Sredni Vashtar

There is an occasional series on this blog, in which I recommend and introduce a work of short fiction that is available to read on the Internet. The last in the series was 'The Job Application' by Robert Walser.

Today I would like to recommend and introduce 'Sredni Vashtar' by H.H. Munro, also known as Saki. I've been aware of Saki for a very long time. I think I was drawn to the name when I was young, because of my Orientalist predilections, and plucked a volume of his tales from a shelf in a bookshop. My memory is of reading the beginning of a short story that had something to do with a wolf. (Could it be 'The She-Wolf'?) I remember that I was almost immediately put off by an 'amusing' lightness of tone, similar to that in the works of P.G. Wodehouse (on whom Saki was apparently an influence). It all had the feel of a witty satire of polite society, and never having been in polite society, I could not care less whether it was satirised or not. So, I stopped reading after about a page or two, disgusted with Saki for ever having dared to take an 'exotic' name and having polluted it with the atmosphere of the English drawing room.

I have only just got round (perhaps twenty years later), to giving Saki a second chance, and I'm glad that I have. This turn of events came about because of an exchange in the comments of this blog post. The blog-master, John Renard, remarked that a commentor on the YouTube Remember You're a Womble clip had taken the pseudonym 'Sredni Vashtar', an allusion to the tale of the same name by Saki, and informed me of my own apparent resemblance to the youthful hero of that tale, Conradin. Intrigued, I went to Wikipedia, where I found the following:

The story concerns a 10-year-old boy called Conradin, who lives with his strict cousin and guardian, Mrs. De Ropp. Conradin rebels against her and invents a new religion for himself, which centres around idolising a polecat-ferret he calls Sredni Vashtar; a vengeful, merciless god. Conradin keeps the polecat hidden in a cage in the garden shed, and worships the idol in secret. The story comes to a climax when his cousin sets out to discover his god.

It sounded like just my kind of story. (Incidentally, I had a lot to do with ferrets when I was young.)

The story is, in fact, very short. It will take you perhaps ten or fifteen minutes to read, if you're as slow as I am. You may read it at Project Gutenberg here.

Immediately after I read the story, I wrote an e-mail to someone well-known on this blog. What I wrote contains spoilers, et cetera, so I suggest you read the story itself before reading further. In any case, this was my e-mail:

I've just read the story.

It's excellently written. I wasn't sure I was convinced by Mrs de Ropp's death, which seemed to require a suspension of disbelief. Then, for some reason, I went back to the beginning of the story, feeling I'd missed something, and I got it. Conradin is fighting for his life. I forgot that. It's the simple battle of imagination against inexorable rationalism. Rationalism wishes to extinguish life itself. It's because he's fighting for his life, and knows it, that he wins. I approve.

I see a similar conflict addressed elsewhere, for instance, in Chapter 35 of Jane Eyre, when St.John proposes to Jane, suggesting she accompany him in his missionary work:

"No. St. John, I will not marry you. I adhere to my resolution."

The avalanche had shaken and slid a little forward, but it did not yet crash down.

"Once more, why this refusal?" he asked.

"Formerly," I answered, "because you did not love me; now, I reply, because you almost hate me. If I were to marry you, you would kill me. You are killing me now."

His lips and cheeks turned white–quite white.

"I SHOULD KILL YOU–I AM KILLING YOU? Your words are such as ought not to be used: violent, unfeminine, and untrue. They betray an unfortunate state of mind: they merit severe reproof: they would seem inexcusable, but that it is the duty of man to forgive his fellow even until seventy-and-seven times."

I had finished the business now. While earnestly wishing to erase from his mind the trace of my former offence, I had stamped on that tenacious surface another and far deeper impression, I had burnt it in.

"Now you will indeed hate me," I said. "It is useless to attempt to conciliate you: I see I have made an eternal enemy of you."

Ever since I first read this scene, I have always hated St.John.

Burroughs also describes the same conflict when he talks about white men engaged in a programme of extermination against the Native Americans by eliminating their dreams:

The way to kill a man or a nation is to cut off his dreams, the way the whites are taking care of the Indians: killing their dreams, their magic, their familiar spirits.

Elsewhere (My Education: A Book of Dreams, I believe), in reaction to the advice of a scientist to forget one's dreams, he writes, "Sure, sure, forget your dreams. And make arrangements with a competent mortician."