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Dossier Université Invitée : Prague

The Eyes of Dog and Man Collided: Animals in Ota Pavel’s The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer

Les yeux du chien et de l’homme se croisent : les animaux dans La Mort des beaux chevreuils d’Ota Pavel
Gli occhi del cane e dell’uomo si sono scontrati: Gli animali ne La morte dei caprioli belli di Ota Pavel
Valentýna Žišková

Résumés

Cet article analyse la représentation des animaux et leur relation avec les humains dans le recueil de nouvelles La Mort des beaux chevreuils de l’écrivain et journaliste Ota Pavel. Il fait suite à des réflexions théoriques antérieures sur les mémoires de Pavel, lesquelles se concentraient principalement sur l’expérience vécue par le peuple juif pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale et mettaient en évidence la tension entre l’enfance, période hautement idéalisée, et les événements historiques tragiques. Ce texte vise à montrer comment cette expérience a pu façonner la perception et la représentation des animaux. Bien que les différents niveaux de la structure narrative soient contrastés, ils fonctionnent en symbiose pour façonner la relation entre les humains et les animaux : la forte idéalisation de l’enfance construit l’image d’un passé où la place de l’homme était dans la sphère naturelle, tandis qu’en même temps, les personnages principaux se retrouvent marginalisés par la société en raison des mesures anti-juives, ce qui transforme fortement leur relation avec les animaux et la ramène à une relation préindustrielle.

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  • 1 Ota Pavel (originally named Otto Popper) was a Czech writer and journalist of Jewish origin. His wo (...)
  • 2 In original Smrt krásných srnců and Jak jsem potkal ryby. Pavel’s Smrt krásných srnců has not been (...)
  • 3 Among his best-known works on the subject are prose pieces such as Dukla among the Skyscrapers (196 (...)
  • 4 The family changed their last name after World War II. Pavel writes on this topic: “We were called (...)

1Among the works of the Czech writer and journalist Ota Pavel (1930–1973),1 two books of short stories have received the most attention: The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer (1971) and How I Came to Know Fish (1974)2, both of which the author wrote towards the end of his life. In these works, Pavel abandons his previous main thematic area, sport3, and returns as a narrator to his childhood and adolescence. In the analysis that follows, I focus on the first book, The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer, which revolves around the fate of the Popper4 family and is set in the period from the 1930s to 1968, year of death of the stories’ protagonist, Pavel’s father Leo Popper.

2Rather than a comprehensive mapping of his own childhood, the stories are fragments, conveying somewhat random images from his father’s life. Although the individual texts are largely separate microworlds – one of the stories, for example, depicts the funeral of a family friend, Karel Prošek, who reappears several stories later – there is a certain linear development in the overall composition of the book through which the characters evolve. This feature has so far been neglected by the scholarly reception, or rather perceived in static, contrasting terms. Frequent references are made to the tension between the narrator’s markedly idealised image of his adolescence and historical events, especially the Second World War, as well as the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia – a development that severely affected the Jewish Popper family. These memories of childhood represent a longing to return to a lost paradise, one that continues to exist in memory and literature. Bohumil Svozil writes on this topic:

  • 5 Bohumil Svozil, “Ota Pavel: Smrt krásných srnců (1971)”, in Jiří Holý et al., Český parnas: Literat (...)

(Pavel) created not an unfeigned, but a legendary, if not directly mythical, image of a reality that has passed, yet is enduring; through this legendisation it has escaped the power of all-consuming time. In Pavel’s stories, the landscape of Křivoklát, where daddy Leo and his loved ones find rest, human solidarity, feelings of contentment, happiness and freedom, is equally legendary. The natural setting around the Berounka River is conceived as a paradise, a garden of bliss, and also as a fairy godmother who, at decisive moments, turns her face graciously towards man, meets his urgent needs and thus becomes a guarantee of the validity of a higher, as if mythical justice, which healingly contrasts with the injustice of human fate.5

3This is one of many examples where the contrast between memory and reality is interpreted as a source of artistic quality and essential part of Pavel’s prose. A similar view is taken in a magazine review from the period:

  • 6 Gustav Fencl, “Kniha, která je objevem”, Lidová demokracie, 18.5.1971, p. 5.

He excellently captures that dialectic of life which rests on the ever-present tension between the tragic and the comic, between the humour of life and its seriousness, between heaviness and lightness.6

4While I agree with the notion that Pavel’s stories are based on the dialectical principle, I will be focusing in this study on the changing ratio of individual dialectical components. For it seems that the further into the past the narrator ventures, the stronger his tendency to paint an idealised picture of the world. Thus, for example, the horrors of the Second World War find their opposition in interpersonal solidarity and the beauty of nature; conversely, the failed sale of rabbits in the last story, towards the end of Leo’s life, is portrayed in a wholly fatalistic and, by extension, more distressing manner. The narrator no longer offers the reader any anaesthetic.

5My intention then is to examine this transformation, one that affects not only the narrator but also (especially) the character of his father, and analyse it in relation to natural and in particular animal motifs. I believe it is in the changing relationship between man and animal that another transformation becomes evident, namely that of self-understanding, a transformation in relation to the time and space that surrounds the characters. My aim is to offer a “fresh” reading of these texts, especially in light of the relatively little attention that has been paid to the crucial role played by animals in Pavel’s stories, specifically in relation to the experience of Jews during World War Two. The theme of Jewishness is traditionally seen as one of the book’s main topics, along with the dialectical tension mentioned above. I think that these two levels of the book together represent an interesting development in the depiction of relationships between humans and animals. On one side, there is a strongly idealised myth about the oneness of all beings; on the other, the ostracisation of Jews challenges this view. In the end, however, the myth is reborn as the protagonist finds himself in true harmony with other outcasts.

Business and Fish

  • 7 Mariusz Szczygieł, “O tom, že život se dá prožít jako svátek”, in Mariusz Szczygieł, Láska nebeská, (...)

