Although in his portraits and descriptions Fabre is simple and exact, and
so full of natural geniality; although he can so handle his words as to
render them "adequate" to reproduce the moving pictures of the tiny
creatures he observes, his style touches a higher level, flashes with
colour, and grows rich with imagery when he seeks to interpret the feelings
which animate them: their loves, their battles, their cunning schemes, and
the pursuit of their prey; all that vast drama which everywhere accompanies
the travail of creation.
It is here in particular that Fabre shows us what horizons, as yet almost
unexplored, what profound and inexhaustible resources science is able to
offer poetry.
The breaking of egg or chrysalid is in itself a moving event; for to attain
to the light is for all these creatures "a prodigious travail."
The hour of spring has sounded. At the call of the field-cricket, the
herald of the spring, the germs that slumber in nymph or chrysalis have
broken through their spell.
What haste and ingenuity are required to emerge from the natal darkness, to
unwrap the swaddling-bands, to break the subterranean shells, to demolish
the waxen bulkheads, to perforate the soil or to escape from prisons of
silk!
The woodland bug, whose egg is a masterpiece, invents I know not what
magical centre-bit, what curious piece of locksmith's work, in order to
unlock its natal casket and achieve its liberty.
For days the grasshopper "butts its head against the roughness of the soil,
and wars upon the pebbles; by dint of frantic wriggling it escapes from the
womb of the earth, bursts its old coat, and is transfigured, opening its
eyes to the light, and leaping for the first time."
The Bombyx of the pine-tree "decks its brow with points of diamond, spreads
its wings, and erects its plumes, and shakes out its fleece to fly only in
the darkness, to wed the same night, and to die on the morrow."
What marvellous inventions, what machinery, what incredible contrivances,
"in order that a tiny fly can emerge from under ground"!
The Anthrax assumes a panoply of trepans, an assortment of gimlets and
knives, harpoons and grapnels, in order to perforate its ceiling of cement;
then the lugubrious black fly appears, all moist as yet with the humours of
the laboratory of life, steadies itself upon its trembling legs, dries its
wings, quits its suit of armour, and takes flight."
The blue-fly, buried in the depth of the sand, "cracks its barrel-shaped
coffin," and splits its mask, in order to disinter itself; the head divides
into two halves, between which we see emerging and disappearing by turns a
monstrous tumour, which comes and goes, swells and shrivels, palpitates,
labours, lunges, and retires, thus compressing and gradually undermining
the sand, until at last the newborn fly emerges from the depth of the
catacombs. (13/1.)
Certain young spiders, in order to emancipate themselves, to conquer space,
and disperse themselves about the world, resort to an ingenious system of
aviation. They gain the highest point of the thicket, and release a thread,
which, seized by the wind, carries them away suspended. Each shines like a
point of light against the foliage of the cypresses. There is a continuous
stream of tiny passengers, leaping and descending in scattered sheaves
under the caresses of the sun, like atomic projectiles, like the fountain
of fire at a pyrotechnic display. What a glorious departure, what an entry
into the world! Gripping its aeronautic thread, the insect ascends in
apotheosis! (13/2.)
But if all are called all are not chosen. "How many can move only at the
greatest peril under the rugged earth, proceeding from shock to shock, in
the harsh womb of universal life, and, arrested by a grain of sand, succumb
half-way"!
There are others whom slower metamorphoses condemn to vegetate still longer
in the subterranean night, before they are permitted to assume their
festival attire, and share in their turn in the gladness of creation.
Thus the Cicada is forced to labour for long gloomy years in the darkness
before it can emerge from the soil. At the moment when it issues from the
earth the larva, soiled with mire, "resembles a sewer-man; its eyes are
whitish, nebulous, squinting, blind." Then "it clings to some twig, it
splits down the back, rejects its discarded skin, drier than horny
parchment, and becomes the Cigale, which is at first of a pale grass-green
hue." Then,
"Half drunken with her joy, she feasts
In a hail of fire";
And all day long drinks of the sugared sap of tender bark, and is silent
only at night, sated with light and heat. The song, which forms part of the
majestic symphony of the harvest-tide, announces merely its delight in
existence. Having passed years underground, the cigale has only a month to
reign, to be happy in a world of light, under the caressing sun. Judge
whether the wild little cymbals can ever be loud enough "to celebrate such
felicity, so well earned and so ephemeral"! (13/3.)
