Becoming Human

Becoming Human

by Roberto Calasso,Translated by Richard Dixon

In the time of the Great Raven even the invisible was visible. And it continually transformed itself. Animals, at that time, were not necessarily animals. They might happen to be animals, but sometimes they were humans, gods, lords of a species, demons, ancestors. And humans weren’t necessarily humans but could also be the transient form of something else. There were no tricks for recognizing those that appeared. They had to be already known, as one knows a friend or an adversary. Everything, from spiders to the dead, occurred within a single flow of forms. It was the realm of metamorphosis...

...When hunting began, it was not a man who chased an animal. It was a being that chased another being. No one could say with certainty who each of them were. The chased animal could be a man transformed or a god or simply an animal or a spirit or a dead being. And one day humans added another invention to the many others: they began to surround themselves with animals that adapted to humans, whereas for a very long time it had been humans that had imitated animals. They became settled—and somewhat staid.

Why so much hesitation before setting off to hunt the bear? Because the bear could also be a man...

Hunting starts as an inevitable act and ends as a gratuitous act. It elaborates a sequence of ritual practices that precede the act (the killing) and follow it. The act can only be encompassed in time, as the prey is encompassed in space. But the course of the hunt itself is unnameable and uncontrollable, like coition. No one knows what will happen between hunter and prey when they face each other. But what is certain is that prior to the hunt the hunter performs acts of devotion. And after the hunt he feels the need to offload a feeling of guilt. He welcomes the dead animal into his hut like a noble guest. In front of the bear that has just been cut into pieces, the hunter murmurs a prayer of vertiginous sweetness:

“Allow me to kill you even in the future.”