6Marius Szczygieł writes that The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer is “the most antidepressant book in the world.”7 While such an assessment might come as a surprise for readers unfamiliar with the book’s main theme, Pavel’s stories – at least the first few ones – really are dominated by reassuring images. It must be pointed out, however, that the optimistic tone of the first stories is not effected by concealing historical events. Rather, there is a conscious gesture of what could be described as “nodding to life”. The protagonist of the stories, the narrator’s father Leo, is the embodiment of this position, characterised by a never-failing vitality. Despite his many professional and personal failures, he constantly throws himself into new ventures and adventures.

  • 8 See for example in Uhlířová: “[…] we can speak of a certain kind of journalism, discussing publicly (...)
  • 9 The first evidence of his intention to write a memoir can be found in a letter he wrote to his brot (...)

7Similarly to Leo, the narrator himself constantly stresses the importance of human nature, simplicity, and a harmonious relationship with nature that he associates with the past. Although Pavel’s prose is traditionally understood as borrowing from the memoir genre,8 I would note that the stories themselves present an escape from reality – and into a completely fabricated world – much more than a return to the past.9 This is largely due to the treatment of setting: rather than the early decades of the 20th century, his depictions of the Central Bohemian landscape are reminiscent of a century before, perhaps even a fictional, fairy-tale landscape. The titular story “The Death of the Beautiful Roe Deer”, for example, begins:

  • 10 Meaning the narrator and his two older brothers, Jiří and Hugo.
  • 11 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 32.

We three boys10 loved to go to that area around the Křivoklát Castle. Back then, I didn’t know why, but today I do. My daddy understood even then that one day I would be able to see the boulevards of Paris and the skyscrapers of New York, but I would never again be able to live for weeks in a cottage with the smell of bread baking in the oven and butter churned in the butter churn, because one day, cars would stop at those cottages, TVs would flicker inside, and you would be served bad black coffee and stale bread. Back then, my daddy could find this place by following his nose.11

8His typical way of depicting animals in these opening stories also corresponds with a generally idealistic tone. For example, the process of poaching roe deer, which is regularly undertaken by family friend Karel Prošek, is described as follows:

  • 12 Ibid., p. 47.

Prošek loaded the roe deer into a huge rucksack, skinned it in the barn, and burned everything but the meat. They had the meat for a month, just as they had small potatoes later again, from the stony field where they had to dig them up with a hoe. Those people didn’t look at it any other way, and there was a longing for adventure in it, though they didn’t call it that, like the city people.12

9This description of people living around Křivoklát corresponds with John Berger’s categorisation of the representation of human-animal relationships in his study “Why Look at Animals?”. Drawing on Berger’s categories, we can see that the depiction of human-animal relationships in Pavel’s stories correspond to the first period, when these relationships were still undisturbed by the Industrial Revolution and associated marginalisation of animals. Berger describes this early form of the human-animal relationship as spiritual, with animals at the centre of human perceptions of the world and appearing in myths and legends as metaphors for those things that humans did not understand. At the same time, however, human survival and quality of life also depended entirely on animals. Crucially, animal consumption and animal worship are not in opposition during this period because animals are not yet marginalised:

  • 13 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, in John Berger, Why Look at Animals?, New York, Penguin, 2009, (...)

The vestiges of this dualism remain among those who live intimately with, and depend upon, animals. A peasant becomes fond of his pig and is glad to salt away its pork. What is significant and is so difficult for the urban stranger to understand, is that the two statements in that sentence are connected by an and not by a but.13

  • 14 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 11.
  • 15 Ibid., p. 82.

10It should be noted, however, that in this landscape where time seems to have stopped, Leo and his family are only visitors. The unproblematic relationship with animals is related solely to the people living around Křivoklát, where the family goes on holiday. Leo remains an urban man in this sense, which is reflected in his relationship with nature. In his first description of his father, the narrator recounts his defining characteristics: “business and fish. He was incredibly good at both, but he preferred fish.”14 Business and fishing are sometimes in harmony within Leo’s personality – “as a fisherman and a businessman, he knew how to wait”, – but more often they are in conflict. Leo is constantly running away from his work to fish, and in one of the last stories he sends his son on a business trip in his stead because “Daddy didn’t want to go to Moravia then, the bream had started to bite below our new cottage on the dam.”15 This aspect of his character could be seen as an inclination towards a simple way of life. However, Leo’s relationship to nature is ultimately a business one, oriented primarily by his sense for profit potential. He sees nature, including animals, as a means to his own ends. This attitude is evident in the short story “In the Service of Sweden”, where Leo falls in love with his boss’s wife. He plans to win Mrs. Irma over by arranging with his friend, a respected artist and art teacher, to paint her portrait. But since his friend categorically refuses to paint women, Leo tries to “bribe” him with a trip to the countryside, and invites him fishing. However, he is convinced that even this will not be enough, and determines to take certain extra measures:

  • 16 Ibid., p. 38.

My daddy did what he had never done before, and what is against fishing regulations. He borrowed twenty rods from fishermen he knew and stuck them all along the shore, hanging jingle bells on the tip of each rod like on a Christmas tree to jingle when the fish bite. […] Then came the evening that good fishermen love. […] And suddenly, in that divine silence, clink! clink! […] The professor took his rod, pulled and pulled out a struggling, fighting parma as long as his elbow. […] The professor, who had never overpowered a living creature, felt the heat and excitement of the ancient hunting ancestors and fell for it. And that night, perhaps all daddy’s friends from the river came to his rescue: muscular parma, serpentine eels, clever chubs swam to his borrowed rods, pulled on earthworms and baited fish, and rang the bells as if they were God’s body.16

11Leo’s efforts are ultimately futile. Despite his best efforts, the professor refuses to paint Daddy’s love, Mrs. Irma, thus bringing an end to his courtship. It is worth noting, however, that Mrs. Irma is portrayed in the story almost exclusively through animal imagery:

  • 17 Ibid., p. 20.

