all possible forms,
including the form of each creature because they were all changing
equally,” as some Ju/’hoan elders put it to Bradford and Hillary Keeney.
“It was a world,” the San informants continued, dwelling further on the
point about flux, “with nothing but changing forms. It was always chang-
ing.” (Keeney and Keeney 2015: 61).
I will return in the next chapter to the element of transformation that
pervades the states and beings of the First Order of Existence and created
many of the therianthropic members of the Early Race (as well as their
descendants in the Second Order). They consisted of, on the one hand,

(1874: 11) resonates with Lang’s postulate of a “universality of the mythopoeic mental con-
dition” (1901: 16) and peaked his interest in the then available literature on Bushman ora-
ture. Regarding animism, Lang engaged critically with Tylor’s take on this pivotal concept
(belief in souls), agreeing to disagree, in conciliatory debate, with “my friend Mr. E. B.
Tylor” (1901: 17). With Tylor he shared the more general notion of “animation of nature”,
which Lang, again, saw manifested especially fulsomely in Bushman mythology. This to him
was an exemplar of “the savage condition of the mind … in which all things, animate or
inanimate, human, animal, vegetable or inorganic, seem on the same level of life, passion and
reason” (ibid.: 39).
5
The /Xam storytellers’ restraint here may have been in deference to the Prussian and
Victorian sense of propriety of their interlocutors, one a theologian’s son, the other a rector’s
daughter (Guenther 1996: 90–91; Wittenberg 2012). This editorial intervention was evi-
dently continued by Bleek’s daughter Dorothea (Bennum 2004: 336).
24 M. GUENTHER

humans and regular animals, both of them rather obscure and secondary
beings of Myth Time and low-profile characters in the stories who make
cameo appearances. In addition to such ontologically “regular” animals,
actual, real plants, too, were found in the First Order, as the Early Race,
just like the San today, hunted and gathered. Trees, too, could be just that,
“just trees”; others could be transformed humans.
Yet, for all their apparent and most often also evident ontological dis-
creteness, like all the other “living creatures” of the First Order its human
and animal members, too, were ontologically ambiguous. This ambiguity
lays a scale from “mere” animals and full humans to “were” animals and
partial humans, the former scale the least, the latter the most ambiguous.
The latter two were therianthropes, the principal denizens of the mythic
First Order of Existence, who blended ontologically with Myth Time’s
regular humans and animals (such as they were).
That the humans and animals of the First Order were ontologically
unstable, and their human and animalian attributes were at odds with each
other, is evident from a number of /Xam tales to be examined below and
in the next chapter, as well as in a ≠Khomani tale that L. F. Maingard col-
lected in the 1930s in the context of linguistic research he conducted
amongst these Khoisan people (1937).6 The story features a “wolf” (i.e.
hyena) and a springbok doe whom wolf is courting, with much ardour and
persistence. His wooing discourse, directed to—and rebuffed by—the
reluctant doe, is replete with ontological ambiguity and ambivalence. This
is the bone of contention in their intense exchange, fuelling both the
wolf’s ardour and the doe’s reluctance. The latter—who is herself ambigu-
ous, referring to herself as human, as “a woman”, albeit one with “hairs”,
but referred to by the wolf as “springbok doe”—is wary of the wolf’s
entreaties and of his repeated avowals as to his humanness:

I feel I am a man, I do. I feel I am a man. I can speak to you, I can. My heart,
I speak to you, you springbok doe. (McCall 1970: 2)

Her wariness unrelenting, she persists in rejecting him:

6
Daniel McCall built his much-cited pioneer study on “the equivalence of hunting and
mating in Bushman thought” around this symbolically pregnant ≠Khomani story (1970:
1–2).
 2 THERIANTHROPES 25

“No, I cannot marry a wolf … this shall not happen … I shall not say yes,
definitely, I shall not, I the springbok doe. Indeed, I refuse … I the spring-
bok doe can have nothing to do with you.”

Until he exclaims, frustrated and defeated:

“You reject me definitely. It cannot be so, it cannot be so. I am a man and I

shall run before you. You say how can I be a man? Listen, I am a man, a
complete man. I shall find you out and chase you. I shall run and fetch you.
I shall fetch you, yes, I shall fetch you. I shall do so. I the Wolf, for I am a
wolf more than a man. I call out to you: ‘Turn back!’”

His animalian identity comes to the fore at the end of the tale, in an ani-
malian being whose ontological constitution is not fixed and who, when
everything is said and done, turns out to be “a wolf more than a man”,
notwithstanding his attestations two sentences prior, to being “a man, a
complete man”.
The First Order humans—“an earlier race of people who preceded the
Bushmen in their country” (Bleek 1875: 14)—were vaguely sketched
humans who, while ontologically fluid and prone to social mingling with
therianthropes through intermarriage and out-adoption, were somewhat
more stable in their ontological make-up than were the therianthropes.
They were less so as social beings, however, afflicted as they were with
moral turpitude, bordering at times on monstrosity (as we will see in
Chap. 7) and with limited intellectual capacity evidenced, for example, by
a First Order man who, nagged by his wife, cut off his ears to get a smooth
pate, in an attempt to assuage his spouse for whom her husband’s baldness
was the issue of contention. First Order humans had a chronic propensity
for foolishness, such as a man mistaking a young lion for a dog and raising
the latter as a hunting dog, only to be eaten by the “dog” when out on a
hunt (Lewis-Williams 2000: 192–204; Wessels 2013). Another propensity
was and for moral transgression, that could lead to First Order humans
being transformed into frogs or other animals (along with their posses-
sions that reverted back to their natural state), the punishment meted out
to girls for menarcheal infractions and hunters for killing a “rain animal”
(Hewitt 1986: 75–88). The animals hunted, killed and eaten by the Early
Race of humans (as of and therianthropes) were the First Order’s regular
animals, for instance the veld’s and mountains’ quaggas, hunted for meat
by long-nosed and striped mice-Early Race people (Lewis-Williams
2015a: 134–6).
26 M. GUENTHER

