There are strong themes in the way different cultures have thought about crows (and ravens). The Twentieth Century and BeyondTimelineReferencesBibliographyWebsitesAssociationsAcknowledgementsPhoto AcknowledgementsIndexĬITATION: "Boria Sax's Crow takes a broadly chronological approach, with an intriguing digression on scarecrows. The European Middle Ages and Renaissance4. It will be of interest to all people who have ever been intrigued, puzzled, annoyed or charmed by these wonderfully intelligent birds. It ranges from the raven sent out by Noah to the corvid deities of the Eskimo, to Taoist legends, Victorian novels and contemporary films. This book is a survey of crows, ravens, magpies and their relatives in myth, literature and life. Crows are among the most ubiquitous of birds, yet, without being in the least exotic, they remain mysterious. Because of their courtship dances and monogamous unions, the Greeks invoked crows at weddings as symbols of conjugal love. Sax reminds us that human attitudes toward animals have evolved from long before our earliest attempts to depict them in art and story and also that much of our original relationship with them has been lost as humans have attempted to separate and differentiate themselves from the animal world. In a vast range of cultures from the Chinese to the Hopi Indians, crows are bearers of prophecy. Nevertheless, the whiskers around their beaks and an apparent smile make crows, in a scruffy sort of way, endearingly "human". Foraging on their long, powerful legs, crows appear to glide over the earth they take flight almost without effort, flapping their wings easily, ascending into the air like spirits. Though people generally do not think of them in such terms, crows are remarkably graceful: from the tip of a crows beak to the end of its tail is a single curve, which changes rhythmically as the crow turns its head or bends toward the ground.
0 kommentar(er)