For a Jewish woman, she had unusual blonde hair and blue eyes, then beautifully shaped breasts that bulged beneath impressive fabrics like satin or shantung, and a firm, rounded bottom. She matched the mares in her husband’s stable in solidity, and her face wore a soulful expression of scholarship that impressed my daddy the most.17

12This fact, together with the passage describing the “improved” fishing, illustrates a situation typical of the first stories of the collection. At its centre, as at the centre of the world, stands a man whose position is so unshakeable that he is unable, or unwilling to see the perspective of others. Thus, the fish swimming to their death is seen as “friendly rescue”, and the woman who is his object of desire is compared to a trophy racehorse.

  • 18 Ibid., p. 60.

13In another story later in the collection, we are presented with another episode that revolves around fishing, this time set against the backdrop of much more horrific events. The story “Carp for the Wehrmacht” is about Leo’s last evening at home before being transported to a concentration camp. We learn that the Nazis, as part of their persecution of the Jews, have confiscated the pond in his hometown. This pond had not only been a source of income for Leo: “Daddy had sailed on this pond as a boy, his daddy also sailed it, as did his grandfather and great-grandfather, and so he was bound to the pond by a kind of ancestral bond.”18 Before leaving, on a December night, Leo takes his youngest son to the pond:

  • 19 Ibid., p. 66.

Daddy didn’t speak and headed for the pond. His pond appeared behind the poplars, looking like in a fairy tale, all frozen over, with the moon lit up above it. It was quiet everywhere, very quiet. Daddy began to feel the ice under Hudeček’s. He went down into the pond, the ice sounded like a church organ under his axe. Then he turned to me: “The carp are choking. They haven’t cut holes for them.”19

14Then, at the risk of his own life, he fishes all the carp out of the pond and carries them home. He thus ensures that his family, which finds itself on the brink of poverty during the war, will at least have a livelihood during his absence. The narrator, who had previously been forced to beg for food from his neighbours, exchanges the carp for food before Christmas: “I was welcomed like a king for whom carp opened the way to the world.” he recalls.

15The trope of fishing has thus changed considerably, a difference that is most evident in the description of the carp fishing process itself. Despite the great danger and necessary haste, Leo stays in the middle of the pond to observe “his carp”:

  • 20 Ibid., p. 67.

They acted like they were in a daze, they didn’t mind at all that we were standing there watching them. Within seconds the surface was filled with them and more and more kept coming. At that moment, daddy broke into something deep and unknown, knelt down on the ice, rolled up his sleeves and began stroking their heads and backs, caressing them and murmuring, “My carp. My little carp.” He played with them and they came down to his hands like his children, golden and silver in the moonlight, shining like saints, I never saw carp like them afterward. He would roll them over in his hands, lift them up, and let them go, humming something as he did so.20

The Animal-Human Gaze

  • 21 Five of the overall eight stories have some kind of animal in their titles.

16Animals play an important role in almost all of Pavel’s stories, a role that is reflected in their titles.21 However, the human-animal relationship changes radically at moments of crisis. At these moments, when Leo is confronted with his own subjectivity and with the category of man as such, he comes to see the animal characters as equal partners, thus re-invoking – this time with much greater force – the mythical time mentioned by John Berger. It is only in these moments that animals become messengers and symbols, moving to the sacred domain. This process strips them of the innocence traditionally attributed to them by post-industrial society, a theme that appears as well in the stories set before the war.

  • 22 Ibid., p. 33.

17The turning point in time – and consequently in Leo’s relationship to animals – comes in “The Death of Beautiful Roe deer”. At the beginning of the story, the narrator characteristically provides a description of the Křivoklát setting. There is harmony between man and nature, represented, for example, by the vagabond Bambas, who “did not work […] He slept in a half-ruined hut and covered himself with the moulted skin of a deer.”22 This view of the world and return to the mythical image of a bygone reality might suggest a certain degree of anthropomorphism in Pavel’s manner of describing animals, a tendency that Marie Uhlířová notes in her study:

  • 23 Marie Uhlířová, “Povídky Oty Pavla”, op. cit., p. 6.

The close relationship of man to everything natural is expressed in Pavel’s works by frequent personification. The author transfers human qualities and thinking to the river, fish and animals in general, and so the pond is evil (They can even kill you), the waves of the river “laugh and roar, why I came here and that I was cheek” (How Daddy and I served the eels), the carp tells the other carp (How we died fishing), the minnows say “remember” (The Long Mile).23

18It is striking, however, that the narrator abandons this strategy in the episode where his family is first confronted with anti-Semitism and persecution.

19In his descriptions of the roe deer (of the title) and dog Holan, the central animals of this story, the narrator deploys several different strategies, for example, introducing the German shepherd Holan as follows:

  • 24 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 34.

his lights were yellow and thoughtful, but there was something else hidden behind those eyes. They were the eyes of a wolf. Somewhere in the tracks of his genetics something had happened, and Holan was essentially a wolf.24

20Rather than highlighting Holan’s proximity to man and his world, the narrator emphasises his undomesticated animal nature. Even in the description of the relationship between Holan and Karel Prošek, there is no hint of anthropomorphisation that might otherwise suggest a modern relationship between a man and his pet – indeed, Holan could hardly be described as a pet. John Berger describes this modern human-animal relationship as follows:

  • 25 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, op. cit., p. 25.

in this relationship the autonomy of both parties has been lost (the owner has become the-special-man-he-is-only-to-his-pet, and the animal has become dependent on its owner for every physical need), the parallelism of their separate lives has been destroyed.25

  • 26 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 35.
  • 27 Ibid.

21Although there are certain aspects of the description of the relationship between Karel Prošek and the dog Holan that are identical to the form of the relationship described by Berger, especially in terms of the mental dependence of the animal on its “master” – “Holan jumped into the water for Prošek out of love”26, “he would always curl up in his master’s lap, put his snout to his nose, and when he heard his breathing, he would fall asleep too”27 –, it seems essential for their relationship to preserve a certain autonomy, and above all the natural nature of the animal. It is Holan’s “wolf nature” that compels his original owner to get rid of him, which is how Prošek has come to take him in:

  • 28 Ibid., p. 34.

