What is it that binds human beings to other animals? T. H. White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Mashamâs Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentenceââthe bird reverted to a feral stateââseized his imagination, and, White later wrote, âA longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word âferalâ has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, âferociousâ and âfree.ââ Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love.
White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gosâat once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literatureâs most memorable and surprising encounters with the wildernessâas it exists both within us and without.
Categories:
- Science & Math
- Nature & Ecology
- Nature Writing & Essays
- Nature & Ecology
Publisher : NYRB Classics
Author : Winn, Marie,White, T. H.,White, T.H.
Language : English
Edition : Main
Published :2007-10-02
Number Of Pages : 215
Binding : paperback
ISBN-10 : 1590172493
ISBN-13 : 9781590172490
Item weight : 0.53 lb
Dimensions : 0.51 in x 5.08 in x 8.03 in
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