The Year of the Hare

Writes Janet St. John of Arto Paasilinna’s novella, The Year of the Hare:

“A Finnish journalist and a photographer out on assignment one June evening suddenly hit a young hare on a country road. The photographer, ultimately unsympathetic, abandons his journalist companion Vatanen, who sets off to find the wounded hare. Vatanen develops a close bond with the hare and in their adventures together they witness people’s avarice, inhumaneness, hypocrisy, cruelty, participation in bureaucracy, and mere existence, rather than living, in the world. This last realization, in particular, is life altering for Vatanen: he quits his job, discards his hopeless marriage, sacrifices financial security, and sells his most prized possession (a boat). All this Vatanen replaces with a life of odd jobs and on-the-road experiences. This picaresque novel could simply depict a middle-age crisis, but it reaches beyond fantasy or fiction, becoming mythic in its universal themes. The story is inventive, satirical, and quite humorous. It is also refreshingly sentimental in the sense that Paasilinna reaffirms our connection with the animal world and our inherent need for happiness and freedom to maintain quality of life.”


Following is an excerpt from Arto Paasilinna’s The Year of the Hare.

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[Vatanen] took the hare in his arms and went out on to the ice, thinking he’d take a walk across the bay, sort his thoughts out and calm down. It was about half a mile to the farther shore.

When he was half-way across, the ravers loosed a couple of large hounds at him. They’d spotted the hare he was carrying. “After ‘em! After ‘em!” they shouted.

The yelping hounds tore across the ice in hot pursuit. The hare took to its heels, and, seeing it on the run, the hounds broke into a fierce baying. Their big paws slithered on the ice as they hurtled past Vatanen and vanished into the trees across the bay.

Vatanen pursued them to the headland, wondering how he could save his hare. What he needed was a gun, but that was hanging on a nail at Läähkimä Gulf.

Several men came running out of the villa, carrying guns. Bellowing as they run, they were like the hounds they’d loosed. The ice bent under their weight.

Vatanen concealed himself among the trees, for as soon as they got to the headland, they fired in his direction. He was lying in the slushy snow, hearing the peevish mumbling of drunken men.

The hare was already far off, the baying of the hounds scarcely audible. Their cry was actually a howl; so the hunt was still on, the hare still alive.

Vatanen’s brain was working overtime. This savage chase must stop, but how? How could such men exist? Where was the pleasure in a rough-house like this? How could human beings lower themselves so viciously?

The poor hare was circling back in terror. Suddenly it burst out of a gap in the trees, saw Vatanen and dashed straight into his arms. Two drops of bright red blood had oozed from its mouth. The baying of the hounds was getting louder.

He knew the hounds could rip the life out of him if he stood there in the forest with a hunted hare in his arms. Should he reject his beloved beast? Send it on its way, save his own skin?

No – the thought shamed him as soon as it came. He ran for a knoll, overgrown with thick-boled, gnarled and twisted pines. Quickly he clambered on one. It was tricky, climbing with a hare in his arms: bits of fur got stuck on the bark; but he was out of reach when the hounds came whirling up, snorting and sniffing the hare’s traces. They soon found their way to the foot of the tree and frenziedly reached up on their hind legs, yelping into the branches, clawing at the red bark with their paws. The hare thrust its head under Vatanen’s armpit, trembling all over.

Boozy voices were again drawing nearer, and soon five men stood at the foot of the tree. . . .

Tan Lines V

Image: Adam Raphael.

Autumn Hare

Image: The Leveret.

Morning Light XIV

Image: Subject and photographer unknown.

Boxing Hares

The following is excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart Evans and David Thomson.

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Hares often stand upright on their hind legs to fight. They rely on their hind legs in most of their actions and their balance is superb as can be seen most clearly in the artic hare which does not touch the ground at all with its front paws at high speed. But it seems that they do not use their hind feet as weapons.


Norman Halkett has watched them boxing with their forelegs:

“The hind legs do not so much kick as thump the ground much in the same way as we would stamp our feet rather than give an outright kick. I have heard the thumps quite distinctly; the object seems to be to make a noise and therefore attract attention – possibly some kind of display before the female. Both fore and hind legs are armed with strong claws, sharp and long enough to inflict wounds.” Halkett never saw much damage done.

“I have heard them make funny noises with their feet, sort of thumping on the ground, and occasionally one punches another like kangaroo boxing, or again you couldn’t quite say it’s punching; it’s more like poking at the other fellow.”

– Excerpted from The Leaping Hare by George Ewart and David Thomson (Faber and Faber, 1972), pp. 52-53.


Image 1: “Boxing Hares” by James Lynch.
Image 2: “The Boxing Match” by Sara Richer.
Image 3: “Boxing Hares” by Hannah Giffard.

Wrestling: "The Heterosexually Acceptable Form of Homosexual Foreplay"

The following is excerpted from Brian Pronger’s The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex.

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One man told me that, as a boy, wrestling brought him to his first awareness of homoeroticism and has remained a source of erotic fascination for him. . . . As a legitimate activity for boys, wrestling allowed him the opportunity to explore, unwittingly, the homoerotic potential of masculine physical contact.

. . . Another man remembered how his fascination with men’s muscles evolved into a desire for wrestling contact.

Boys and teenagers are intuitively aware of this kind of fun and wrestle with their friends. Some are content with the subtle non-genital expression of the paradox; others use it as a mutual masculine ruse or prolegomenon to a more transparent homoerotic seduction. As Gregory Woods said, “Wrestling . . . is the heterosexually acceptable form of homosexual foreplay.”