For the most part: the Early Race—the therianthropes—sometimes also

hunted, killed, butchered and ate one another, as though the animal com-
ponent in a First Race were-being took over its being, leading its fellows,
even members of their own extended family, to view him or her as animal,
prey and meat. A case in point is the pan-Khoisan myth-motif of the
antelope-­wife that appears in many versions and variants7 (McCall 1970;
Schmidt 2013a: 128–32). Having been married and moved to her hus-
band’s people’s place, the latter come to change their perception of their
newly acquired sister-in-law (who, in the context of the most frequent
version of the tale, is a Quagga girl, married to a Jackal). This starts when
one of them comes to the ever more nagging, inescapable realization that
their newly wed “Young-He-Dog” brother or son has “married meat”.
Having convinced the initially incredulous and reluctant husband of this
fact, he realizes that what his Jackal kinfolk tell him is true and joins them
in killing and eating the animal-wife (Guenther 1989: 94–5, 98–100,
1999: 69–70, 75, 153; Biesele 1993: 2, 197). (We see from this story and
its recurrent trope that the wooed springbok doe’s wariness in the above-­
featured ≠Khomani tale was not unwarranted.)
Indeed, an Early Race hunter may actually butcher himself to roast his
own meat and gorge himself on it out in the veld or to feed his family back
at his home camp (Schmidt 1995: 89–91, 213–5, 2013a: 48–51, 128–32;
Biesele 1993: 171–3; Guenther 2015: 283). Such an act of “autovenery”
and “autophagy” can be seen as the radical, solipsistic culmination of
“endoanthropophagy”—“eating not just other people but your own”—
which Thea Skaanes finds in Hadza cosmology and extends metaphori-
cally to their eating of eland flesh (2017: 193–5). It attests dramatically to
the ontological ambiguity of the First Race. They were not only both
human and animal, but also both hunter and prey and eaters and eaten, of
meat that was simultaneously their own flesh and that of a game animal
(Guenther 2015: 306–7).
It was such hybrid beings as these, beings, “confus’d and disturb’d”,
morally muddled and ontologically conflated, who were the centre-fold
exemplars of the First Race. They are the salient protagonists and
­antagonists of San myth and lore, none more so than the myth- and real
time-­shuttling trickster.