All sing for happiness, each after its kind, through the calm of the summer
days. Their minds are intoxicated; it is their fashion of praying, of
adoring, of expressing "the joys of life: a full crop and the sun on the
back." Even the humble grasshopper rubs its flanks to express its joy,
raises and lowers its shanks till its wing-cases squeak, and is enchanted
with its own music, which it commences or terminates suddenly "according to
the alternations of sun and shade." Each insect has its rhythm, strident or
barely perceptible; the music of the thickets and fallows caressed by the
sun, rising and falling in waves of joyful life.
The insects make merry; they hold uproarious festival; and they mate
insatiably; even before forming a mutual acquaintance; in a furious rush of
living, for "love is the sole joy of the animal," and "to love is to die."
Hardly unwrapped, still dusty from the strenuous labour of deliverance,
"the female of the Scolia is seized by the male, who does not even give her
time to wash her eyes." Having slept over a year underground, the Sitares,
barely rid of their mummy-cases, taste, in the sunlight, a few minutes of
love, on the very site of their re-birth; then they die. Life surges,
burns, flares, sparkles, rushes "in a perpetual tide," a brief radiance
between two nights.
A world of a myriad fairies fills the rustling forest: day and night it
unfolds a thousand marvellous pictures; about the root of a bramble, in the
shadow of an old wall, on a slope of loose soil, or in the dense thickets.
"The insect is transfigured for the nuptial ceremony; and each hopes, in
its ritual, to declare its passion." Fabre had some thought of writing the
Golden Book of their bridals and their wedding festivals (13/4.); the
Kamasutra of their feasts and rules of love; and with what art, at once
frank and reserved, has he here and there handled this wonderful theme! In
the radiant garden of delight, where no detail of truth is omitted, but
where nothing shocks us, Fabre reveals himself as he is in his
conversation; evading the subject where it takes a licentious turn;
fundamentally chaste and extremely reserved.
At the foot of the rocks the Psyche "appears in the balcony of her boudoir,
in the rays of the caressing sun; lying on the cloudy softness of an
incomparable eider-down." She awaits the visit of the spouse, "the gentle
Bombyx," who, for the ceremony, "has donned his feathery plumes and his
mantle of black velvet." "If he is late in coming, the female grows
impatient; then she herself makes the advances, and sets forth in search of
her mate."
Drawn by the same voluptuous and overwhelming force, the cricket ventures
to leave his burrow. Adorned "in his fairest attire, black jacket, more
beauteous than satin, with a stripe of carmine on the thigh," he wanders
through the wild herbage, "by the discreet glimmer of twilight," until he
reaches the distant lodging of the beloved. There at last he arrives "upon
the sanded walk, the court of honour that precedes the entry." But already
the place is occupied by another aspirant. Then the two rivals fall upon
one another, biting one another's heads, "until it ends by the retreat of
the weaker, whom the victor insults by a bravura cry." The happy champion
bridles, assuming a proud air, as of one who knows himself a handsome
fellow, before the fair one, who feigns to hide herself behind her tuft of
aphyllantus, all covered with azure flowers. "With a gesture of a fore-limb
he passes one of his antennae through his mandibles as though to curl it;
with his long-spurred, red-striped legs he shuffles with impatience; he
kicks the empty air; but emotion renders him mute." (13/5.)
In the foliage of the ash-tree the lover of the female Cantharis thrashes
his companion, who makes herself as small as she can, hiding her head in
her bosom; he bangs her with his fists, buffets her with his abdomen,
"subjects her to an erotic storm, a rain of blows"; then, with his arms
crossed, he remains a moment motionless and trembling; finally, seizing
both antennae of the desired one, he forces her to raise her head "like a
cavalier proudly seated on horse and holding the reins in his hands."
