The Bedside Book of Birds
by Graeme Gibson
Handcover; 384 pages; published Oct. 25, 2005
This book is a sumptuous, lusciously illustrated homage to birds of all sorts, common and exotic. It is printed on rich, delicately tintured stock, which frames the splendid artwork that accompanies each contribution. It is composed of poems, meditations, folklore, sagas, journal notes, involving birds, from people who've been inspired, or irritated by birds. The artwork includes famous Audubon watercolors, oils, aboriginal renditions in sculpture or stone paintings, statuary, mobiles and all sorts of depictions.
Gibson is a lifelong birdwatcher and collector of arcane literary and artistic tomes on birds. Birds have always been providential for man, omens of good or evil tidings. Creation stories are replete with birds, they are clarions of peace, of messianic proclamation or of disaster. They include the dove clasping the olive branch, to the raven, the trickster, the wolfbird, harbinger of bad times. They can be objects of veneration, of beauty, of song; or they can be pest birds, that could ruin a crop, or spread disease in overcrowded cities.
Modern man's relationship with the bird has always been ambiguous. It is shot for sport, roasted for his plate, it is adopted as symbol for nations, it is a muse for writers and artists. They represent characteristics of fierceness, nobility, piety, beauty, purity, or connivance with dark forces.
Gibson relates the story of the 19th Century Lutheran Pastor in Dresden who called for the extermination of the sparrow for its incessant chattering and scandalous acts of unchastity during service. Or of the adventurer, who having killed what was likely the last of the Dodos, lamented only that he had not saved the beak and skull for posterity. The book is chock full of the mundane, the profound and the mythical.
The book begins (almost) and ends with the birds of the Western Front. Whose singing always re-sounded on the destroyed landscapes of Flanders before and after the mechanistic slaughter of battles that engulfed mankind in the First World War. They gave a faint promise of grace to those in the trenches below. Bird lovers and those whose main preoccupation is the racket outside their window or the droppings in their public places will all find solace in this book. |
