What are you reading now?

[Anna]

Just re-read, after a 30-year interval, Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes.

Oh Yes. Glad you mentioned this, I first read it in, I think, early twenties and it haunted me for years, then it was book at bedtime about 10 or 12 years ago (do they still do B@B?) and last year I dragged my copy out of the bookcase to re-read, which I still haven't yet done. Your comment, and the article by Julian Barnes has made me determined to read at the earliest opportunity. Current read is a charity shop buy, Alan Bennett Untold Stories a mix of biography, diaries and prose, a good dip in and out book.

[vinteuil]

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.

... Thus our colleague Byas'd Opinion back in February (on the "Musil" thread). To add my support to this. Having whizzed through Kornel Esti and Skylark I am now engrossed in his short tales contained in the two vols of l'Œil-de-Mer - marvellous. A discovery; renewed thanks to Byas'd Opinion...

As light relief, am racing through John Buchan's The Three Hostages. Totally absorbed...

[Richard Tarleton]

The Three Hostages[/B]. Totally absorbed...

I re-read the "Hanay Five" recently. Marvellous stuff. Apart from anything else, Buchan was the master of the chapter heading.

[aeolium]

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.

RT, 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.

[Richard Tarleton]

RT, 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.

A fascinating topic. I think it's fair to say that feeding, pairing, mating, nest building, roosting, avoiding predators, migrating, keeping in contact etc. occupy birds most of the time, and that there must be levels and details of communication between them that are not discernible to us - minutiae of behaviour included. I expect this is what you mean. The most we can do is analyse it and break it down into its smallest observable parts. For example - it is only thanks to the use of technology that we know that the song of the marsh warbler (now almost extinct as a breeding species in UK) consists largely of mimicry, mainly of species it encounters in its African winter quarters. Likewise that successful, Domingo-esque sedge warblers might have up to 70 different phrases in their repertoire for impressing the ladies, as opposed to their Russell Watson equivalents with only 30 or 40. Avian evolution selects against the Russell Watsons.

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

[aeolium]

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

Maybe not. That Darwin fellow was not such a dusty naturalist, though

[vinteuil]

Maybe not. That Darwin fellow was not such a dusty naturalist, though

... nor Alfred Russel Wallace, neither

[Pianorak]

Cosima Wagner (The Lady of Bayreuth) by Oliver Hilmes (transl. Stewart Spencer) Yale University Press 2010
and
Thomas Mann: Der Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain)

[Richard Tarleton]

... nor Alfred Russel Wallace, neither

Vinteuil, aeolium, please keep up - the discussion was about bird song, and communication, and I was referring to aeolium's remark

I 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.

thus rather agreeing with me. I was suggesting that, even had they been inclined, Victorian naturalists would not have a great deal to tell us in this regard, and that the study of avian communication has moved on, technically speaking. I would refer you yet again to the work of Joan Hall-Craggs, cellist and authority on blackbird song.

[aeolium]

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.