7
In 1995, I obtained an especially vivid and expansive Naro version from D’Kar’s best
story teller, Qhomatcã. The tale is presented and discussed in Vol. II (Chap. 3).
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 —Sortez, sortez, sortez, sortez tous! cria la Marana en sautant
avec l’agilité d’une tigresse sur le poignard qu’elle arracha des mains
de Perez étonné.
—Sortez, Perez, reprit-elle avec tranquillité, sortez, vous, votre
femme, votre servante et votre apprenti. Il va y avoir un meurtre ici.
Vous pourriez être fusillés tous par les Français. N’y soyez pour rien,
cela me regarde seule. Entre ma fille et moi, il ne doit y avoir que
Dieu. Quant à l’homme, il m’appartient. La terre entière ne
l’arracherait pas de mes mains. Allez, allez donc, je vous pardonne.
Je le vois, cette fille est une Marana. Vous, votre religion, votre
honneur, étiez trop faibles pour lutter contre mon sang.
Elle poussa un soupir affreux et leur montra des yeux secs. Elle
avait tout perdu et savait souffrir, elle était courtisane. La porte
s’ouvrit. La Marana oublia tout, et Perez, faisant signe à sa femme,
put rester à son poste. En vieil Espagnol intraitable sur l’honneur, il
voulait aider à la vengeance de la mère trahie. Juana, doucement
éclairée, blanchement vêtue, se montra calme au milieu de sa
chambre.
—Que me voulez-vous? dit-elle.
La Marana ne put réprimer un léger frisson.
—Perez, demanda-t-elle, ce cabinet a-t-il une autre issue?
Perez fit un geste négatif; et, confiante en ce geste, la courtisane
s’avança dans la chambre.
—Juana, je suis votre mère, votre juge, et vous vous êtes mise
dans la seule situation où je pusse me découvrir à vous. Vous êtes
venue à moi, vous que je voulais au ciel. Ah! vous êtes tombée bien
bas. Il y a chez vous un amant.
—Madame, il ne doit et ne peut s’y trouver que mon époux,
répondit-elle. Je suis la marquise de Montefiore.
—Il y en a donc deux? dit le vieux Perez de sa voix grave. Il m’a
dit être marié.
—Montefiore, mon amour! cria la jeune fille en déchirant les
rideaux et montrant l’officier, viens, ces gens te calomnient.
 L’Italien se montra pâle et blême, il voyait un poignard dans la
main de la Marana, et connaissait la Marana.
Aussi, d’un bond, s’élança-t-il hors de la chambre, en criant d’une
voix tonnante:—Au secours! au secours! l’on assassine un Français.
Soldats du 6e de ligne, courez chercher le capitaine Diard! Au
secours!
Perez avait étreint le marquis, et allait de sa large main lui faire
un bâillon naturel, lorsque la courtisane, l’arrêtant, lui dit:—Tenez-le
bien, mais laissez-le crier. Ouvrez les portes, laissez-les ouvertes, et
sortez tous, je vous le répète.—Quant à toi, reprit-elle en s’adressant
à Montefiore, crie, appelle au secours... Quand les pas de tes
soldats se feront entendre, tu auras cette lame dans le cœur.—Es-tu
marié? Réponds.
Montefiore, tombé sur le seuil de la porte, à deux pas de Juana,
n’entendait plus, ne voyait plus rien, si ce n’est la lame du poignard,
dont les rayons luisants l’aveuglaient.
—Il m’aurait donc trompée, dit lentement Juana. Il s’est dit libre.
—Il m’a dit être marié, reprit Perez de sa voix grave.
—Sainte Vierge! s’écria dona Lagounia.
—Répondras-tu donc, âme de boue? dit la Marana à voix basse
en se penchant à l’oreille du marquis.
—Votre fille, dit Montefiore.
—La fille que j’avais est morte ou va mourir, répliqua la Marana.
Je n’ai plus de fille. Ne prononce plus ce mot. Réponds, es-tu marié?
—Non, madame, dit enfin Montefiore, voulant gagner du temps.
Je veux épouser votre fille.
—Mon noble Montefiore! dit Juana respirant.
—Alors pourquoi fuir et appeler au secours? demanda
l’Espagnol.
Terrible lueur!
 Juana ne dit rien, mais elle se tordit les mains et alla s’asseoir
dans son fauteuil. En cet instant, il se fit au dehors un tumulte assez
facile à distinguer par le profond silence qui régnait au parloir. Un
soldat du 6e de ligne, passant par hasard dans la rue au moment où
Montefiore criait au secours, était allé prévenir Diard. Le quartier-
maître, qui heureusement rentrait chez lui, vint, accompagné de
quelques amis.
—Pourquoi fuir, reprit Montefiore en entendant la voix de son
ami, parce que je vous disais vrai. Diard! Diard! cria-t-il d’une voix
perçante.
Mais, sur un mot de son maître, qui voulait que tout chez lui fût
du meurtre, l’apprenti ferma la porte, et les soldats furent obligés de
l’enfoncer. Avant qu’ils n’entrassent, la Marana put donc donner au
coupable un coup de poignard; mais sa colère concentrée l’empêcha
de bien ajuster, et la lame glissa sur l’épaulette de Montefiore.
Néanmoins, elle y mit tant de force, que l’Italien alla tomber aux
pieds de Juana, qui ne s’en aperçut pas. La Marana sauta sur lui;
puis, cette fois, pour ne pas le manquer, elle le prit à la gorge, le
maintint avec un bras de fer, et le visa au cœur.
—Je suis libre et j’épouse! je le jure par Dieu, par ma mère, par
tout ce qu’il y a de plus sacré au monde; je suis garçon, j’épouse,
ma parole d’honneur!
Et il mordait le bras de la courtisane.
—Allez! ma mère, dit Juana, tuez-le. Il est trop lâche, je n’en
veux pas pour époux, fût-il dix fois plus beau.
—Ah! je retrouve ma fille, cria la mère.
—Que se passe-t-il donc ici? demanda le quartier-maître
survenant.
—Il y a, s’écria Montefiore, que l’on m’assassine au nom de cette
fille, qui prétend que je suis son amant, qui m’a entraîné dans un
piége, et que l’on veut me forcer d’épouser contre mon gré...
—Tu n’en veux pas, s’écria Diard, frappé de la beauté sublime
que l’indignation, le mépris et la haine prêtaient à Juana, déjà si
belle; tu es bien difficile! s’il lui faut un mari, me voilà. Rengaînez vos
poignards.
La Marana prit l’Italien, le releva, l’attira près du lit de sa fille, et
lui dit à l’oreille:—Si je t’épargne, rends-en grâce à ton dernier mot.
Mais, souviens-t’en! Si ta langue flétrit jamais ma fille, nous nous
reverrons.—De quoi peut se composer la dot? demanda-t-elle à
Perez.
—Elle a deux cent mille piastres fortes...
—Ce ne sera pas tout, monsieur, dit la courtisane à Diard. Qui
êtes-vous?—Vous pouvez sortir, reprit-elle en se tournant vers
Montefiore.
En entendant parler de deux cent mille piastres fortes, le marquis
s’avança disant:—Je suis bien réellement libre...
Un regard de Juana lui ôta la parole.—Vous êtes bien réellement
libre de sortir, lui dit-elle.
Et l’Italien sortit.
—Hélas! monsieur, reprit la jeune fille en s’adressant à Diard, je
vous remercie avec admiration. Mon époux est au ciel, ce sera
Jésus-Christ. Demain j’entrerai au couvent de...
—Juana, ma Juana, tais-toi! cria la mère en la serrant dans ses
bras. Puis elle lui dit à l’oreille:—Il te faut un autre époux.
Juana pâlit.
—Qui êtes-vous, monsieur? répéta-t-elle en regardant le
Provençal.
—Je ne suis encore, dit-il, que le quartier-maître du 6e de ligne.
Mais, pour une telle femme, on se sent le cœur de devenir maréchal
de France. Je me nomme Pierre-François Diard. Mon père était
prévôt des marchands; je ne suis donc pas un...
—Eh! vous êtes honnête homme, n’est-ce pas? s’écria la
Marana. Si vous plaisez à la signora Juana de Mancini, vous pouvez
être heureux l’un et l’autre.
 —Juana, reprit-elle d’un ton grave, en devenant la femme d’un
brave et digne homme, songe que tu seras mère. J’ai juré que tu
pourrais embrasser au front tes enfants sans rougir... (là, sa voix
s’altéra légèrement). J’ai juré que tu serais une femme vertueuse.
Attends-toi donc, dans cette vie, à bien des peines; mais, quoi qu’il
arrive, reste pure, et sois en tout fidèle à ton mari; sacrifie-lui tout, il
sera le père de tes enfants... Un père à tes enfants!... Va! entre un
amant et toi, tu rencontreras toujours ta mère; je la serai dans les
dangers seulement... Vois-tu le poignard de Perez... Il est dans ta
dot, dit-elle en prenant l’arme et la jetant sur le lit de Juana, je l’y
laisse comme une garantie de ton honneur, tant que j’aurai les yeux
ouverts et les bras libres.—Adieu, dit-elle en retenant ses pleurs,
fasse le ciel que nous ne nous revoyions jamais.
A cette idée, ses larmes coulèrent en abondance.
—Pauvre enfant! tu as été bien heureuse dans cette cellule, plus
que tu ne le crois!—Faites qu’elle ne la regrette jamais, dit-elle en
regardant son futur gendre.
Ce récit purement introductif n’est point le sujet principal de cette
Étude, pour l’intelligence de laquelle il était nécessaire d’expliquer,
avant toutes choses, comment il se fit que le capitaine Diard épousa
Juana de Mancini; comment Montefiore et Diard se connurent, et de
faire comprendre quel cœur, quel sang, quelles passions animaient
madame Diard.
Lorsque le quartier-maître eut rempli les longues et lentes
formalités sans lesquelles il n’est pas permis à un militaire français
de se marier, il était devenu passionnément amoureux de Juana de
Mancini. Juana de Mancini avait eu le temps de réfléchir à sa
destinée. Destinée affreuse! Juana, qui n’avait pour Diard ni estime,
ni amour, se trouvait néanmoins liée à lui par une parole, imprudente
sans doute, mais nécessaire. Le Provençal n’était ni beau, ni bien
fait. Ses manières dépourvues de distinction se ressentaient
également du mauvais ton de l’armée, des mœurs de sa province et
d’une incomplète éducation. Pouvait-elle donc aimer Diard, cette
jeune fille toute grâce et toute élégance, mue par un invincible
instinct de luxe et de bon goût, et que sa nature entraînait d’ailleurs
vers la sphère des hautes classes sociales? Quant à l’estime, elle
refusait même ce sentiment à Diard, précisément parce que Diard
l’épousait. Cette répulsion était toute naturelle. La femme est une
sainte et belle créature, mais presque toujours incomprise; et
presque toujours mal jugée, parce qu’elle est incomprise. Si Juana
eût aimé Diard, elle l’eût estimé. L’amour crée dans la femme une
femme nouvelle; celle de la veille n’existe plus le lendemain. En
revêtant la robe nuptiale d’une passion où il y va de toute la vie, une
femme la revêt pure et blanche. Renaissant vertueuse et pudique, il
n’y a plus de passé pour elle; elle est tout avenir et doit tout oublier,
pour tout réapprendre. En ce sens, le vers assez célèbre qu’un
poëte moderne a mis aux lèvres de Marion Delorme était trempé
dans le vrai, vers tout cornélien d’ailleurs.
Et l’amour m’a refait une virginité.

