To see a live flamingo is to understand elegance
NATURE To see a live flamingo is to understand elegance As a child, I read a great many books in which animals and birds played significant roles, not only in the narrative itself, but also in creating the emotional and psychological atmosphere of that narrative - the imaginative furniture, as it we...
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| Published in: | New Statesman 2013-03, Vol.142 (5148), p.55 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Magazinearticle |
| Language: | eng |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | NATURE To see a live flamingo is to understand elegance As a child, I read a great many books in which animals and birds played significant roles, not only in the narrative itself, but also in creating the emotional and psychological atmosphere of that narrative - the imaginative furniture, as it were, in which any story unfolds. Yet even the briefest encounter with a live flamingo brings out the characteristics that Audubon's drawings fail to convey - because, in life, the flamingo is elegant and not at all awkward and, even as it stands on one leg (many other birds do this but in the flamingo it is both more frequent and more pronounced), it enjoys a special relationship with gravity that brings to mind the grace of a dancer, or a tightrope walker. |
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| ISSN: | 1364-7431 1758-924X |