Often boys will wrestle with each other hoping for a more explicit homosexual action. Describing an ultimately frustrating teenage relationship with another boy who turned out to be more interested in orthodoxy, one man told me that he and his friend, “were very physical, we were always wresting, doing everything but having sex, and I think I just got tired of waiting for something to happen.”

Afraid of the homoerotic paradox, its power to undermine masculinity and the estrangement that may follow the pleasure of the paradox, some boys and men nevertheless manage to immerse themselves in the experience by disguising it as “orthodox” athletic combat.

On the other hand, in The City and the Pillar, a novel by Gore Vidal, boys wrestle their way to sex: “Somehow the violence released Jim from certain emotions and he wrestled furiously with Bob, made free, for the time, by violence.” In this story, the wrestling eventually gives way to genital sex, leaving Bob feeling uncomfortable and Jim feeling that he has found himself.


A man I interviewed remembered the problems that competitive wrestling in high school caused him. He said he found wrestling:

Very sexual. I’d often get hard. I’d often come. It was difficult to deal with: “How did you get hard-on off me?” That became a problem in high school so that I ended up, grade twelve . . . I stopped wresting. I was too afraid that I was going to get hard and someone would notice. Actually, it rarely happens when you are really wresting – it can’t physiologically because the blood is going to the muscles and it’s certainly not engorging the penis. So it has to be in a fooling-around sense, but still, it’s happened to me, so you tend to become really cautious about coming out in grade ten in front of the gym class, it’s not cool.

The homoerotic appeal of wrestling needn’t always result in erections. As the wrestler above pointed out, when one wrestles intensely the muscles get precedence over the penis for the supply of blood. That physical economy, however, may have little to do with the erotic focus of the athletic activity. The lack of an erection does not signify a paucity of homoerotic attraction. As Neil Marks said, “There is a unique excitement in being aware of your physical attraction to a man and sublimating it into an athletic maneuver.”

– Excerpted from Pronger, B. The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex (St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 183-185.

The Fabled Hare

Image: The Fabled Hare: Esoteric Art and Supplies.

Tan Lines IV

Image: Ludovic Canot photographed by Dylan Rosser.

The Hare in Flight

The following is excerpted from The Hare by Jill Mason.

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A hare’s first line of defense when it spots danger is to lie low: to press itself down close to the ground in its form. Only taking flight when it is under imminent threat. Brown hares can run up to a speed of 45 mph (70 kms) and often zig-zag or turn at right angles when chased, to elude being caught. The action of a greyhound in full flight exactly mirrors that of a hare. The long hind legs are thrust forward and the fore legs backwards between them. When not in danger, a hare will casually rise and stretch before lolloping off and stopping to sit every now and then to look around, especially if it has passed through a hedge. Because of their build, chased hares usually choose to run uphill, which gives them an advantage over other animals. All hares possess larger hearts and a bigger volume of blood within their bodies than animals of comparable size; this gives them greater speed, endurance, and stamina.


Image: “Running Hare” by Roger Oakes.

St. Francis and the Hare

Little Flowers of St. Francis, a classic collection of popular legends first printed in 1476, contains numerous stories of St Francis of Assisi’s love of the poor and of nature.

Francis’ striking rapport with animals is perhaps the most well-known aspect of his legend. For centuries he has been regarded as the patron saint of animals and, more recently, the ecological movement.

Here is one example of Francis’ rapport with animals: Once, when he was staying in the town of Greccio, a hare was caught in a trap and brought live to Francis by a brother Seeing the hare, Francis was moved to pity and said, “Brother hare, come here. Why did you let yourself be fooled in this way?”

As soon as the hare was released by the brother he leaped over to Francis and settled into his lap. After the hare had rested for a while, Francis let him go so that he could return to the wild. Yet each time he was placed on the ground, the hare ran back to Francis. Finally Francis asked that the brothers carry the hare to a nearby forest.

In the Arena

The following is excerpted from Brian Pronger’s insightful book, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex.

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[S]ubjective experience rather than objective behavior is important. Viewed objectively, any sexual act involving persons of the same physical sex can be considered a homosexual act. But the simple physical fact of a man’s penis being in another man’s hand, mouth, or anus is, in itself, insignificant. In our culture, there is great importance attached to our saying that someone has been involved in homosexuality. What’s important is the meaning of homosexuality. What the homosexual act might mean to those involved, to someone who has caught them in the act, or to someone who suspects another of being homosexual can be highly significant.

To many high school coaches, the surprise discovery of two male athletes in flagrante delicto would have almost earth-shattering significance. To some, it would mean that the team has two faggots, pansies, boys who are less than real men. Having engaged in homosexual activity, the two young athletes have betrayed the pure aspirations of athletics: mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body. These boys have the potential to destroy the moral fabric of the team and perhaps the entire school. Even more importantly, their characteristically unmasculine behavior could undermine the macho competitive edge that many coaches work so hard to develop among their athletes.

For the boys involved, on the other hand, this sexual foray may have none of the significance that might overwhelm a coach’s vision. There is every possibility that the two lads were simply randy and were caught taking advantage of a warm and friendly hand in the shower, a welcome but not necessarily significant physical release of sexual energy. It is possible, however, that to one or maybe both of the boys, this sexual meeting had enormous personal significance, that it was the young expression of a profound and largely unexplored world of meaning.


Boys and men can engage in homosexual behavior with each other, but the content of that behavior depends on the subjective interpretation of those involved. It is actually the subjective meaning of the behavior and not the behavior itself that, from an orthodox view, is considered troublesome in our culture.

- Excerpted from The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex by Brian Pronger.