Ce vers ne semblait-il pas une réminiscence de quelque tragédie

de Corneille, tant y revivait la facture substantivement énergique du
père de notre théâtre? Et cependant le poëte a été forcé d’en faire le
sacrifice au génie essentiellement vaudevilliste du parterre.
Donc Juana, sans amour, restait la Juana trompée, humiliée,
dégradée. Juana ne pouvait pas honorer l’homme qui l’acceptait
ainsi. Elle sentait, dans toute la consciencieuse pureté du jeune âge,
cette distinction, subtile en apparence, mais d’une vérité sacrée,
légale selon le cœur, et que les femmes appliquent instinctivement
dans tous leurs sentiments, même les plus irréfléchis. Juana devint
profondément triste en découvrant l’étendue de la vie. Elle tourna
souvent ses yeux pleins de larmes, fièrement réprimées, et sur
Perez et sur dona Lagounia, qui, tous deux, comprenaient les
amères pensées contenues dans ces larmes; mais ils se taisaient. A
quoi bon les reproches? Pourquoi des consolations? Plus vives elles
sont, plus elles élargissent le malheur.
Un soir, Juana, stupide de douleur, entendit, à travers la portière
de sa cellule, que les deux époux croyaient fermée, une plainte
échappée à sa mère adoptive.
—La pauvre enfant mourra de chagrin.
 —Oui, répliqua Perez d’une voix émue. Mais que pouvons-nous?
Irais-je maintenant vanter la chaste beauté de ma pupille au comte
d’Arcos, à qui j’espérais la marier?
—Une faute n’est pas le vice, dit la vieille femme, indulgente
autant que pouvait l’être un ange.
—Sa mère l’a donnée, reprit Perez.
—En un moment, et sans la consulter, s’écria dona Lagounia.
—Elle a bien su ce qu’elle faisait.
—En quelles mains ira notre perle!
—N’ajoute pas un mot, ou je cherche querelle à ce... Diard. Et,
ce serait un autre malheur.
En entendant ces terribles paroles, Juana comprit alors le
bonheur dont le cours avait été troublé par sa faute. Les heures
pures et candides de sa douce retraite auraient donc été
récompensées par cette éclatante et splendide existence dont elle
avait si souvent rêvé les délices, rêves qui avaient causé sa ruine.
Tomber du haut de la Grandesse à monsieur Diard! Juana pleura,
Juana devint presque folle. Elle flotta pendant quelques instants
entre le vice et la religion. Le vice était un prompt dénoûment; la
religion, une vie entière de souffrances. La méditation fut orageuse
et solennelle. Le lendemain était un jour fatal, celui du mariage.
Juana pouvait encore rester Juana. Libre, elle savait jusqu’où irait
son malheur; mariée, elle ignorait jusqu’où il devait aller. La religion
triompha. Dona Lagounia vint près de sa fille prier et veiller aussi
pieusement qu’elle eût prié, veillé près d’une mourante.
—Dieu le veut, dit-elle à Juana.
La nature donne alternativement à la femme une force
particulière qui l’aide à souffrir, et une faiblesse qui lui conseille la
résignation. Juana se résigna sans arrière-pensée. Elle voulut obéir
au vœu de sa mère et traverser le désert de la vie pour arriver au
ciel, tout en sachant qu’elle ne trouverait point de fleurs dans son
pénible voyage. Elle épousa Diard. Quant au quartier-maître, s’il ne
trouvait pas grâce devant Juana, qui ne l’aurait absous? il aimait
avec ivresse. La Marana, si naturellement habile à pressentir
l’amour, avait reconnu en lui l’accent de la passion, et deviné le
caractère brusque, les mouvements généreux, particuliers aux
méridionaux. Dans le paroxysme de sa grande colère, elle n’avait
aperçu que les belles qualités de Diard, et crut en voir assez pour
que le bonheur de sa fille fût à jamais assuré.
Les premiers jours de ce mariage furent heureux en apparence;
ou, pour exprimer l’un de ces faits latents dont toutes les misères
sont ensevelies par les femmes au fond de leur âme, Juana ne
voulut point détrôner la joie de son mari. Double rôle, épouvantable
à jouer, et que jouent, tôt ou tard, la plupart des femmes mal
mariées. De cette vie, un homme n’en peut raconter que les faits, les
cœurs féminins seuls en devineront les sentiments. N’est-ce pas une
histoire impossible à retracer dans toute sa vérité? Juana, luttant à
toute heure contre sa nature à la fois espagnole et italienne, ayant
tari la source de ses larmes à pleurer en secret, était une de ces
créations typiques, destinées à représenter le malheur féminin dans
sa plus vaste expression: douleur incessamment active, et dont la
peinture exigerait des observations si minutieuses que, pour les
gens avides d’émotions dramatiques, elle deviendrait insipide. Cette
analyse, où chaque épouse devrait retrouver quelques-unes de ses
propres souffrances, pour les comprendre toutes, ne serait-elle pas
un livre entier? Livre ingrat de sa nature, et dont le mérite
consisterait en teintes fines, en nuances délicates que les critiques
trouveraient molles et diffuses. D’ailleurs, qui pourrait aborder, sans
porter un autre cœur en son cœur, ces touchantes et profondes
élégies que certaines femmes emportent dans la tombe: mélancolies
incomprises, même de ceux qui les excitent; soupirs inexaucés,
dévouements sans récompenses, terrestres du moins; magnifiques
silences méconnus; vengeances dédaignées; générosités
perpétuelles et perdues; plaisirs souhaités et trahis; charités d’ange
accomplies mystérieusement; enfin toutes ses religions et son
inextinguible amour? Juana connut cette vie, et le sort ne lui fit grâce
de rien. Elle fut toute la femme, mais la femme malheureuse et
souffrante, la femme sans cesse offensée et pardonnant toujours, la
femme pure comme un diamant sans tache; elle qui, de ce diamant,
avait la beauté, l’éclat; et, dans cette beauté, dans cet éclat, une
vengeance toute prête. Elle n’était certes pas fille à redouter le
poignard ajouté à sa dot.
Cependant, animé par un amour vrai, par une de ces passions
qui changent momentanément les plus détestables caractères et
mettent en lumière tout ce qu’il y a de beau dans une âme, Diard sut
d’abord se comporter en homme d’honneur. Il força Montefiore à
quitter le régiment, et même le corps d’armée, afin que sa femme ne
le rencontrât point pendant le peu de temps qu’il comptait rester en
Espagne. Puis, le quartier-maître demanda son changement, et
réussit à passer dans la garde impériale. Il voulait à tout prix acquérir
un titre, des honneurs et une considération en rapport avec sa
grande fortune. Dans cette pensée, il se montra courageux à l’un de
nos plus sanglants combats en Allemagne; mais il y fut trop
dangereusement blessé pour rester au service. Menacé de perdre
une jambe, il eut sa retraite, sans le titre de baron, sans les
récompenses qu’il avait désiré gagner, et qu’il aurait peut-être
obtenues, s’il n’eût pas été Diard. Cet événement, sa blessure, ses
