“Aska and the Wolf” is the most famous story for children by Ivo Andrić (1892 –1975) who was a Yugoslav novelist poet and short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1961.
It is an allegory about Aska, an unusual sheep from Steep Meadows who loved ballet and wanted to become a famous ballerina where Ivo Andric conveys the importance of art and artistic creation, a very current problem of our society.
“We do not know how much power and what kind of possibilities all the living creatures hide in themselves. And we do not realize what we all know. We exist and we pass without finding out everything we could have been or done.”
This happened in the sheep’s world on the Steep Meadow when Aya, a large sheep with an abundant fleece and big round eyes, brought to the world her first lamb. It looked like all the other newborn babies, a fistful of fleece that starts to whimper. It was female, and she was an orphan because Aya had just lost her husband, whom she liked very much. Aya named her child Aska, finding that it was an appropriate name for a future sheep-beauty. “Aska, Let them call you by that name, my dear little lamb!” whispered the content mother.
In the beginning, the lamb followed her mother like all the other lambs, but as soon as she could run, on her still rigid and unusually long legs, and graze on her own, she started showing her nature. She did not keep to her mother, she did not mind for mother’s urges and cautions, and she did not follow the tinkling of the bell of the flock leader. She chose to wander through the paths she found for herself, to search for pastures in faraway places as if led by forces unknown to her.
The mother warned her otherwise good, beautiful, and a clever child. Aya forewarned her with advice and cautions, envisaging the dangers of such behavior in their surroundings, where there could always appear a cunning and violent wolf, from which the sheepherders are not always able to protect their sheep, and which slaughters the sheep and their lambs, especially when they are detached and stray. Aya was worried, and she often wondered after whom the child has taken her nature, and being female, that she was so impertinent and restless. After whoever it is, it is a great concern for the mother. At school, Aska had learned a lot and had made great progress. However, whenever the mother went to inquire about Aska’s grades and conduct, the teacher would tell her that the child is gifted and could be the first in class, only if she was not so lively and scattered. Only at the Physical Education Aska always had great marks.
One day, when she finished with a good grade, Aska stood in front of her mother and declared that she wanted to go to the ballet school. At first, her mother resolutely resisted giving many reasons, one more convincing than the other. She remarked that no one in her family was anything apart from a quiet sheep householder. Art is, the mother spoke, an unsafe choice that nor nourishes nor defends the one who devotes themselves to it. The path of art is in general uncertain, deceptive and difficult, and the dance is the hardest and the most deceitful of all arts, even a notorious and dangerous thing. No sheep from a respected family went by this path. Aya continued with similar arguments and asked herself what would the entire world say when it hears that her daughter is going by that path.
That is how the worried and benevolent mother dissuaded her child. However, knowing the nature of her daughter, she knew in advance that she could not resist for long, and she gave it up. She enrolled the little sheep to the ballet school, hoping that Aska might somehow curb her natural unrest. The sheep from the flock mostly condemned the mother’s decision.
One could not say that Aya was indifferent to the objections and harassment of sheep and rams on the corral and on the pastures, but the mother loves her child so much that she likes and those of its properties that she does not approve of in the soul. Bit by bit mother-sheep accepted the daughters wish and started looking at the matter in a different way. Secretly Aya observed Aska practicing, and came to the conclusion that there was something nice and splendor in dancing. She wondered what, after all, could be wrong in art. In addition, the dance is the noblest of all the skills, the only one where we use exclusively our native body.
The reconciliation with the daughter’s choice was easier as little Aska really showed a lot of talent and will, and visibly advanced. Besides, the sheep was modest and innocent as one could only bid. However, the strange and dangerous habits to wander far from the sheep and sheepherders, the little sheep had not overcome. One day happened that, of which Aya was always afraid.
