First English edition - 1985
Vixen Sharp-Ears was a real fox who had real adventures with a real forester in the 19th century. Rudolf Tesnohlidek's novel is no fairy tale. It presents a world of not-so-innocent animals living out their short lives in brutal harmony alongside a world of longer-lived humans who are no less brutal, scarcely more intelligent, and a good deal less happy. The author, born in 1882, grew up with a father who was a 'knacker', who earned his living by dispatching ailing and unwanted animals, then skinning them and tanning their hides. Rudolph suffered from an eye problem that gave him a strange, almost manic appearance: his eyes would spin around, darting uncontrollably this way and that. He grew up introverted and oversensitive... As a young man, he headed for Prague, studying philosophy and languages at the university. His first publication in print was a collection of resoundingly gloomy verses! In fact, this was very much the style of the time - Prague was drenched in melancholy. In 1902 he met Jindra Kopecka (Kaja) and married her in 1905. Visiting Norway just two months after the wedding, tragedy struck. Kaja accidently shot herself. From then on, Rudolph, always sad, became even more gloomy. His books, poems and plays began to reek with melancholy. In 1910, he married an 18 year-old, but the relationship failed, Married for a third time, he began to rebuild his life, helped along by the popular success of The Cunning Little Vixen, which was serialised in Lidove Noviny in 1920.
The editor of Lidove Noviny, Jaromir John, recalled Rudolph as a man who manufactured sadness on purpose...he was physically and emotionally created for self-flagellation. No wonder his co-workers began avoiding him. On 12 January, 1928, the latter wrote a farewell, phrased in his funniest manner, shaped it to the length of his weekly column, put it on his desk and then shot himself in the office. When his third wife, Olga, was told, she locked the doors, turned on the gas, and also committed suicide. Rudolph left behind a number of books, poems and plays - many still read in Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic) - and his children's books are still read with pleasure; none, though, fired the popular imagination as did The Cunning Little Vixen. First known as Vixen Sharp-Ears, the story appeared roughly twice a week between 7 April and 23 June 1920. People just went crazy over the story...it was published in book form a year later. It has been in print ever since.
There are three translators - Tatiana Firkusnu and Maritza Morgan are both Czech and they prepared a separate literal translation of the novel. Robert T. Jones, an American, based the final English text on their work. The novel was written in the Moravian dialect of Brno, a patois of immense charm but great difficulty even for Czechs! The translators opted for colloquial English throughout.
As for the story itself - it concerns forester Bartos, a hot tempered man who is a regular at the local pub, where he plays bowls and other games mainly with a Reverend Father and the local schoolmaster. After a typical drinking session, the forester falls asleep on his way home. He needs to find an excuse for his tardiness for his wife and creeps up on a young fox family - close enough to grab spoiled little Sharp-Ears. Home they go. Sharp-Ears meets a human cub: how ugly it was! It had only a handful of hairs on its head...the most hideous part of it was its legs: there was not a single good claw on its hind paws. With the human cub came another small animal - and thus Sharp-Ears meets Catcher, a little dachshund, who becomes the vixen's friend. It wasn't long before Sharp-Ears felt like the mistress of the house. She had realised that Catcher was useless and totally green, afraid of humans and a complete coward. Not surprising, as the forester regularly whipped him.
Inevitably, Sharp-Ears tries to escape back to the wild. Her first effort fails and she is tied to the dog kennel. Interspersed with all this are roosters and hens 'talking', a mosquito soliloquising - which doesn't really 'work' for this reader. Sharp-Ears' second attempt at freedom succeeds. She soon evicts Mr. Badger, an elderly bachelor, officious bureaucrat of the forest realm, now in retirement, from his sett. To describe the rest of the story in any detail is not for this short Blog. Suffice it to say, there are touches of morbid humour - as when the forester mistakenly shoots his only pig, much to the chagrin of his curmudgeonly wife; when the priest staggers home drunk; and the description of the poacher Martinek. There is a strong element of anti-clericalism and the author is clearly on the side of the animals rather than the humans. Sharp-Ears escapes on one occasion by losing her tail in a gin trap. She finds fulfilment when she meets a roguish male fox, Golden-Stripe and, presumably lives happily ever after.
Golden-Stripe probably sums up the author's own views here:
You think that humans aren't just like us when they're in love? They're worse. They do everything for the sake of appearances, to put on a show, but reality they fight and quarrel like starlings when they've had their fill of love.
People are nothing but pride, lies, and deceit. Not one single vixen can be as deceitful as a young girl tossing up her short skirts. No fox is as immoral as a handsome man-about-town. Man...likes to keep running into his victim so he can degrade her, grind her into the mud, and then walk over her.
The lay-out and general production of the book is excellent - by the Bodley Head - with a particularly striking dust wrapper, but I must confess I wasn't keen on some of Maurice Sendak's illustrations. They were bright and often amusing, however they were the original designs and watercolours that the artist created for the New York City Opera production of Janacek's opera, which had its first performance on 9th April 1981.
The schoolmaster and the little priest
It meant that, amongst some lovely watercolours of woodlands and village life, of genuine animals and people, there were too many of humans 'inhabiting' animal costumes.
Golden-Stripe
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