espérances trahies, contribuèrent à changer son caractère. Son
énergie provençale, exaltée pendant un moment, tomba soudain.
Néanmoins, il fut d’abord soutenu par sa femme, à laquelle ces
efforts, ce courage, cette ambition, donnèrent quelque croyance en
son mari, et qui, plus que toute autre, devait se montrer ce que sont
les femmes, consolantes et tendres dans les peines de la vie. Animé
par quelques paroles de Juana, le chef de bataillon en retraite vint à
Paris, et résolut de conquérir, dans la carrière administrative, une
haute position qui commandât le respect, fît oublier le quartier-maître
du 6e de ligne, et dotât un jour madame Diard de quelque beau titre.
Sa passion pour cette séduisante créature l’aidait à en deviner les
vœux secrets. Juana se taisait, mais il la comprenait; il n’en était pas
aimé comme un amant rêve de l’être; il le savait, et voulait se faire
estimer, aimer, chérir. Il pressentait le bonheur, ce malheureux
homme, en trouvant en toute occasion sa femme et douce et
patiente; mais cette douceur, cette patience, trahissaient la
résignation à laquelle il devait Juana. La résignation, la religion,
était-ce l’amour? Souvent Diard eût souhaité des refus, là où il
rencontrait une chaste obéissance; souvent, il aurait donné sa vie
éternelle pour que Juana daignât pleurer sur son sein et ne déguisât
pas ses pensées sous une riante figure qui mentait noblement.
Beaucoup d’hommes jeunes, car, à un certain âge, nous ne luttons
plus, veulent triompher d’une destinée mauvaise dont les nuages
grondent, de temps à autre, à l’horizon de leur vie; et au moment où
ils roulent dans les abîmes du malheur, il faut leur savoir gré de ces
combats ignorés.
Comme beaucoup de gens, Diard essaya de tout, et tout lui fut
hostile. Sa fortune lui permit d’d’entourer sa femme des jouissances
du luxe parisien, elle eut un grand hôtel, de grands salons, et tint
une de ces grandes maisons où abondent et les artistes, peu
jugeurs de leur nature, et quelques intrigants qui font nombre, et les
gens disposés à s’amuser partout, et certains hommes à la mode,
tous amoureux de Juana. Ceux qui se mettent en évidence à Paris
doivent ou dompter Paris ou subir Paris. Diard n’avait pas un
caractère assez fort, assez compacte, assez persistant pour
commander au monde de cette époque, parce que, à cette époque,
chacun voulait s’élever. Les classifications sociales toutes faites sont
peut-être un grand bien, même pour le peuple. Napoléon nous a
confié les peines qu’il se donna pour imposer le respect à sa cour,
où la plupart de ses sujets avaient été ses égaux. Mais Napoléon
était Corse, et Diard Provençal. A génie égal, un insulaire sera
toujours plus complet que ne l’est l’homme de la terre ferme, et sous
la même latitude, le bras de mer qui sépare la Corse de la Provence
est, en dépit de la science humaine, un océan tout entier qui en fait
deux patries.
De sa position fausse, qu’il faussa encore, dérivèrent pour Diard
de grands malheurs. Peut-être y a-t-il des enseignements utiles dans
la filiation imperceptible des faits qui engendrèrent le dénoûment de
cette histoire. D’abord, les railleurs de Paris ne voyaient pas, sans
un malin sourire, les tableaux avec lesquels l’ancien quartier-maître
décora son hôtel. Les chefs-d’œuvre achetés la veille furent
enveloppés dans le reproche muet que chacun adressait à ceux qui
avaient été pris en Espagne, et ce reproche était la vengeance des
amours-propres que la fortune de Diard offensait. Juana comprit
quelques-uns de ces mots à double sens auxquels le Français
excelle. Alors, par son conseil, son mari renvoya les tableaux à
Tarragone. Mais le public, décidé à mal prendre les choses, dit:—Ce
Diard est fin, il a vendu ses tableaux. De bonnes gens continuèrent à
croire que les toiles qui restèrent dans ses salons n’étaient pas
loyalement acquises. Quelques femmes jalouses demandaient
comment un Diard avait pu épouser une jeune fille et si riche et si
belle. De là, des commentaires, des railleries sans fin, comme on
sait les faire à Paris. Cependant Juana rencontrait partout un respect
commandé par sa vie pure et religieuse qui triomphait de tout, même
des calomnies parisiennes; mais ce respect s’arrêtait à elle, et
manquait à son mari. Sa perspicacité féminine et son regard brillant,
en planant dans ses salons, ne lui apportaient que des douleurs.
Cette mésestime était encore une chose toute naturelle. Les
militaires, malgré les vertus que l’imagination leur accorde, ne
pardonnèrent pas à l’ancien quartier-maître du 6e de ligne,
précisément parce qu’il était riche et voulait faire figure à Paris. Or, à
Paris, de la dernière maison du faubourg Saint-Germain au dernier
hôtel de la rue Saint-Lazare, entre la butte du Luxembourg et celle
de Montmartre, tout ce qui s’habille et babille, s’habille pour sortir et
sort pour babiller, tout ce monde de petits et de grands airs, ce
monde vêtu d’impertinence et doublé d’humbles désirs, d’envie et de
courtisanerie, tout ce qui est doré et dédoré, jeune et vieux, noble
d’hier ou noble du quatrième siècle, tout ce qui se moque d’un
parvenu, tout ce qui a peur de se compromettre, tout ce qui veut
démolir un pouvoir, sauf à l’adorer s’il résiste; toutes ces oreilles
entendent, toutes ces langues disent et toutes ces intelligences
savent, en une seule soirée, où est né, où a grandi, ce qu’a fait ou
n’a pas fait le nouveau venu qui prétend à des honneurs dans ce
monde. S’il n’existe pas de Cour d’assises pour la haute société, elle
rencontre le plus cruel de tous les procureurs-généraux, un être
moral, insaisissable, à la fois juge et bourreau: il accuse et il marque.
N’espérez lui rien cacher, dites-lui tout vous-même, il veut tout savoir
et sait tout. Ne demandez pas où est le télégraphe inconnu qui lui
transmet à la même heure, en un clin d’œil, en tous lieux, une
histoire, un scandale, une nouvelle; ne demandez pas qui le remue.
Ce télégraphe est un mystère social, un observateur ne peut qu’en
constater les effets. Il y en a d’incroyables d’exemples, un seul suffit.
L’assassinat du duc de Berry, frappé à l’Opéra, fut conté, dans la
dixième minute qui suivit le crime, au fond de l’île Saint-Louis.
L’opinion émanée du 6e de ligne sur Diard filtra dans le monde le soir
même où il donna son premier bal.
Diard ne pouvait donc plus rien sur le monde. Dès lors, sa femme
seule avait la puissance de faire quelque chose de lui. Miracle de
cette singulière civilisation! A Paris, si un homme ne sait rien être par
lui-même, sa femme, lorsqu’elle est jeune et spirituelle, lui offre
encore des chances pour son élévation. Parmi les femmes, il s’en