The Osmiae "reply by a click of the jaws to the advances of their lovers,
who recoil, and then, doubtless to make themselves more valiant, they also
execute a ferocious mandibular grimace. With this byplay of the jaws and
their menacing gestures of the head in the empty air the lovers have the
air of intending to eat one another." Thus they preface their bridals by
displays of gallantry, recalling the ancient betrothal customs of which
Rabelais speaks; the pretenders were cuffed and derided and threatened with
a hearty pummelling. (13/6.)
On the arid hillsides, where the doubtful rays of the moon pierce the
storm-clouds and illumine the sultry atmosphere, the pale scorpions, with
short-sighted eyes, hideous monsters with misshapen heads, "display their
strange faces, and two by two, hand in hand, stalk in measured paces amid
the tufts of lavender. How tell their joys, their ecstasies, that no human
language can express...!" (13/7.)
However, the glow-worm, to guide the lover, lights its beacon "like a spark
fallen from the full moon"; but "presently the light grows feebler, and
fades to a discreet nightlight, while all around the host of nocturnal
creatures, delayed in their affairs, murmur the general epithalamium."
(13/8.)
But their happy time is soon over; tragedy is about to follow idyll.
One must live, and "the intestine rules the world."
All creatures that fill the world are incessantly conflicting, and one
lives only at the cost of another.
On the other hand, in order that the coming generations may see the light,
the present generations must think of the preservation of the young.
"Perish all the rest provided the brood flourish!" And in the depth of
burrows the future larvae who live only for their stomachs, "little ogres,
greedy of living flesh," must have their prey.
To hunger and maternity let us also add love, which "rules the world by
conflict."
Such are the components of the "struggle for existence," such as Fabre has
described it, but with no other motive than to describe what he has
observed and seen. Such are the ordinary themes of the grandiose battles
which he has scattered through his narratives, and never did circus or
arena offer more thrilling spectacles; no jungle ever hid more moving
combats in its thickets."
"Each has its ruses of war, its methods of attack, its methods of killing."
What tactics--"studied, scientific, worthy of the athletes of the ancient
palaestra"--are those which the Sphex employs to paralyse the Cricket and
the Cerceris to capture the Cleona, to secure them in a suitable place, so
as to operate on them more surely and at leisure!
Beside these master paralysers, so expert in the art of dealing slow death,
there are those which, with a precision no less scholarly, kill and wither
their victims at a single stroke, and without leaving a trace: "true
practitioners in crime."
On the rock-rose bushes, with their great pink flowers, "the pretty
Thomisus, the little crab-spider, clad in satin," watches for the domestic
bee, and suddenly kills it, seizing the back of the head, while the
Philanthus, also seizing it by the head, plunges its sting under the chin,
neither too high nor too low, but "exactly in the narrow joint of the
neck," for both insects know that in this limited spot, in which is
concentrated a small nervous mass, something like a brain, is "the weak
point, most vulnerable of all," the fault in the cuirass, the vital centre.
Others, like the Araneidae, intoxicate their prey, and their subtle bite,
"which resembles a kiss," in whatever part of the body it is applied,
"produces almost immediately a gradual swoon."
Thus the great hairy Bourdon, in the course of its peregrinations across
the wastes of thyme, sometimes foolishly strays into the lair of the
Tarantula, whose eyes glimmer like jewels at the back of his den. Hardly
has the insect disappeared underground than a sort of shrill rattling is
heard, a "true death-song," immediately followed by the completest silence.
"Only a moment, and the unfortunate creature is absolutely dead, proboscis
outstretched and limbs relaxed. The bite of the rattlesnake would not
produce a more sudden paralysis."
The terrible spider "crouching on the battlements of his castle, his heavy
belly in the sun, attentive to the slightest rustling, leaps upon whatever
passes, fly or Libellula, and with a single stroke strangles his victim,
and drains its body, drinking the warm blood."