He was still rolling around like a puppy ball with its pupils bulging out and was already killing chickens. Woof and woof. Grrrr and grrrr. And mostly a jerk and a snap and DEATH. That came later. And that’s why farmer Novák was glad to get rid of him. But he was exactly the kind of dog that Uncle Prošek needed.28

22The relationship between Holan and Prošek is thus an emotional one, which distinguishes Holan from the post-industrial animal-machine, at the same time not yet disturbed by the humanisation of the dog and suppression of its natural nature.

23This type of relationship is thus on the borderline between the two main approaches to animals that have been defined in animal studies so far:

  • 29 Jan Matonoha, “Zvíře”, in Jan Matonoha et al., Za(de)konstruktivismem: Kritické koncepty (post)post (...)

on the one hand, animals are seen as radically different (Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), on the other hand, as radically related or coextensive with humans (Giorgio Agamben, to a large extent Jacques Derrida, Donna Haraway, Carry Wolfe, etc.).29

24However, each of these approaches also entails a potential danger:

  • 30 Ibid., p. 407.

Deleuzian radical otherness can relegate animals to indifferent ungraspability; conversely, a Derridean-Agambenian accommodating approach to animals that emphasizes close (and forgotten) kinship runs the risk of falling into indulgent protectionism without being able to perceive that Deleuzian radical otherness. The relation to animals is thus exposed to a double danger: on the one hand, it faces the danger of reducing them to common meat for consumption (and, earlier, for work and transport); on the other, it may equally reductively descend to their glorification and “infantilisation” through the categories of pets.30

  • 31 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 35.

25In The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer, Pavel’s construction of the German shepherd character avoids both – on the one hand, he is an animal who lives alongside a man, with whom he shares “a friendship I have never seen even among humans”31; on the other hand, Holan is still an animal, a semi-wild dog/wolf whose nature, which includes killing other animals, has not been suppressed. Even the narrator of the story, who tends to idealise reality, presents rather a stark picture of Holan’s potential for brutality, and the dog’s encounters with other animals are among the most violent in the book:

  • 32 Ibid., p. 34.

Holan caught up with him on the hillside and jumped on his neck. But the fox was no beginner. For an hour, hair flying and blood dripping, the writhing ball moved a mile to the river, where finally Holan, who knew how to fish for trout, held the fox under water until it drowned.32

  • 33 Jan Matonoha, “Zvíře”, op. cit., p. 404.
  • 34 Ibid., p. 407.
  • 35 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, op. cit., p. 13.
  • 36 Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, in Jacques Derrida, The Animal (...)
  • 37 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 39.

26One of the central motifs that animal studies scholars have been concerned with is the “hiatus between the so-called human and the so-called animal”33, which has been “created discursively and materially” and their “relatedness has been strategically or familiarly displaced”34. This hiatus is also mentioned by John Berger, who relates it to the gaze that humans and animals share. The gaze, according to Berger, is a “narrow abyss of non-comprehension”35 that cannot be bridged because humans and animals do not share the same communication code. The gaze is thus filled with an insurmountable void, but at the same time, it is precisely because of this void that it provides a space for self-awareness, as Jacques Derrida writes: “I often ask myself, just to see, who I am — and who I am (following) at the moment when, caught naked, in silence, by the gaze of an animal”36. The gaze shared between man and animal is also one of the key motifs in Pavel’s collection. It first occurs in the story “The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer”, specifically when Leo Popper asks his friend, the ferryman and poacher Karel Prošek, to lend him his dog Holan for the purpose of poaching a roe deer when his two eldest sons are called up to be transported to a concentration camp (I will deal with this sequence and roe deer motif in more detail later). “If he goes, then I will lend him”37, Prošek replies, thereby distancing himself from the notion of the animal as a machine without its own will. Aware that the survival of himself and his family now depends on Holan’s will, Leo gradually tries to persuade the dog in various ways, which again can be understood to some extent as parallel to certain phases mentioned in Berger:

  • 38 Ibid., p. 41.

“Holan, come with me. You remember the sausages I used to bring you. Come on, buddy.” Holan sat there, just blinking his eyes and continuing to look at my daddy. It was clear he wasn’t going with him, he never went with anyone. My daddy begged him again, as he never begged anyone, but to no avail. He called him Holan, little Holan, but it was useless. Then he was getting desperate and on the verge of that condition called madness. He took out of his pocket the little canvas star JUDE and showed it to Holan, shouting: “I am now a Jew and I have no sausages. I would need some myself. I’m a Jew and I need meat for my wonderful boys and you have to get it for me!” Then, tears flowing, he turned and walked to the path that led to the island. […] But at the beginning of the path he couldn’t stand it and turned around. The eyes of dog and man collided. They looked at each other for a long time, perhaps an eternity, the lights in them flickered, going off and on, and what they said to each other no one would know because they are both dead now, and even if they were alive no one would know, because they themselves didn’t know anyway. Perhaps they were cursing the life of a dog, perhaps the life of a Jew, but that’s all just perhaps. Holan got up, stretched and went lazily to my daddy like an ordinary ferryman’s dog, like he belonged to him from the beginning of time.38

27Leo’s use of diminutives together with his attempts to remind Holan of good times past, an approach that tends to anthropomorphise the dog, is replaced by frustration as Leo increasingly treats him as something inferior and subordinate. It is only when there is a reciprocal look between man and animal that a moment occurs which the narrator believes to be uncommunicable and ungraspable, but which, based on what follows, could be interpreted as a sense of understanding. Beyond the fact that Holan rises and listens to Leo’s pleas, this moment has another dimension: the space for self-reflection mentioned by Derrida, in which we become aware not only of ourselves, but secondarily of the feelings that are triggered by this awareness:

  • 39 Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, op. cit., p. 4.

