Although saying so will probably lead to bloody conflict in Europe and intermittent showers in Letchworth, Herts, it seems to me axiomatic in terms of human psychology that mythologies in which zoomorphs and humans mingle socially progressed naturally to bestiaries mirroring human behaviour, from which emerged zany zoologies like Pere Quart’s. Ramon Llull’s Llibre de les Bèsties (Book of the Beasts), dated by Ferran Gadea to the early 1280s, falls into the second category. Llull may have had such a great leap forward in mind when in chapter four he wrote:

Lord, said Reynard, in that time, when God threw Adam out of paradise, God cursed the Serpent, who had advised Eve to eat of the fruit that God had forbidden to Adam; and from that time to this, all serpents are horrible to see, and are venomous, and through the serpent have come all evils in the world; and for this reason a wise man had a serpent thrown out of the king’s council, which serpent the king greatly loved.

This same expository progression from symbiosis to allegory is used in a more recent moral novel, Orwell’s Animal Farm, in which Biblical convention linking human folly and animal agency is scrupulously followed. I think it’s pretty unlikely that Orwell encountered Llull’s beasts, but embassies between the animal and the human kingdoms also form an important and unusual feature of both works. However, where Orwell despairs of the present and fears the future, Llull cheerfully champions the role of proto-Machiavellian guile in the maintenance and marginal improvement of a society that is divinely ordained. Orwell was deeply conservative, but it’s funny to think of him having been more so than a thirteenth century quasi-cleric.

An English translation of Llibre de les Bèsties was published in London in 1927, but I don’t think there’s one available at the moment. Ferran Gadea’s edition was issued in 2002 by Proa.

Tags: Orwell, Ramon Llull
Categories: God, the angels and the orders of the faithful, Heathen philosophers, Languages, Of metres, Serpents

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1. Geoff
   January 18th 2004 18:59

   Ah yes, but Orwell was the worker’s friend…

2. Trevor
   January 18th 2004 20:34

   Llull bought an Arab slave in order to learn the language and seems to have beaten him up when he took the Lord’s name in vain, but Orwell also beat his servants in Burma.

3. Pablo Garcia
   March 22nd 2009 10:18

   A recent translation of Ramon Llull’s Book of the Beasts into English, accompanied by illustrations by Albetrto Garcia Alvarez, is to be found at:
   http://www.algaral.com/book_of_beasts/index060208.htm

   Visit this and please send notes, comments etc to the author….