est rencontré de malades, de faibles en apparence, qui, sans se
lever de leur divan, sans sortir de leur chambre, ont dominé la
société, remué mille ressorts, et placé leurs maris, là où elles
voulaient être vaniteusement placées. Mais Juana, dont l’enfance
s’était naïvement écoulée dans sa cellule de Tarragone, ne
connaissait aucun des vices, aucune des lâchetés ni aucune des
ressources du monde parisien; elle le regardait en jeune fille
curieuse, elle n’en apprenait que ce que sa douleur et sa fierté
blessée lui en révélaient. D’ailleurs, Juana avait le tact d’un cœur
vierge qui recevait les impressions par avance, à la manière des
sensitives. La jeune solitaire, devenue si promptement femme,
comprit que si elle essayait de contraindre le monde à honorer son
mari, ce serait mendier à l’espagnole, une escopette en main. Puis,
la fréquence et la multiplicité des précautions qu’elle devait prendre
n’en accuseraient-elles pas toute la nécessité? Entre ne pas se faire
respecter et se faire trop respecter, il y avait pour Diard tout un
abîme. Soudain elle devina le monde comme naguère elle avait
deviné la vie, et elle n’apercevait partout pour elle que l’immense
étendue d’une infortune irréparable. Puis, elle eut encore le chagrin
de reconnaître tardivement l’incapacité particulière de son mari,
l’homme le moins propre à ce qui demandait de la suite dans les
idées. Il ne comprenait rien au rôle qu’il devait jouer dans le monde,
il n’en saisissait ni l’ensemble, ni les nuances, et les nuances y
étaient tout. Ne se trouvait-il pas dans une de ces situations où la
finesse peut aisément remplacer la force? Mais la finesse qui réussit
toujours est peut-être la plus grande de toutes les forces.
Or, loin d’étancher la tache d’huile faite par ses antécédents,
Diard se donna mille peines pour l’étendre. Ainsi, ne sachant pas
bien étudier la phase de l’empire au milieu de laquelle il arrivait, il
voulut, quoiqu’il ne fût que chef d’escadron, être nommé préfet. Alors
presque tout le monde croyait au génie de Napoléon, sa faveur avait
tout agrandi. Les préfectures, ces empires au petit pied, ne
pouvaient plus être chaussées que par de grands noms, par des
chambellans de S. M. l’empereur et roi. Déjà les préfets étaient
devenus des vizirs. Donc, les faiseurs du grand homme se
moquèrent de l’ambition avouée par le chef d’escadron, et Diard se
mit à solliciter une sous-préfecture. Il y eut un désaccord ridicule
entre la modestie de ses prétentions et la grandeur de sa fortune.
Ouvrir des salons royaux, afficher un luxe insolent, puis quitter la vie
millionnaire pour aller à Issoudun ou à Savenay, n’était-ce pas se
mettre au-dessous de sa position? Juana, trop tard instruite de nos
lois, de nos mœurs, de nos coutumes administratives, éclaira donc
trop tard son mari. Diard, désespéré, sollicita successivement
auprès de tous les pouvoirs ministériels; Diard, repoussé partout, ne
put rien être, et alors le monde le jugea comme il était jugé par le
gouvernement et comme il se jugeait lui-même. Diard avait été
grièvement blessé sur un champ de bataille, et Diard n’était pas
décoré. Le quartier-maître, riche, mais sans considération, ne trouva
point de place dans l’État; la société lui refusa logiquement celle à
laquelle il prétendait dans la société. Enfin, chez lui, ce malheureux
éprouvait en toute occasion la supériorité de sa femme. Quoiqu’elle
usât d’un tact il faudrait dire velouté, si l’épithète n’était trop hardie,
pour déguiser à son mari cette suprématie qui l’étonnait elle-même,
et dont elle était humiliée, Diard finit par en être affecté.
Nécessairement, à ce jeu, les hommes s’abattent, se grandissent ou
deviennent mauvais. Le courage ou la passion de cet homme
devaient donc s’amoindrir sous les coups réitérés que ses fautes
portaient à son amour-propre, et il faisait faute sur faute. D’abord, il
avait tout à combattre, même ses habitudes et son caractère.
Passionné Provençal, franc dans ses vices autant que dans ses
vertus, cet homme, dont les fibres ressemblaient à des cordes de
harpe, fut tout cœur pour ses anciens amis. Il secourut les gens
crottés aussi bien que les nécessiteux de haut rang; bref, il avoua
tout le monde, et donna, dans son salon doré, la main à de pauvres
diables. Voyant cela, le général de l’empire, variation de l’espèce
humaine dont bientôt aucun type n’existera plus, n’offrit pas son
accolade à Diard, et lui dit insolemment:—Mon cher! en l’abordant.
Là où les généraux déguisèrent leur insolence sous leur bonhomie
soldatesque, le peu de gens de bonne compagnie que voyait Diard
lui témoignèrent ce mépris élégant, verni, contre lequel un homme
nouveau est presque toujours sans armes. Enfin le maintien, la
gesticulation italienne à demi, le parler de Diard, la manière dont il
s’habillait, tout en lui repoussait le respect que l’observation exacte
des choses voulues par le bon ton fait acquérir aux gens vulgaires,
et dont le joug ne peut être secoué que par les grands pouvoirs.
Ainsi va le monde.
Ces détails peignent faiblement les mille supplices auxquels
Juana fut en proie, ils vinrent un à un; chaque nature sociale lui
apporta son coup d’épingle; et, pour une âme qui préfère les coups
de poignard, n’y avait-il pas d’atroces souffrances dans cette lutte où
Diard recevait des affronts sans les sentir, et où Juana les sentait
sans les recevoir? Puis un moment arriva, moment épouvantable, où
elle eut du monde une perception lucide, et ressentit à la fois toutes
les douleurs qui s’y étaient d’avance amassées pour elle. Elle jugea
son mari tout à fait incapable de monter les hauts échelons de
l’ordre social, et devina jusqu’où il devait en descendre le jour où le
cœur lui faudrait. Là, Juana prit Diard en pitié. L’avenir était bien
sombre pour cette jeune femme. Elle vivait toujours dans
l’appréhension d’un malheur, sans savoir d’où pourrait venir ce
malheur. Ce pressentiment était dans son âme comme une
contagion est dans l’air; mais elle savait trouver la force de déguiser
ses angoisses sous des sourires. Elle en était venue à ne plus
penser à elle. Juana se servit de son influence pour faire abdiquer à
Diard toutes ses prétentions, et lui montrer, comme un asile, la vie
douce et bienfaisante du foyer domestique. Les maux venaient du
monde, ne fallait-il pas bannir le monde? Chez lui, Diard trouverait la
paix, le respect; il y régnerait. Elle se sentait assez forte pour
accepter la rude tâche de le rendre heureux, lui, mécontent de lui-
même. Son énergie s’accrut avec les difficultés de la vie, elle eut
tout l’héroïsme secret nécessaire à sa situation, et fut inspirée par