The gaze of a seer, a visionary or extra-lucid blind one. It is as if I were ashamed, therefore, naked in front of this cat, but also ashamed for being ashamed. A reflected shame, the mirror of a shame ashamed of itself, a shame that is at the same time specular, unjustifiable, and unavowable.39

28While shrouded in mystery, the episode draws a certain parallel between ‘dog life’ and ‘Jewish life’. Perhaps it is at this moment that Leo Popper becomes aware of the full extent to which his position in both social and natural contexts has been degraded, giving him a glimpse for the first time of an animal as independent, other being. In this way, he returns, if only in his mind, to the primordial relationship between man and animal, characterised by an autonomy that allowed an authentic and full relationship to be established between them.

29The absence of a common language is traditionally interpreted as a gap between man and animal. The inability to communicate clearly was also one of the reasons why animals came to be seen as inferior to humans. Derrida reversed this thesis: thinking, he argued, begins within the animal’s gaze. Sharon Sliwinski, who expands on Derrida’s thesis by way of observations by Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud regarding the animal-human gaze, writes:

  • 40 Sharon Sliwinski, “The Gaze Called Animal: Notes for a Study on Thinking”, The New Centennial Revie (...)

Little Hans offers us yet another account of how subjectivity depends not only upon how “I look,” but also upon how “I am looked at”, how one can be caught in the field of the other’s gaze.40

30The gaze between Leo and Holan can thus be understood not only as the moment when Leo first sees animals as his equals, but as the moment when he himself is actually seen for the first time. Symbolically stripped of all his previous attributes – businessman, fisherman, husband, father, Jew – Leo stands naked before Holan. Just as he recognises Holan as a subject, Holan recognises someone who is his equal. Perhaps this is why he listens to – rather than obeys – someone other than Prošek and goes hunting with Leo. Yet what actually took place between Leo and Holan remains incommunicable. The language – the basis of which the hierarchy was created, with humans at the top – proves inadequate.

31The second instance in which Leo shares this kind of animal gaze occurs in the last story, “Rabbits with Wise Eyes”. After the fiasco with the rabbit sale, Leo sets out on foot – because he has no money for the train – to go home. Before that, he sets all his rabbits free, maybe because he suspects that this journey will be his last. His never-quenching zest for life is gone:

  • 41 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 98.

The river was everything in his life. And so he went to it; in following the river he had to reach his house and his wife. […] Then he said, he saw a fish by the shore. It was a long fish with big, bulging eyes. It looked at him and he looked at it. It was a fish that was so clever that no other fish had killed it in all its life, and no clever fisherman had caught it. That was the only reason she could be so big and so old. He insisted later that she had come to watch him die because he had killed thousands of fish in his lifetime. The fish shook its fins and swam away.41

  • 42 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, op. cit., p. 2.

32After returning home, Leo is indeed taken to the hospital where he dies a few days later. As with Holan, he shares with this fish a supremely intimate moment, the beginning of his dying. It is precisely because of the uniqueness of the situation that the fish is restored to the role of messenger that belonged to animals in pre-industrial society: “Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises.”42 More significantly, however, the fish functions as a kind of parallel to Leo. Its gaze is understood by Leo as the triumph of the quarry over the dying hunter. This happens because, at that moment, he sees himself literally through the eyes of the fish. It is only through this gaze and the nearness of his own death that he is able to glimpse his own act of killing. Just as well, however, this gaze can be seen as the parting of two beings who have faced numerous pitfalls in their lives but, thanks to their abilities and perhaps a little luck, have survived to old age:

  • 43 Ibid., p. 4.

Just because of this distinctness, however, an animal’s life, never to be confused with a man’s, can be seen to run parallel to his. Only in death do the two parallel lines converge and after death, perhaps, cross over to become parallel again: hence the widespread belief in the transmigration of souls.43

Killing of a Sacred Deer

  • 44 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 40.

33A similarly mythical dimension can be observed with the roe deer, which Leo and Holan hunt in the hope that its meat will save Leo’s sons from death in a concentration camp. The reasons for this belief in the power of venison is not explained in the story. Leo initially goes on a fishing expedition to get some meat for his sons before they leave. He soon discovers, however, that his new, inferior status does not only apply to the laws given by men: “Nature had conspired against the Jew, those clear moonlit nights, those nocturnal water snakes, and now the forest with its silent oaks, in which not even a squirrel shows itself.”44 He hides near the house of his friend Karel Prošek, who brings him food.

  • 45 Ibid., p. 52.

“Karel, I need meat for my boys. They need to eat meat properly once more.” “Mr Leo, I don’t have meat, I’d have to kill a cow for you. If you want, I’ll kill it today.” And then daddy said the sentence he’d probably already thought of at home, the one he hadn’t told mum about, but the one he’d come here for in the first place. “Karel, bring me a roe deer.45

34The reason why Leo rejects Karel’s proposal remains unknown. According to the narrator, Leo is driven by the vision of a roe deer, acting, one might say, at the behest of a kind of subconscious intuition. The mythical power of the roe deer is already apparent in his description:

  • 46 Ibid., p. 53.

Across the hillside, quite close by, a roe deer was grazing, apparently sent here at the last moment by the Jewish god. Dad grabbed his binoculars and looked at it. A beautiful rack of antlers, more beautiful than any he had seen before the war at Křivoklát Castle. It was a divine roe deer. The mighty head bore a thick, almost red deer-like neck, and it burned a strange red and golden colour, as if it had come out of a blazing hell and not from God himself.46

35If animals for Leo have hitherto been primarily products, anthropomorphised pets, and if he has found in Holan an equivalent being, the roe deer is an animal that is elevated above man and descends to him in his moment of supreme need.