"To dislodge him from his keep needs all the cunning strategy of the
Pompilus; a terrible duel, a hand-to-hand combat, stupendous, truly epic,
in which the subtle address and the ingenious audacity of the winged insect
eventually triumph over the dreadful spider and his poisoned fangs."
(13/9.)
On the pink heather "the timid spider of the thickets suspends by ethereal
cables the branching whorl of his snare, which the tears of the night have
turned into chaplets of jewels...The magical jewellery sparkles in the sun,
attracting mosquitoes and butterflies; but whosoever approaches too closely
perishes, a victim of curiosity." Above the funnel is the trap, "a chaos of
springs, a forest of cordage; like the rigging of a ship dismembered by the
tempest. The desperate creature struggles in the shrouds of the rigging,
then falls into the gloomy slaughter-house where the spider lurks ready to
bleed his prey."
Death is everywhere.
Each crevice of bark, each shadow of a leaf, conceals a hunter armed with a
deadly weapon, all his senses on the alert. Everywhere are teeth, fangs,
talons, stings, pincers, and scythes.
Leaping in the long grasses, the Decticus with the ivory face "crunches the
heads of grasshoppers in his mandibles."
A ferocious creature, the grub of the Hemerobius, disembowels plant-lice,
making of their skins a battle-dress, covering its back with the
eviscerated victims, "as the Red Indian ties about his loins the tresses of
his scalped enemies."
Caterpillars are surrounded by the implacable voracity of the Carabidae:
"The furry skins are gaping with wounds; their contents escape in knots of
entrails, bright green with their aliment, the needles of the pine-tree;
the caterpillars writhe, struggling with loop-like movements, gripping the
sand with their feet, dribbling and gnashing their mandibles. Those as yet
unwounded are digging desperately in the attempt to escape underground. Not
one succeeds. They are scarcely half buried before some beetle runs to them
and destroys them by an eviscerating wound."
At the centre of its net, which seems "woven of moonbeams," in the midst of
its snare, a glutinous trap of infernal ingenuity, or hidden at a distance
in its cabin of green leaves, the Epeïra fasciata waits and watches for its
prey. Let the terrible hornet, or the Libellula auripennis, flying from
stem to stem, fall into the limed snare; the insect struggles, endeavours
to unwind itself; the net trembles violently as though it would be torn
from its cables. Immediately the spider darts forward, running boldly to
the intruder. With rapid gestures the two hinder limbs weave a winding-
sheet of silk as they rotate the victim in order to enshroud it...The
ancient Retiarius, condemned to meet a powerful beast of prey, appeared in
the arena with a net of cordage lying upon his left shoulder; the animal
sprang upon him; the man, with a sudden throw, caught it in the meshes; a
stroke of the trident despatched it. Similarly the Epeïra throws its web,
and when there is no longer any movement under the white shroud the spider
draws closer; its venomous fangs perform the office of the trident.
(13/10.)
The Praying Mantis, that demoniac creature which alone among the insects
turns its head to gaze, "whose pious airs conceal the most atrocious
habits," remains on the watch, motionless, for hours at a time. Let a great
grasshopper chance to come by: the Mantis follows it with its glance,
glides between the leaves, and suddenly rises up before it; "and then
assumes its spectral pose, which terrifies and fascinates the prey; the
wing-covers open, the wings spring to their full width, forming a vast
pyramid which dominates the back; a sort of swishing sound is heard, like
the hiss of a startled adder; the murderous fore-limbs open to their full
extent, forming a cross with the body, and exhibiting the axillae
ornamented with eyes vaguely resembling those of the peacock's tail, part
of the panoply of war, concealed upon ordinary occasions. These are only
exhibited when the creature makes itself terrible and superb for battle.
Then the two grappling-hooks are thrown; the fangs strike, the double
scythes close together and hold the victim as in a vice." (13/11.)
There is no peace; night falls and the horrible conflict continues in the
darkness. Atrocious struggles, merciless duels, fill the summer nights. On
the stems of the long grasses, beside the furrows, the glow-worm
"anaethetizes the snail," instilling into it its venom, which stupefies and
produces sleep, in order to immobilize its prey before devouring it.
