Оглавление
Jules Michelet. The Bird
The Bird
Table of Contents
How the Author was led to the Study of Nature
THE EGG
THE POLE. AQUATIC BIRDS
THE WING
THE FIRST FLUTTERINGS. OF THE WING
TRIUMPH OF THE WING. THE FRIGATE BIRD
THE SHORES. DECAY OF CERTAIN SPECIES
THE HERONRIES OF AMERICA. WILSON, THE ORNITHOLOGIST
THE COMBAT. THE TROPICAL REGIONS
PURIFICATION
DEATH. BIRDS OF PREY.—(THE RAPTORES)
THE LIGHT. THE NIGHT
STORM AND WINTER. MIGRATIONS
MIGRATIONS: CONTINUED. THE SWALLOW
HARMONIES OF THE TEMPERATE ZONE
THE BIRD. AS THE LABOURER OF MAN
LABOUR. THE WOODPECKER
THE SONG
THE NEST. ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS
THE COMMUNITIES OF BIRDS. ESSAYS AT A REPUBLIC
EDUCATION
THE NIGHTINGALE. ART AND THE INFINITE
THE NIGHTINGALE: CONTINUED
CONCLUSION
ILLUSTRATIVE NOTES
FOOTNOTES:
Отрывок из книги
Jules Michelet
Published by Good Press, 2019
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"Memory vividly recalls to me all the charms of this locality, and its varied character. It was never otherwise than grave and melancholy in itself, and it impressed these feelings on all about it. My father, though lively and agreeable, was a man already aged, and of uncertain health. My mother, young, beautiful, austere, had the queenly bearing of the North American, with a prudence and an active economy very rare in Creoles. The estate which we occupied formerly belonged to a Protestant family, and after passing through many hands before it fell into ours, still retained the graves of its ancient owners—simple hillocks of turf, where the proscribed had enshrined their dead under a thick grove of oaks. I need hardly say, that these trees and these tombs, consecrated by their very oblivion, were religiously respected by my father. Each grave was marked out by rose-bushes, which his own hands had planted. These sweet odours, these bright blossoms, concealed the gloom of death, while suffering, nevertheless, something of its melancholy to remain. Thither, then, we were drawn, and as it were in spite of ourselves, at evening time. Overcome by emotion, we often mourned over the departed; and, at each falling star, exclaimed, 'It is a soul which passes!'[6]
"In this living country-side, among alternate joys and pains, I lived for ten years—from four to fourteen. I had no comrades. My sister, five years older than myself, was the companion of my mother when I was still but a little girl. My brothers, numerous enough to play among themselves without my help, often left me all alone in the hours of recreation. If they ran off to the fields, I could only follow them with my eyes. I passed, then, many solitary hours in wandering near the house, and in the long garden alleys. There I acquired, in spite of a natural vivacity, habits of contemplation. At the bottom of my dreams I began to feel the Infinite: I had glimpses of God, of the paternal divinity of nature, which regards with equal tenderness the blade of grass and the star. In this I found the chief source of consolation; nay, more, let me say, of happiness.
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