Aska successfully completed her first year of ballet school and was just supposed to start the other year. It was the beginning of autumn with a still strong sun, which seamlessly starts to fade, and warm short rains, and rainbows forming above the humid and beamed areas. On that day, Aska was especially cheerful, vibrant and distracted. Overjoyed by the freshness of the day and the succulence of the grass, she strayed to the edge of the distant beech forest,
even into it. Here the grass was, as Aska had observed, especially succulent, and even better the deeper in the forest.
There was still a misty fog, which as a remnant of a strange nighttime activity withdrew beneath the rising sun, Poor visibility and full silence created a spellbound landscape in the space, and the distance did not have any measure. In time, time lost its significance.
Aska was sniffing the old skewed beech trees battered with moss that was enchanting as a story of an unusual adventure. Running across bright, green forest clearings it seemed to her that there was no end to the story and no limit to the number of unusual experiences. When she was in one of the clearings, she suddenly found herself face to face with a terrible wolf. Experienced, old and brave, he got to the places where the wolves do not descend at that time of year. His faded fur, greenish and brownish enabled him to equalize with the autumn beech trees and grass which was beginning to wither.
A beautiful landscape, which fascinated and aroused Aska, suddenly lifted itself up like a thin and deceptive curtain, and in front of her stood a wolf with bloodshot eyes, tucked tail, and a grin like a laugh, more terrible than in any of mother’s envisaged dangers. The blood in Aska’s veins froze, and the legs beneath her became arborous. She remembered that she had to call for help, her mouth opened, but there was no sound. Death was before her, invisible, immanent, horrible and implausible in its horror.
The Wolf walked a semicircle around his immutable pray, a slow soft walk that would precede the jump. It seemed that with disbelief if the wolves were aware of unbelieving, he watched the pray and was suspicious. Wolfs are capable of suspicion, and with the fear of a trap, he wondered how this young white beauty strayed here coming under his teeth.
For the pray, these were unexpected moments, somewhere between the deadly horrors to which she had already sunk, and the inconceivable bloody and final facts behind the word death. Already horrified Aska had a bit of time left, even where she thought it was gone and could not be, but so little that it scarcely seemed like time. This gave her the force for the movement; it was not a movement for defense because she was not capable of it. The last move could only be a dance.
Hardly, as if in a sore sleep, the sheep made the first movement, one of those movements practiced by the ballet bar and still do not seem like a dance. Immediately after the first movement came another, and another. The movements were modest, dire movements of the by death condemned body, but sufficient to stop the surprised wolf for a moment. Once she had started, Aska repeated the steps one after the other, with a horrible feeling that she should not stop, because if there was only a second of space between the two movements, death could become through that crack. She performed the steps in the order she had learned them at school and felt like hearing the sharp voice of her teacher: “One – and – two! One – and – two – and – three!”
That is, the way it went, everything she could learn during the first year. The movements are short, quick, and could not fill the time, which stood as the emptiness from which there was a constant threat of death. She also switched to figures performed at school without support, in the middle of the ballet room. Now her knowledge and her strengths were limited. She knew that she could perform two or three figures correctly and completely. She performed them feverishly, one after the other. There about was the end of her knowledge and skill. She had to repeat the movements, and she was afraid that by repeating them she would lose her strength and attractiveness. In vain, she tried to think of something else to perform to fill the dark abysm waiting at the end of the dance. The time passes, the wolf watches and waits, but already starts to approach. Before her, were the ruthlessly closed further knowledge of the classical dance and the fading voice of her teacher disappearing somewhere completely. She was well aware that her knowledge had helped her, but now it has ended. Her knowledge had failed her, the school knowledge could not help her anymore, and she must live and, in order to survive, to dance.
Aska went into the dance above the school knowledge and famous rules, beyond everything that she had learned and practiced. Who knows if the world had ever seen what the modest and unknown forest over the Steep Meadow saw on that day,
Through the green forest clearings, through narrow passages, between gray and heavy beech wood, over the smooth and brown mat of yearly layers of leaves, danced the sheep. Aska, clean, thin, not yet a sheep and no more a lamb, light, mobile like a white willow seed carried in the wind, greyish when she enters into the thin fog, and light when beamed by the sun, as if lit from inside, when she found herself on the clearing alighted by the sun.