Having chorused their joy all the day long in the sunshine, in the evening
the Cicadae fall asleep among the olives and the lofty plane-trees. But
suddenly there is a sound as of a cry of anguish, short and strident; it is
the despairing lamentation of the cicada, surprised in repose by the green
grasshopper, that ardent hunter of the night, which leaps upon the cicada,
seizes it by the flank, and devours the contents of the stomach. After the
orgy of music comes night and assassination.
Such is the gloomy epic which goes forward among the flowers, amidst the
foliage, under the shadowy boughs, and on the dusty fallows. Such are the
sights that nature offers amid the profound peace of the fields, behind the
flowering of the sudden spring-tide and the splendours of the summer. These
murders, these assassinations are committed in a mute and silent world, but
"the ear of the mind" seems to hear
"A tiger's rage and cries as of a lion
Roaring remotely through this pigmy world."
Was it to these thrilling revelations that Victor Hugo intended to apply
these so wonderfully appropriate lines? Was it he who bestowed upon Fabre,
according to a poetic tradition, the name of "the Homer of the insects,"
which fits him so marvellously well?
It is possible, although Fabre himself can cite no evidence to support
these suggestions; but let us respect the legend, simply because it is
charming, and because it adds an exact and picturesque touch to the
portrait of Fabre.
In this drama of a myriad scenes, in which the little actors in their
rustic stage play each in his turn their parts at the mercy of occasion and
the hazard of encounter, the humblest creatures are personages of
importance.
Like the human comedy, this also has its characters privileged by birth,
clothed in purple, dazzling with embroidery, "adorned with lofty plumes,"
who strut pretentiously; "its idle rich," covered with robes of gold of
rustling splendour, who display their diamonds, their topazes and their
sapphires; who gleam with fire and shine like mirrors, magnificent of mien;
but their brains are "dense, heavy, inept, without imagination, without
ingenuity, deprived of all common sense, knowing no other anxiety than to
drink in the sunlight at the heart of a rose or to sleep off their draughts
in the shadow of a leaf.
Those who labour, on the contrary, do not attract the eye, and the most
obscure are often the most interesting. Necessitous poverty has educated
and formed them, has excited in them "feats of invention," unsuspected
talents, original industries; a thousand curious and unexpected callings,
and no subject of poetry equals in interest the detailed history of one of
these tiny creatures, by which we pass without observing them, amid the
stones, the brambles, and the dead leaves. It is these above all that add
an original and epic note to the vast symphony of the world.
But death also has its poetry. Its shadowy domains hold lessons no less
magnificent, and the most putrid carrion is to Fabre a "tabernacle" in
which a divine comedy is enacted.
The ant, that "ardent filibuster, comes first, and commences to dissect it
piecemeal."
The Necrophori "exhaling the odour of musk, and bearing red pompons at the
end of their antennae," are "transcendent alchemists."
The Sarcophagi, or grey flesh flies, "with red bloodshot eyes, and the
stony gaze of a knacker"; the Saprinidae, "with bodies of polished ebony
like pearls of jet"; the Silpha aplata, with large and sombre wing-cases in
mourning; the shiny slow-trotting Horn-beetle; the Dermestes, "powdered
with snow beneath the stomach"; the slender Staphylinus; the whole fauna of
the corpse, the whole horde of artisans of death, "intoxicating themselves
with purulence, probing, excavating, mangling, dissecting, transmuting, and
stamping out infection."
Fabre gives a curious exposition of "that strange art" by which the grub of
the grey bot-fly, the vulgar maggot, by means of a subtle pepsine,
disintegrates and liquefies solid matter; and it is because this singular
solvent has no effect upon the epidermis that the fly, in its wisdom,
chooses by preference the mucous membranes, the corner of the eye, the
entrance of the nostrils, the borders of the lips, the live flesh of
wounds, there to deposit its eggs.
With what penetration this original mind has analysed "the operation of the
crucible in which all things are fused that they may recommence" and has
expounded the marvellous lesson which is revealed by decomposition and
putridity!