36The act of killing the sacred (roe) deer may evoke Euripides’ drama Iphigenia of Aulis. Of course, the situation is reversed in the titular story of The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer: the father does not sacrifice his offspring to a higher power, he sacrifices himself (or at least risks his own life) to save them. In her analysis of Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Killing of a Sacred Deer, which explicitly refers to the myth of Iphigenia, and to Euripides’ drama (and is a modern adaptation of it), Svitlana Pereplotchykova writes about the existence of two orders, citing R. Goodkin:

  • 47 Svitlana Pereplotchykova, “Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Contemporary Reception o (...)

a familial order and a heroic order which is meant to protect or insure it. Agamemnon, in order to become a hero in the forthcoming war, first has to be strong enough to violate familial order. Steven initially behaves as a hero, considering himself strong enough to operate while drunk, and then is faced with the inevitable fatal choice undermining his familial order.47

37Iphigenia, like many other Greek tragedies, is thus understood through the lens of punishment that comes after an individual’s rebellion against the natural order. This order is established by the gods, who are essentially its anthropomorphised form. Artemis is the goddess of the hunt, the protector of the forest and wild animals. Agamemnon’s wrongdoing against the forest and deer must be atoned for by the sacrifice of his own offspring. In this respect, “The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer” can be seen as a “reversal” of this myth. I do not mean to suggest that Ota Pavel was inspired by the story of Iphigenia in Aulis, for there is no evidence of this. I mean only to draw attention to the way these two works deal in the same motifs – sacrifice, deer, family, the will of the gods/higher powers, etc. – to produce different meanings.

38If we proceed to read “The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer” through the prism of Euripides’ tragedy, we must first ask: “who is who?” At first glance, we are offered a reading in which Leo, as the father of the family and protagonist of the story, plays the role of Agamemnon. Pereplotchykova writes in relation to Agamemnon (and Stephen, who is his counterpart in Lanthimos’ film):

  • 48 Ibid.

It has sometimes been argued that Euripides believed that any passion if not resisted can lead a person to tragedy and even death. Agamemnon openly speaks of his superiority as an archer over the goddess Artemis, kills the animal she considers sacred, and later, longing to consolidate his power, sacrifices his own daughter. Steven considers himself such a brilliant heart surgeon that he imagines he can operate successfully on Martin’s father while drunk, and then later kills one member of his family.48

39This description would certainly fit the Leo of the early stories. However, as a result of finding himself in a quite liminal situation, his character changes – he loses his superiority and is confronted with destiny. This is where the two works diverge. While Agamemnon does not dare to defy the will of the gods – mainly for fear of the wrath of his army, which, incidentally, even Achilles is unable to tame –, and while Stephen accedes to the perverse game played by Martin, Leo defies the higher power, i.e. both nature and state. He illegally sets out to hunt a roe deer and then, thinking of the possibility of his own death, turns to the animals in passing and finds a kind of cosmic justice in settling scores:

  • 49 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 42.

Daddy knew that if they catch him they would beat him to death and then shoot him and throw him into the river, and he would swim through those places that were the most beautiful in the world to him, and stop at Šíma’s Rock against a big black boulder, and there the eels would find him and eat his guts and heart and brain, and repay him for pulling them out of the most beautiful river in the world.49

40Despite the fear of death and the adversity of nature, Leo perseveres. This defiance can be understood as a transformed heroism, as his own innovative violation of the established order. It is not the heroism of an Agamemnon, not the heroism of a king, but rather that of the victim, the heroism of Iphigenia. Leo, like her, finds himself in a situation where he has but few options. Like Iphigenia, he chooses to willingly sacrifice (or at least risk) his life to save others. Like Iphigenia, the forest (Artemis) takes pity on him and like in Iphigenia’s case, uses a (roe) deer to save him.

41Leo’s two sons, who, like their father, actually survived the concentration camp and returned home after the war, eventually come to believe that the roe deer saved their lives:

  • 50 Ibid., p. 59.

My mommy would put (the roe deer) in this nice container, and cooked for my brothers Hugo and Jirka sauces and steaks, which was her great specialty. The boys were stuffing themselves for the next years to endure Terezin, Auschwitz, Mauthausen and the death marches in -30-degree frosts and carrying stones up the Mauthausen steps in 30-degree heat and all the lovely things the Germans had prepared for them. Hugo came back pretty good. Jirka came back from Mauthausen and weighed forty kilos and was dying of hunger and suffering for six months before he started living again. He never told me much about it, only once, and when we were talking about the roe deer, he said: “Maybe that roe deer just saved my life. Maybe those last pieces of proper meat were just enough to last me till the very end.”50

42We may return to the beginning once more to note that Leo’s act of defiance is strongly linked to his main and defining characteristic: his never-failing vitality and will to live. In connection to this aspect, I would draw attention to the last parallel between man and animal that we find in Ota Pavel’s prose works.

  • 51 Ibid., p. 78.

43The short story “The Insect Question Has Been Solved” is set after the Second World War, following Leo’s new business venture involving a new type of flypaper. These are unpopular because they are not sticky, but simply confuse the flies, who then fly off somewhere else to die. The venture is unsuccessful because “people wanted to see the death of their enemy with their own eyes, not have him fly off to die in seclusion.”51 After failing to sell them, Leo leaves the company and breaks up with Mr. Jehlička, the engineer who invented them. The story ends with the image of the engineer destroying his creation in despair over the unsalable flypaper:

  • 52 Ibid., p. 87.

The flypaper burned beautifully, the deadly DDT powder had gone somewhere, and the smell of sweet honey wafted over the yellowing burn. It attracted flies, they swarmed and clouds of them danced their victorious dance over the burning BOMBA-CHEMIK flytraps.52

44Reading the story as a kind of allegory for the fate of Jews during Second World War is possible primarily because of its title. Indeed, the tagline for the newly created flytraps, The insect question has been solved, echoes the Nazi euphemism “The Final Solution of the Jewish Question”. The image of the dancing flies, which survive all efforts to destroy them, is then strikingly similar to the image of the triumphant Leo in “Carp for the Wehrmacht”. After Leo has already been taken to a concentration camp, the Germans organise a fishing trip to the pond he had fished out with his son a few months earlier:

  • 53 Ibid., p. 68. In the original: “vypálil Němcům rybník”, which would translate to the English idiom (...)