Following her, with inaudible steps and without taking his gaze away from her, walked the old wolf, the long-standing and invisible predator of her flock.
The cunning, cold and proverbially cautious wolf, to which neither humans nor animals could do harm, was surprised at first. This surprise turned more and more into amazement and strange, irresistible curiosity. He recalled who he was, where he was and what he should do. Then he spoke to himself: “To first see this wonder of the unseen. Therefore, from this strange snare, I will have not only blood and flesh but also its unusual, funny, crazy and crazily funny dance that no eyes of any wolf have seen. Moreover, her blood and flesh I will not lose because I can knock her down and slaughter her whenever I want, and I will do it, but only at the end of the dance, when I see the whole miracle to the end.”
Thinking like that, the wolf followed the sheep, stagnant when she stopped and treading the step when she accelerated the rhythm of the dance.
Aska had no thoughts. She was only extracting unexpected strength and incredible skill and diversity of movement from her little body, which was covered with pure juices of life joy and condemned to inevitable and immediate death, She knew only one thing, she lived and would live as long as she danced, and the better she danced. She danced. It was no longer a dance, but a miracle.
The new miracle turned increasingly the wolf’s wondering into admiration, a thing completely unknown to wolves because if the wolves could admire anything in the world, they would not be what they were. This unknown sensation of admiration had crept into the wolf so much that this lost sheep, dead from the fear of death, dragged him behind her as if he was on an invisible but firm leash, bound to the invisible ring attached to his nostrils.
Walking like asleep not looking at where he trod and not giving attention to the direction in which he went, the wolf equally repeated to himself: “The blood and flesh of this snare will never escape from me. I can snatch it at any moment when I want to. But let me look at the wonders, to see this movement, and yet this …”
Each movement was really new and exciting and promising a new one even more exciting. One after the other passed the forest clearings and the crepuscular, humid corridors beneath the beech trees covered with dry leaves.
Now, the little sheep felt in her a hundred lives, and she used all their strengths to extend her one and only, her own life, which had already burned out.
We do not know how much power and what kind of possibilities hide in each living creature. We do not portend of what we all are capable. We are and we pass, but we do not acknowledge what we could have been or done. These possibilities occur only in great and extraordinary moments like those in which Aska dances for her already lost life. Her body was no longer tired, and her dance from itself created new strength for a new dance. Aska was dancing. She carried out all new and new figures, which no ballet masters know.
When she observed that the wolf recaptured and remembered who he was and what he was, she enhanced the speed and courage of her dance. She performed unusual jumps over fallen trees, which incited the wolf to laugh, a new admiration, and the desire to see them being repeated. She jumped onto the fallen beech trees and onto the pillows of moss covering them, standing only on her back legs, forming of herself a white, joyful whirligig that glinted at the eyes of the viewer. Then she would stand straight, only on the front legs, and then run with a tiny and fast-paced step, across some flat and yet still green space between the trees. When she would encounter an open slope, she would drop down head-on, imitating bold skies down a smooth dry trail of leaves, but as fast as when a thumb burns a brilliant “glissando” over the piano keyboard. The wolf would succumb to her as fast as he could, without losing sight of anything from the dance. He still kept repeating to himself that, before or after, the blood and flesh of this snare would not escape him, only wanting to see fully the dance, but every time he repeated it shorter and weaker because the dance took more and more of his attention and repressed everything else.
Neither the wolf nor Aska measured the time or the length of the road. She was alive and he enjoyed it.
