#animalhuman

[cor-ardens-archive]

Bodies That Bleed: Metamorphosis in Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales, Anna Pasolini

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

Adrenaline isn’t interested in ennui. Adrenaline floods, regardless, in my state not just the human fibres but lupine leftovers too, those creature dregs that hadn’t fully conceded transformation.

Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf

[ranime90]

[opuntie]

Lots of ears.

[cor-ardens-archive]

The shadow escapes from the body like an animal we had been sheltering. In place of formal correspondences, what Bacon’s painting constitutes is a zone of indiscernibility or undecidability between man and animal. Man becomes animal, but not without the animal becoming spirit at the same time, the spirit of man, the physical spirit of man presented in the mirror as Eumenides or Fate. It is never a combination of forms, but rather the common fact: the common fact of man and animal. Bacon pushes this to the point where even his most isolated Figure is already a coupled Figure; man is coupled with his animal in a latent bullfight.

Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation, Gilles Deleuze, tr. Daniel W. Smith

[cor-ardens-archive]

“The tigress! The tigress! The tigress!”

... And I heard the terrible mewing of the beast, and the crunching of the bones in her jaw.

There was nothing to be done. We had arrived too late. I understood what had happened. The cornered tigress had bound upon Joan, and, sinking her claws deep into her breast, she must have bitten her on the lips, preventing her from calling for help... Tigresses are as cunning as they are cruel, you see...

Finally, my poor Joan was devoured. I missed her for a very long time, because she was an excellent hunting companion. I am neither tenderly nor cowardly, but I heard, to the very end of my life, that mewing at once furious and satisfied, and that crunching of the bones in that terrible jaw.

— Renée Vivien, ‘Trahison de la forêt’, from La Dame à la louve

Original:

“La tigresse! La tigresse! La tigresse!”

Et j’entendis l’horrible miaulement de la bête et le broiement des os sous sa mâchoire.

Il n’y avait rien à faire. Nous étions arrivés trop tard. Je compris ce qui s’était passé. La tigresse embusquée avait bondi sur Joan, et, lui enfonçant ses griffes dans la poitrine, elle avait dû la mordre aux lèvres, ce qui l’avait empêchée d’appeler au secours… Les tigresses sont aussi rusées que cruelles, voyez-vous…

Enfin, ma pauvre Joan a été dévorée. Je l’ai regrettée très longtemps, car c’était une excellente compagne de chasse. Je ne suis ni tendre ni poltron, mais j’entendrai, jusqu’à la fin de ma vie, ce miaulement à la fois furieux et satisfait et ce broiement des os sous l’affreuse mâchoire.

[cor-ardens-archive]

Anna Pasolini, Bodies That Bleed: Metamorphosis in Angela Carter’s Fairy Tales

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

Do as I say. You will do as I—many of his early utterances were cut off by the inarticulate urgency of animal need. It came down like a guillotine. I knew what the need was. There was no not knowing. There was nowhere to hide the thought that I wouldn’t … that I would never—

Glen Duncan, The Last Werewolf