An interest in birds has crept up on me in the past few months, and I find them very helpful for my writing. It's interesting, for example, thinking about a highly landscaped, highly humanized college campus being the hunting-ground for a bird of prey. I like it when I see hawks perched along the highway, too, or on top of skyscrapers in big cities. The contrast between the life "red in tooth and claw" that they lead and the plastic civilization of the 21st century always interests me.
In traditional literature, too, birds are often symbols of chaos - check out the stormcrows in Anglo-Saxon poems, for example, who always show up before the battle has started. Artists continue to make use of this, too - Hitchcock among them in Psycho and, you guessed it, The Birds.
They are incredibly rich symbols, in my opinion, in part because they are so thoroughly other. Look in a bird's eyes sometime - there is nothing human there, nothing to empathize with. And for me, that sparks the imagination.
I think that your comments about birds apply best to birds of prey. Hawks and eagles definately have something other about them, but some birds can seem quite human. Robins in particular can seem very friendly and often pop up in literature as friends and messengers (like in "The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe," or "The Secret Garden"). I also think one of the things that makes birds of prey seem so eerie is that they seem very other, but they also seem to be REGARDING you. There is an awareness of your presence that is not necessarily benevolent.
ReplyDeleteBirds of prey have a uniquely piercing gaze. I'm sure you've read Hawk Roosting by Ted Hughes, a great poem that describes the mind of a raptor. Tennyson's The Eagle is another great one . . . I think robins are funny; they're always so busy . . .
ReplyDeleteHmmm, I wish I could show you my new piece: a woman whose hair is made of birds, which are flying up and away, swirling above her head. I've been thinking a lot about birds lately too!
ReplyDeleteHmm... birds. When I write about a certain medieval character of mine, who happens to be a poet, she thinks of birds, too. And I think she sees them has messengers... if not a metaphor for another character in her oft-times crazed imaginings.
ReplyDeleteI think it is interesting when characters have names associated with birds: Sally Sparrow, of Sparrow and Nightengale (in Doctor Who's Blink); Jack Sparrow; Robin Hood... crow-girls (Charles de Lint books... which involve a lot of Native American animal-people)...
And one last thought... I am rereading Peter Pan in Scarlet, and one of the danger signs that something sad and catastrophic has happened to Neverland is the subtle absence of birdsong. And I've seen this detail woven into the fabric of other stories. Birds have such a presence of peace... the world does not seem quite right without them.
Doves! Of course! Symbols of peace! Ravens weaving their black presence on a moorland, calling mournfully. Crows weave in and out of stories like eye pieces of the Devil (bringing up images of birds in Fellowship of the Ring, birds watching and following the fellowship). Gulls soaring above a shoreline - either calling out to lonely waters or greedy for a ripe-smelling meal. Wrens...
ReplyDeleteOkay... I'll stop, but you've conjured up wonderful images, Michelle!
Very illuminating comments, all! See? Birds are rich symbols. :) They mean lots of things to everybody.
ReplyDeleteI think you're right, Maren and Jillian, to direct my attention to other ways birds are and can be. You're quite right about robins and doves. Sparrows, also, invoke vulnerability or humility, due to the Bible quote about God caring for "the fall of the sparrow." Peacocks traditionally for the Resurrection, or for pride; owls for wisdom, bluebirds for happiness. Swallows for spring and hope, as in "Thumbelina." On and on in terms of iconographic/literary tradition.
Really, though you have to observe every bird in real life, up close, I think, to see its character. I like the books to inform me but not mandate how I see things. Maybe sometime I'll see a vulture as a symbol of hope, just because I do; that would be fun. :)
Perhaps my mind is just a bit on the macabre side lately, on account of all the horror fiction I've been reading.
Hawk Roosting (by Ted Hughes)
ReplyDeleteI sit in the top of the wood, my eyes closed.
Inaction, no falsifying dream
Between my hooked head and hooked feet:
Or in sleep rehearse perfect kills and eat.
The convenience of the high trees!
The air's buoyancy and the sun's ray
Are of advantage to me;
And the earth's face upward for my inspection.
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of Creation
To produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot
Or fly up, and revolve it all slowly -
I kill where I please because it is all mine.
There is no sophistry in my body:
My manners are tearing off heads -
The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:
The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.