At first there was great glory, the band was playing on the dam and everything looked promising. But there was nothing in the pond and no one could explain it. And I thought at the time that the music was only playing in honour of my daddy, who was among Germans, even with the Star of David on his coat, still the biggest fish in the pond.53

Conclusion

45I have tried to point out possible alternatives to the most common ways of reading Ota Pavel’s stories, namely with regard to the tension between harmony and pessimism, which, I propose, may be seen not as a fixed contrast, but rather as a dynamic process that reflects the development of the characters and their relationship to the world. The feelings of unhappiness and loss in Pavel’s stories are not primarily associated with historical tragedies, but rather with inevitable change: the narrator coming of age, his father growing old, and the gradual disappearance of all that is harmonious.

46A significant role in this transformation is played by the relationship with animals, which changes fundamentally in the stories. It can be said that Pavel’s portrayal of animals follows a particular dynamic: the more a person thrives, the less room they have for a true understanding of other creatures. While, at the beginning, Leo Popper sees animals as a simple means for achieving his personal goals, the status of man and animal shifts gradually to the point where they may see each other as equals. Moments of crisis, especially those associated with the threat of death, open up space for a deeper self-knowledge and awareness of individuality, along the lines that Jacques Derrida writes about. This moment is depicted through the motif of a gaze shared between man and animal, one in which, even if the common code for communication is absent, a moment of sovereign understanding emerges. The animal characters also function as a parallel to human ones, providing certain contact points with the Jewish experience during World War Two. The animal sphere is a place of comfort for the characters, and ultimately for the narrator himself, who depicts animals invariably as victorious. So it is also for the Jews, as represented by the character of Leo.

47The world of nature and animals function here as a stable point to which one can always return and that stands soothingly in contrast to the feeling of anxiety about the passing time – one of the main themes of the book. It can be said that Pavel returns to the ancient type of animal-human relationship not only by way of the story but in the very act of narrating. As I mentioned in the beginning, Berger talks about the importance of animal metaphors in this era. In Pavel’s stories, we see a similar approach. The Second World War itself is only lightly touched on in the narration. Yet the moments of dread, fear, and hope connected to the war are always described by way of animals. Thus, by interweaving animal imagery with human experience, Pavel creates a narrative that not only preserves moments of harmony against the flow of time but also transforms historical (and personal) trauma into a more universal story of loss and resilience.

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Bibliographie

Berger, John, “Why Look at Animals?”, in John Berger, Why Look at Animals?, New York, Penguin, 2009, p. 12-37.

Derrida, Jacques, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, in Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, trans. David Wills, New York, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 1-52.

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis, ed. and trans. Holly Eckhardt and John Harrison, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Fencl, Gustav, “Kniha, která je objevem”, Lidová demokracie, 18.5.1971, p. 5.

Kaczorowski, Aleksander, Ota Pavel: Pod povrchem, trans. Martin Veselka, Brno, Host, 2020.

Matonoha, Jan, “Zvíře”, in Jan Matonoha et al., Za(de)konstruktivismem: Kritické koncepty (post)poststrukturální literární a kulturní teorie, Prague, Academia, 2017, p. 404-425.

Pavel, Ota, Sebrané spisy Oty Pavla IV. Smrt krásných srnců, Prague, HAK, 2002.

Pereplotchykova, Svitlana, “Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Contemporary Reception of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis”, Lіteraturoznavstvo. Movoznavstvo. Folkloristika, vol. 1, n° 33, 2023, p. 101-106.

Szczygieł, Mariusz, “O tom, že život se dá prožít jako svátek” in Mariusz Szczygieł, Láska nebeská, trans. Helena Stachová, Prague, Dokořán, 2012, p. 28-36.

Sliwinski, Sharon, “The Gaze Called Animal: Notes for a Study on Thinking”, The New Centennial Review, vol. 11, n° 2, 2011, p. 61-81.

Svozil, Bohumil, “Ota Pavel: Smrt krásných srnců (1971)”, in Jiří Holý et al., Český parnas: Literatura 1970–1990, Prague, Galaxie, 1993, p. 37-43.

Uhlířová, Marie, “Povídky Oty Pavla”, Česká literatura, vol. 27, n° 1, 1979, p. 58-65.

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Notes

1 Ota Pavel (originally named Otto Popper) was a Czech writer and journalist of Jewish origin. His works, published from the 1950s through the 1970s, were initially connected to the sports environment, focusing primarily on the genre of reportage. Pavel gradually shifted to fiction, mainly writing short stories depicting well-known athletes and events (see footnote 2). These stories mix facts with fiction, creating often fairy-tale like narrations based on real events. They ensured the author’s popularity during his lifetime. This artistic approach endured in the two books describing Pavel’s own childhood Smrt krásných srnců (The Death of Beautiful Deer and How I Came to Know Fish) –, which made him even more famous; the books became part of the Czech literary canon and were included as required reading in highschool curricula. The stories have been also made into popular films: Golden Eels (1979), Death of the Beautiful Deer (1986) [other titles : Death of Beautiful Roebucks; Forbidden Dreams] directed by Karel Kachyňa.

2 In original Smrt krásných srnců and Jak jsem potkal ryby. Pavel’s Smrt krásných srnců has not been translated into English, in this article I work with the term Roe deer, as it preserves “deer” from the movie title, but specifies the animal more precisely (deer refers to a larger mammal, alternatively also to all members of Cervidae family). In Czech, the word roe deer (srnec) is in plural, thus another possible translation would be The Death of Beautiful Roe Deers. All quotes from the book, as well as from the Czech academic literature used in this text are my translations. An English translation of Pavel’s second book, How I came to know fish (Jak jsem potkal ryby, 1974), trans. Jindřiška Badal and Robert McDowell, has been published (New York, New Directions Books, 1991; 2nd ed. London, Penguin Books, 2010).

