Originally posted by Richard Tarleton
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What are you reading now?
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Anna
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Originally posted by Byas'd Opinion View Post
Another novelist from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire who I rate very highly is Hungarian writer Dezso Kosztolányi. His books are currently not easy to find, but I can recommend both Skylark (set in a provincial Hungarian town around 1900) and Anna Edès (set in Budapest in the chaotic period following the end of the First World War). The translations I came across (at least one of them by poet George Szirtes, IIRC) read very well in English.
As light relief, am racing through John Buchan's The Three Hostages. Totally absorbed...
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Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by vinteuil;151062
As light relief, am racing through John Buchan's [BThe Three Hostages[/B]. Totally absorbed...
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It's a mistake to imagine that birdsong "means" anything in an anthropomorphic sense - it has evolved, in different ways among different species, for specific biological purposes - establishing territories, warning off rival males, impressing females, etc.
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Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by aeolium View PostRT, I wasn't thinking of meaning in an anthropomorphic sense, but presumably those avian purposes could be considered as meanings and the sheer numbers of variations in song might suggest that the birds have developed many different types of signal rather than the relatively small number of signals that you usually see described such as mating, territorial calls etc.
I don't think the Victorians would have had a lot to add - their strong point was killing and collecting dead birds in order to measure their skins, and stuff them
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Richard Tarleton
Originally posted by vinteuil View Post... nor Alfred Russel Wallace, neitherI just thought it was a pity that none of those intrepid Victorian naturalists had spent a lifetime studying the calls and song of birds to try and work out patterns of communication, however difficult this task is.
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I realise that, RT, but I think you may be a trifle harsh on Victorian naturalists. After all, it was they who really established ornithology as a serious study - for instance, with the founding of the British Ornithology Union in 1858 and with people like its founder Alfred Newton and William MacGillivray. Modern technology has undoubtedly greatly improved the science of ornithology, but it still depends to a great extent on painstaking observation, something some Victorians (like Darwin) were very good at. It was a shame that there don't seem to have been many, if any, among them who were interested in studying birdsong.
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Richard Tarleton
Of course. Agree entirely.
The most treasured volume on my (bird) shelves is a leather-bound Victorian edn of Gilbert White, first publ. 1785 ish I think. The first to spot the difference between chiffchaffs and willow warblers, by their song......
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Sparafucile
Hi,
It's been a while.
I'm currently reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's Thomas Cranmer: A Life. Quite, quiet brilliant
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I've just finished Penelope Fitzgerald's The Blue Flower, a historical novel about the German Romantic poet Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg). PF is a recent discovery, and I'm going through all her novels. I like her concise, ironic and unrhetorical style (none of her novels is over 250 pages) and the amount of background detail is amazing (Donald Macleod would be envious ). Others of hers I've enjoyed are The Beginning of Spring, set in Moscow before WWI and The Gate of Angels, set in Cambridge in 1912. Does anyone else like her work?
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I've just finished 'The Vesuvius Club' by Mark Gatiss. Its very rude and very funny, highly recommended, though perhaps to be avoided by the prudish. The Telegraph blurb on the back says it reads like Oscar Wilde crossed with HP Lovecraft, but I reckon there's a generous dose of Conan Doyle, both the Sherlock Holmes stories and other historical tales, in the mix as well. The adventures of Lucifer Box, artist, seducer and British secret agent as he foils a dastardly plot to detonate Vesuvius and destroy the whole of Italy. Delirious stuff.
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Mandryka
Stefan Zweig - 'Beware Of Pity'. This is, apparently, the only completed novel by the latter-day Strauss librettist and, I have to say, it's quite a little masterpiece. Can't vouch for the veracity of the translation, but it reads superbly (Pushkin Press edition). On this evidence, Zweig has the beating of Mann when it comes to clarity and concision.
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