ces religieux désirs qui soutiennent l’ange chargé de protéger une
âme chrétienne: superstitieuse poésie, images allégoriques de nos
deux natures.
Diard abandonna ses projets, ferma sa maison et vécut dans son
intérieur, s’il est permis d’employer une expression si familière. Mais
là fut l’écueil. Le pauvre militaire avait une de ces âmes tout
excentriques auxquelles il faut un mouvement perpétuel. Diard était
un de ces hommes instinctivement forcés à repartir aussitôt qu’ils
sont arrivés, et dont le but vital semble être d’aller et de venir sans
cesse, comme les roues dont parle l’Écriture sainte. D’ailleurs peut-
être cherchait-il à se fuir lui-même. Sans se lasser de Juana, sans
pouvoir accuser Juana, sa passion pour elle, devenue plus calme
par la possession, le rendit à son caractère. Dès lors, ses moments
d’abattement furent plus fréquents, et il se livra souvent à ses
vivacités méridionales. Plus une femme est vertueuse et plus elle est
irréprochable, plus un homme aime à la trouver en faute, quand ce
ne serait que pour faire acte de sa supériorité légale; mais si par
hasard elle lui est complétement imposante, il éprouve le besoin de
lui forger des torts. Alors, entre époux, les riens grossissent et
deviennent des Alpes. Mais Juana, patiente sans orgueil, douce
sans cette amertume que les femmes savent jeter dans leur
soumission, ne laissait aucune prise à la méchanceté calculée, la
plus âpre de toutes les méchancetés. Puis, elle était une de ces
nobles créatures auxquelles il est impossible de manquer; son
regard, dans lequel sa vie éclatait, sainte et pure, son regard de
martyre avait la pesanteur d’une fascination. Diard, gêné d’abord,
puis froissé, finit par voir un joug pour lui dans cette haute vertu. La
sagesse de sa femme ne lui donnait point d’émotions violentes, et il
souhaitait des émotions. Il se trouve des milliers de scènes jouées
au fond des âmes, sous ces froides déductions d’une existence en
apparence simple et vulgaire. Entre tous ces petits drames, qui
durent si peu, mais qui entrent si avant dans la vie, et sont presque
toujours les présages de la grande infortune écrite dans la plupart
des mariages, il est difficile de choisir un exemple. Cependant il est
une scène qui servit plus particulièrement à marquer le moment où,
dans cette vie à deux, la mésintelligence commença. Peut-être
servira-t-elle à expliquer le dénoûment de cette histoire.
 Juana avait deux enfants, deux garçons, heureusement pour elle.
Le premier était venu sept mois après son mariage. Il se nommait
Juan, et ressemblait à sa mère. Elle avait eu le second, deux ans
après son arrivée à Paris. Celui-là ressemblait également à Diard et
à Juana, mais beaucoup plus à Diard, il en portait les noms. Depuis
cinq ans, Francisque était pour Juana l’objet des soins les plus
tendres. Constamment la mère s’occupait de cet enfant: à lui les
caresses mignonnes, à lui les joujoux; mais à lui surtout les regards
pénétrants de la mère; Juana l’avait épié dès le berceau, elle en
avait étudié les cris, les mouvements; elle voulait en deviner le
caractère pour en diriger l’éducation. Il semblait que Juana n’eût que
cet enfant. Le Provençal, voyant Juan presque dédaigné, le prit sous
sa protection; et, sans s’expliquer si ce petit était l’enfant de l’amour
éphémère auquel il devait Juana, ce mari, par une espèce de
flatterie admirable, en fit son Benjamin. De tous les sentiments dus
au sang de ses aïeules, et qui la dévoraient, madame Diard
n’accepta que l’amour maternel. Mais elle aimait ses enfants et avec
la violence sublime dont l’exemple a été donné par la Marana qui
agit dans le préambule de cette histoire, et avec la gracieuse pudeur,
avec l’entente délicate des vertus sociales dont la pratique était la
gloire de sa vie et sa récompense intime. La pensée secrète, la
consciencieuse maternité, qui avaient imprimé à la vie de la Marana
un cachet de poésie rude, étaient pour Juana une vie avouée, une
consolation de toutes les heures. Sa mère avait été vertueuse
comme les autres femmes sont criminelles, à la dérobée; elle avait
volé son bonheur tacite; elle n’en avait pas joui. Mais Juana,
malheureuse par la vertu, comme sa mère était malheureuse par le
vice, trouvait à toute heure les ineffables délices que sa mère avait
tant enviées, et desquelles elle avait été privée. Pour elle, comme
pour la Marana, la maternité comprit donc tous les sentiments
terrestres. L’une et l’autre, par des causes contraires, n’eurent pas
d’autre consolation dans leur misère. Juana aima peut-être
davantage, parce que, sevrée d’amour, elle résolut toutes les
jouissances qui lui manquaient par celles de ses enfants, et qu’il en
est des passions nobles comme des vices: plus elles se satisfont,
plus elles s’accroissent. La mère et le joueur sont insatiables. Quand
Juana vit le pardon généreux imposé chaque jour sur la tête de
Juan, par l’affection paternelle de Diard, elle fut attendrie; et, du jour
où les deux époux changèrent de rôle, l’Espagnole prit à Diard cet
intérêt profond et vrai dont elle lui avait donné tant de preuves, par
devoir seulement. Si cet homme eût été plus conséquent dans sa
vie; s’il n’eût pas détruit par le décousu, par l’inconstance et la
mobilité de son caractère, les éclairs d’une sensibilité vraie, quoique
nerveuse, Juana l’aurait sans doute aimé. Malheureusement il était
le type de ces méridionaux, spirituels, mais sans suite dans leurs
aperçus; capables de grandes choses la veille, et nuls le lendemain;
souvent victimes de leurs vertus, et souvent heureux par leurs
passions mauvaises: hommes admirables d’ailleurs, quand leurs
bonnes qualités ont une constante énergie pour lien commun.
Depuis deux ans, Diard était donc captivé au logis par la plus douce
des chaînes. Il vivait, presque malgré lui, sous l’influence d’une
femme qui se faisait gaie, amusante pour lui; qui usait les
ressources du génie féminin pour le séduire au nom de la vertu,
mais dont l’adresse n’allait pas jusqu’à lui simuler de l’amour.
En ce moment, tout Paris s’occupait de l’affaire d’un capitaine de
l’ancienne armée qui, dans un paroxysme de libertinage, avait
assassiné une femme. Diard, en rentrant chez lui pour dîner, apprit à
Juana la mort de cet officier. Il s’était tué pour éviter le déshonneur
de son procès et la mort ignoble de l’échafaud. Juana ne comprit
pas tout d’abord la logique de cette conduite, et son mari fut obligé
de lui expliquer la belle jurisprudence des lois françaises, qui ne
permet pas de poursuivre les morts.
—Mais, papa, ne nous as-tu pas dit, l’autre jour, que le roi faisait
grâce? demanda Francisque.
—Le roi ne peut donner que la vie, lui répondit Juan à demi
