The hunter and the hunted

"There is a passion for hunting, something deeply implanted in the human breast", we read in chapter 10 of Charles Dickens's Oliver Twist. On the other hand, Samuel Johnson in the mid-18th century proclaims that "it is very strange, and very melancholy, that the paucity of human pleasures should persuade us ever to call hunting one of them".

Celebration and condemnation, instinct and preservation, primordial impulse and civilised control, these are the reactions for and against one of the hottest issues under discussion the world over. Sunny Malta is there with the rest of them.

Hunting has been indulged in by both prince and pauper since time immemorial. Whether clad in shining boots and spotless red jackets with a hip-flask to aid the cry for blood, mounted on groomed steeds and accompanied by howling hounds or whether clothed in nakedness, barefoot and unkempt, treading over rock and wading waist-high in streams, hunting has been one exercise that has bridged the seemingly irreconcilable gap between the haughty and the humble, the civilised and the coarse, the historic and the prehistoric.

For the former it is a pleasurable and costly endeavour that allows mannered self-control to snap out of its belted confines, a histrionic bursting forth of the instinctual and the barbaric that is forever restrained under the guise of expensive façades and perfumed wigs, if only for one glorious afternoon.

For the latter it is a desperate need and a poignant attempt at achieving some kind of civilised existence by struggling to keep alive in procuring some food for himself and his loved ones.

One goes back to his opulent pile flushed with the sweat of superficial victory, the other trudges his weary way to the cold comfort of his cave, broken but not beaten with a sense of profound loss.

Could the contrast be more glaring or the irony more bitter?

What was once a life-giving exercise has become a seemingly unquenchable thirst for destruction. Indulging in his hobby, the civilised man goes on the rampage and, degenerating into a savage, there is no end to the slaughter, the abuse and the corruption of nature. Living in a world of presumed advance, a world that boasts unbridled progress and endless wealth, when it comes to hunting the metaphorical hell hounds are unleashed in a storm of primitive fury, violence and revenge.

Is this a pastime? I am not sure I know the meaning of the word any more. Dr Johnson would have had a hard time compiling a new dictionary. This type of recreation is hardly a re-creation. It is more of a regress into de-creation. It certainly does not have a civilising influence on hunter and hunted alike. What pleasure could be got out of shooting down a robin or mutilating a swan? Is man really keen on destroying such harmless creatures, or does the urge for annihilation go much deeper?

It appears that the violent exterior conceals an even uglier interior. It seems that beauty is insulting man's thwarted, warped mind. This curious paradox never fails to bewilder. The secularisation of the sacred has wreaked havoc with man's worldview, has carved a jagged, sterile wasteland in the desert of his soul. The destruction of beauty in the form of a swan, the brutal silencing of the bird's eternal song, becomes the perverted yardstick by which man measures his values. There is no Colerdigean guilt here. The "albatross" is dead, and the hunter exults in his achievement. Experience corrupts innocence. William Blake's "mind-forged manacles" have trapped man in that same thing that was created to set him free - beauty.

Speaking about fox hunting, Oscar Wilde describes it as the "inexplicable in hot pursuit of the inedible". Wilde's tortured syntax here is the stuff of serious comedy. It is spasmodically hilarious, yet beneath its shimmering veneer lies an inscrutable logic. The mild pursuit of nature may be tolerated. Degenerating it into tragic farce becomes a crime.