Dogs and the hunt

Up to that point nothing happens in the country-side. The chains of sleep still weigh upon hunters. The beaters cross lazily, still mute and joyless. One would say that no one had the desire to hunt. Everything is still static. The scenary is still purely vegetal and therefore paralytic.

At most, the furze, heather, and thyme tremble slightly in the comb of the morning wind. There are some other movements of a cinematic nature, lacking the dynamism that would reveal governing forces. Wandering birds fly slowly toward some easy task. Faster, musical insects glide near the hunter's ear humming their aria of microscopic violins. The hunter withdraws into himself. Things are said at that time, of course, stupid things which lead him to close himself off more. He does nothing. He does not want to do anything. The sudden immersion in the countryside has numbed and annulled him. He feels himself a plant, a botanical entity, and he surrenders himself to that which in the animal is almost vegetal: breathing.

But here they come, here comes the pack, and instantly the whole horizon is charged with a strange electricity; it begins to move to stretch elastically. Suddenly the orgiastic element shoots forth, the dionysiac, which flows and boils in the depths of all hunting. Dionysios is the hunting god: "skilled cynegetic," Euripides calls him The Bacchantes. "Yes, yes," answers the chorus, "the god is a hunter!" There is a universal vibration. Things that before were inert and flaccid have suddenly grown nerves, and they gesticulate, announce, foretell. There it is, there's the pack! Thick saliva, panting, chorus of jaws, and the arcs of tails excitedly; whipping the countryside! The dogs are hard to restrain; their desire to hunt consumes them, pouring from eyes, muzzle, and hide. Visions of swift beasts pass before their excited eyes, while, within, they are already in hot pursuit.

Jose Ortega y Gasset, "Meditations on Hunting," p. 87.