courroucé.
Diard et Juana, spectateurs de cette scène, en furent bien
diversement affectés. Le regard humide de joie que sa femme jeta
sur l’aîné révéla fatalement au mari les secrets de ce cœur
impénétrable jusqu’alors. L’aîné, c’était tout Juana; l’aîné, Juana le
connaissait; elle était sûre de son cœur, de son avenir; elle l’adorait,
et son ardent amour pour lui restait un secret pour elle, pour son
enfant et Dieu. Juan jouissait instinctivement des brusqueries de sa
mère, qui le serrait à l’étouffer quand ils étaient seuls, et qui
paraissait le bouder en présence de son frère et de son père.
Francisque était Diard, et les soins de Juana trahissaient le désir de
combattre chez cet enfant les vices du père, et d’en encourager les
bonnes qualités. Juana, ne sachant pas que son regard avait trop
parlé, prit Francisque sur elle et lui fit, d’une voix douce, mais émue
encore par le plaisir qu’elle ressentait de la réponse de Juan, une
leçon appropriée à son intelligence.
—Son caractère exige de grands soins, dit le père à Juana.
—Oui, répondit-elle simplement.
—Mais Juan!
Madame Diard, effrayée de l’accent avec lequel ces deux mots
furent prononcés, regarda son mari.
—Juan est né parfait, ajouta-t-il. Ayant dit, il s’assit d’un air
sombre; et, voyant sa femme silencieuse, il reprit:—Il y a un de vos
enfants que vous aimez mieux que l’autre.
—Vous le savez bien, dit-elle.
—Non! répliqua Diard, j’ai jusqu’à présent ignoré celui que vous
préfériez.
—Mais ils ne m’ont encore donné de chagrin ni l’un ni l’autre,
répondit-elle vivement.
—Oui, mais qui vous a donné le plus de joies? demanda-t-il plus
vivement encore.
—Je ne les ai pas comptées.
—Les femmes sont bien fausses, s’écria Diard. Osez dire que
Juan n’est pas l’enfant de votre cœur.
—Si cela est, reprit-elle avec noblesse, voulez-vous que ce soit
un malheur?
—Vous ne m’avez jamais aimé. Si vous l’eussiez voulu, pour
vous, j’aurais pu conquérir des royaumes. Vous savez tout ce que
j’ai tenté, n’étant soutenu que par le désir de vous plaire. Ah! si vous
m’eussiez aimé...
—Une femme qui aime, dit Juana, vit dans la solitude et loin du
monde. N’est-ce pas ce que nous faisons?
—Je sais, Juana, que vous n’avez jamais tort.
Ce mot fut empreint d’une amertume profonde, et jeta du froid
entre eux pour tout le reste de leur vie.
Le lendemain de ce jour fatal, Diard alla chez un de ses anciens
camarades, et y retrouva les distractions du jeu. Par malheur, il y
gagna beaucoup d’argent, et il se remit à jouer. Puis, entraîné par
une pente insensible, il retomba dans la vie dissipée qu’il avait
menée jadis. Bientôt il ne dîna plus chez lui. Quelques mois s’étant
passés à jouir des premiers bonheurs de l’indépendance, il voulut
conserver sa liberté, et se sépara de sa femme; il lui abandonna les
grands appartements, et se logea dans un entre-sol. Au bout d’un
an, Diard et Juana ne se voyaient plus que le matin, à l’heure du
déjeuner. Enfin, comme tous les joueurs, il eut des alternatives de
perte et de gain. Or, ne voulant pas entamer le capital de sa fortune,
il désira soustraire au contrôle de sa femme la disposition des
revenus; un jour donc, il lui retira la part qu’elle avait dans le
gouvernement de la maison. A une confiance illimitée succédèrent
les précautions de la défiance. Puis, relativement aux finances, jadis
communes entre eux, il adopta, pour les besoins de sa femme, la
méthode d’une pension mensuelle, ils en fixèrent ensemble le
chiffre; la causerie qu’ils eurent à ce sujet fut la dernière de ces
conversations intimes, un des charmes les plus attrayants du
mariage. Le silence entre deux cœurs est un vrai divorce accompli,
le jour où le nous ne se dit plus. Juana comprit que de ce jour elle
n’était plus que mère, et elle en fut heureuse, sans rechercher la
cause de ce malheur. Ce fut un grand tort. Les enfants rendent les
époux solidaires de leur vie, et la vie secrète de son mari ne devait
pas être seulement un texte de mélancolies et d’angoisses pour
Juana. Diard, émancipé, s’habitua promptement à perdre ou à
gagner des sommes immenses. Beau joueur et grand joueur, il
devint célèbre par sa manière de jouer. La considération qu’il n’avait
pas pu s’attirer sous l’Empire lui fut acquise, sous la Restauration,
par sa fortune capitalisée qui roulait sur les tapis, et par son talent à
tous les jeux qui devint célèbre. Les ambassadeurs, les plus gros
banquiers, les gens à grandes fortunes, et tous les hommes qui,
pour avoir trop pressé la vie, en viennent à demander au jeu ses
exorbitantes jouissances, admirent Diard dans leurs clubs, rarement
chez eux, mais ils jouèrent tous avec lui. Diard devint à la mode. Par
orgueil, une fois ou deux pendant l’hiver, il donnait une fête pour
rendre les politesses qu’il avait reçues. Alors Juana revoyait le
monde par ces échappées de festins, de bals, de luxe, de lumières;
mais c’était pour elle une sorte d’impôt mis sur le bonheur de sa
solitude. Elle apparaissait, elle, la reine de ces solennités, comme
une créature tombée là, d’un monde inconnu. Sa naïveté, que rien
n’avait corrompu; sa belle virginité d’âme, que les mœurs nouvelles
de sa nouvelle vie lui restituaient; sa beauté, sa modestie vraie lui
acquéraient de sincères hommages. Mais, apercevant peu de
femmes dans ses salons, elle comprenait que si son mari suivait,
sans le lui communiquer, un nouveau plan de conduite, il n’avait
encore rien gagné en estime, dans le monde.
Diard ne fut pas toujours heureux; en trois ans, il dissipa les trois
quarts de sa fortune; mais sa passion lui donna l’énergie nécessaire
pour la satisfaire. Il s’était lié avec beaucoup de monde, et surtout
avec la plupart de ces roués de la Bourse, avec ces hommes qui,
depuis la révolution, ont érigé en principe qu’un vol, fait en grand,
n’est plus qu’une noirceur, transportant ainsi, dans les coffres-forts,
les maximes effrontées adoptées en amour par le dix-huitième
siècle. Diard devint homme d’affaires, et s’engagea dans ces affaires
nommées véreuses en argot de palais. Il sut acheter à de pauvres
diables, qui ne connaissaient pas les bureaux, des liquidations
éternelles qu’il terminait en une soirée, en en partageant les gains
avec les liquidateurs. Puis, quand les dettes liquides lui manquèrent,
il en chercha de flottantes, et déterra, dans les États européens,
barbaresques ou américains, des réclamations en déchéance qu’il
faisait revivre. Lorsque la Restauration eut éteint les dettes des
princes, de la République et de l’Empire, il se fit allouer des
commissions sur des emprunts, sur des canaux, sur toute espèce
d’entreprises. Enfin, il pratiqua le vol décent auquel se sont adonnés