3 Among his best-known works on the subject are prose pieces such as Dukla among the Skyscrapers (1964, čes. Dukla mezi mrakodrapy), which describes the tour of the Czech football team Dukla Prague in North America. Or The Box Full of Champagne (1967, Bedna plná šampaňského), a collection of stories reflecting that time’s famous sport events.

4 The family changed their last name after World War II. Pavel writes on this topic: “We were called Pavlovi then. At the time we thought that since we lived in Czech country, we should have a proper Czech name instead of Popper, and perhaps we were also a little more scared than we needed to be.” Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců. Sebrané spisy Oty Pavla IV, Prague, HAK, 2002, p. 76.

5 Bohumil Svozil, “Ota Pavel: Smrt krásných srnců (1971)”, in Jiří Holý et al., Český parnas: Literatura 1970–1990, Prague, Galaxie, 1993, p. 42.

6 Gustav Fencl, “Kniha, která je objevem”, Lidová demokracie, 18.5.1971, p. 5.

7 Mariusz Szczygieł, “O tom, že život se dá prožít jako svátek”, in Mariusz Szczygieł, Láska nebeská, trans. Helena Stachová, Prague, Dokořán, 2012, p. 31.

8 See for example in Uhlířová: “[…] we can speak of a certain kind of journalism, discussing publicly one’s own experiences and the stories of one’s relatives… The reporter’s effort to give the truest possible testimony compels him to write only about what he has experienced, what he has witnessed, what he has come to know well” (Marie Uhlířová, “Povídky Oty Pavla”, Česká literatura, vol. 27, n° 1, 1979, p. 58).

9 The first evidence of his intention to write a memoir can be found in a letter he wrote to his brother from a psychiatric hospital, where he had been hospitalised many times with manic-depressive psychosis: “It is rewarding to write about sports because many people are involved in it. But my most secret wish – if I am healthy – is to write about normal life. About old Prošek, about Franěk, about the hermit from Skryje, a book of stories about our dad and mom, etc.” (Aleksander Kaczorowski, Ota Pavel: Pod povrchem, trans. Martin Veselka, Brno, Host, 2020, p. 14).

10 Meaning the narrator and his two older brothers, Jiří and Hugo.

11 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 32.

12 Ibid., p. 47.

13 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, in John Berger, Why Look at Animals?, New York, Penguin, 2009, p. 5.

14 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 11.

15 Ibid., p. 82.

16 Ibid., p. 38.

17 Ibid., p. 20.

18 Ibid., p. 60.

19 Ibid., p. 66.

20 Ibid., p. 67.

21 Five of the overall eight stories have some kind of animal in their titles.

22 Ibid., p. 33.

23 Marie Uhlířová, “Povídky Oty Pavla”, op. cit., p. 6.

24 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 34.

25 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, op. cit., p. 25.

26 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 35.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., p. 34.

29 Jan Matonoha, “Zvíře”, in Jan Matonoha et al., Za(de)konstruktivismem: Kritické koncepty (post)poststrukturální literární a kulturní teorie, Prague, Academia, 2017, p. 404.

30 Ibid., p. 407.

31 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 35.

32 Ibid., p. 34.

33 Jan Matonoha, “Zvíře”, op. cit., p. 404.

34 Ibid., p. 407.

35 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, op. cit., p. 13.

36 Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)”, in Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, trans. David Wills, New York, Fordham University Press, 2008, p. 3.

37 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 39.

38 Ibid., p. 41.

39 Jacques Derrida, “The Animal That Therefore I Am”, op. cit., p. 4.

40 Sharon Sliwinski, “The Gaze Called Animal: Notes for a Study on Thinking”, The New Centennial Review, vol. 11, n° 2, 2011, p. 73.

41 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 98.

42 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, op. cit., p. 2.

43 Ibid., p. 4.

44 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 40.

45 Ibid., p. 52.

46 Ibid., p. 53.

47 Svitlana Pereplotchykova, “Yorgos Lanthimos’ The Killing of a Sacred Deer: Contemporary Reception of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis”, Lіteraturoznavstvo. Movoznavstvo. Folkloristika, vol. 1, n° 33, 2023, p. 102.

48 Ibid.

49 Ota Pavel, Smrt krásných srnců, op. cit., p. 42.

50 Ibid., p. 59.

51 Ibid., p. 78.

52 Ibid., p. 87.

53 Ibid., p. 68. In the original: “vypálil Němcům rybník”, which would translate to the English idiom “steal a march on someone”. I have chosen to use a translation that preserves the pond/fish meaning.

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Référence électronique

Valentýna Žišková, « The Eyes of Dog and Man Collided: Animals in Ota Pavel’s The Death of Beautiful Roe Deer  »TRANS- [En ligne], 31 | 2025, mis en ligne le 07 avril 2025, consulté le 21 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/trans/13227 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13k9q

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Auteur

Valentýna Žišková

Department of Czech and Comparative Literature, Faculty of Arts, Charles University

Valentýna Žišková graduated from the Faculty of Arts of Charles University in Prague with a Bachelor’s degree in Czech Language and Literature and Master’s degree in Comparative Literature with the diploma thesis “Possibilities of Synthesis of Marxist-Formalist Polemics in Texts by Selected Members of Bakhtin’s Circle: Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Pavel N. Medvedev, and Valentin N. Voloshinov”. Since 2024, Valentýna Žišková has been enrolled in the double degree doctoral programme in German and Slavonic Studies at Sapienza University (Rome, Italy) and Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) with the research project “The Gothic and post-postmodernism”. In her research project, she maps the notion of the “Gothic” and its various forms in contemporary literary texts, focusing on the concept of the “Gothic” in the Anglophone environment, where it has a long and important tradition, and comparing this context to that of Eastern European literature. Above all, she is interested in how modern-day conditions – which she refers to in her dissertation as “post-postmodernism” – are reflected in contemporary texts, and how they correspond to or transform traditional Gothic motifs.

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