The peregrine falcon
The accuracy of the written word has hypnotic power:
"When torque bat torque is excessive, when satisfies the hunger, will soon, when attacked, damaged, when it strikes, cleave, and when you prey gets tired. "
I owe this perfect phrase for translation of a treaty hunting Arabic. That's so brilliant, deadly and treacherous mentioned, that beating, splits and goes quickly, is the gyrfalcon. The quoted phrase is at the very center of the book, and I like to think that's his secret swing.
The treaty is a written excuse for the Frenchman Pierre Michon create a superb phrase, center and culmination of your essay. His praise is concise and elegant. No more words are necessary.
The image of a gyrfalcon is magnificent in itself and leads me to another of a peregrine falcon. I imagine their movements. Few, electrical. The hawk appears in the gloved hand of a central European noble on a visit to an American lady does. The triangle is completed by an alcoholic husband, jealous of the brutal descent that the bird has on its owner. This triangle is superimposed on the set of ambiguities in the maid with her husband and the driver of the visitors. A third triangle involving the narrator, the ubiquitous host and a hawk. The overlap of the frames is subtle.
Michon's book arouses intellectual curiosity, that of Glenway Wescott is magic. I close with a quotation for this latest work:
Humanity tends to histrionics, worrying about trying to detail every outburst of passion, so that half of our life is a diffuse and stormy fiction.
0 comments:
Post a Comment