When the sheepherders heard the bleating of the sheep and detected the anxiety that had flown from one herd to another, they picked out among themselves two young and bold men and sent them to the forest to look for the lost disobedient sheep. One of them had only a dogwood stick, but a good one and the other one had, on the shoulder a gun, if so it is possible to call that percussion rifle. It was a famous old rifle with which the men’s father had killed, a famine wolf, on the fence of his corral. Like all narrated stories, who knows
how it happened and whether it happened. Certainly, it was the only piece of firearms on the Steep Meadow, and it served more to raise the courage and self-confidence of the sheepherders than it was dangerous for wolves.
The men reached the edges of the forest, hesitated a little, wondering in which direction to go. There were many, thousands of entrances to the forest, and there were no traces of the little hoofs. They followed along the path of green grass and good pasture, as the best choice. Luck had served them. Just as they entered a little deeper into the forest, and climbed on a small elevation, they saw a strange sight in front of them. They stopped for a while. Through the branches, they could watch unseen. In a daring and proper way, Aska performed pirouettes moving through the forest, and behind her, at a distance of several steps, the wolf with a fallen muzzle tagged along, gazing constantly, and wagging his tail.
For a few moments the sheepherders were standing like stoned of wonder, but then they composed themselves. When Aska came to the first trees of a clearing, she suddenly changed the shape and rhythm of the dance, and the wolf was still in the clearing turned to the viewers by his side. The older sheepherder removed the gun from his shoulder, aimed and fired. The forest echoed and the leaves flew along with rare frightened birds.
An unexpected thing happened in the clearing, from its interrupted movement, as a bird hit in the flight, Aska fell, and the wolf disappeared into the forest as a green shadow.
The sheepherders stumbled toward the lamb and found her unconscious on a flat spot. There were no injuries on her, but she was lying in the forest grass motionless as if she was dead. There was a bloody trail after the wolf.
The elder sheepherder filled the gun, the young man took his dogwood stick firmly with both hands, and so they followed the bloody trail. They walked slowly and cautiously. There was no need to go far. The wounded wolf had the force just for about a hundred paces, while his wound was still hot and then fell on the thicket. The rear of his body was motionless, but he was digging the ground with his forelegs, wagging his head and grinning. Easily the shepherds abated him.
The sun had just passed the zenith when the sheepherders got back. They descended along the pastures, between the flocks and the corrals. The young man tied the wolf with his braid,
by the rear legs and easily dragged the bloody and elongated body. The elder was carrying the lamb. He put it over his shoulders, according to the sheepherder’s custom. Aska’s beautiful head hung, as dead, down the left shoulder of the shepherd.
There was great joy on the Steep Meadow. There were congratulations, clatter, singing, tears, craving, and joyful bleating without an end to it.
Aska composed herself. It was a slow recollection, lying in the grass motionless, more like a handful of fleece. She did not feel a healthy muscle or a tendon that did not hurt. Her mother was running around her in tears and happiness. Sheep and rams gathered as at a miracle.
She was unsound and disordered for a long time and slowly recovering from the terrible experience, but with her youth and will for life, her mother’s devoted care, and general compassion of all the inhabitants of the Steep Meadow, she overcame her condition. Aska cured and became an obedient daughter and a good pupil, and eventually a ballet champion on the Steep Meadow.
Around the world, it was written, spoken, and sung about the way the sheep Aska outplayed and deceived a terrible wolf. Aska herself never talked about her encounter with the beast or about her dance in the forest. No one likes to talk about the unpleasant and most difficult things in their lives. Only after a few years went by, and when she had overcome her difficult experience, Aska set her own famous ballet, which critics and the audience called the “Dance with Death”, but Aska always called it “The Dance for Life”.
She lived a long and happy life, became a world-renowned dancer, and died at an old age.
Now, after so many years, a famous ballet in which art and spirit of resistance conquer every evil, even the death itself, is performed around the world.
Dance the “kolo and live longer”!
In Southeastern Europe, the South Slavic peoples traditionally dance the circle dance, known as Kolo.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivo_Andri%C4%
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