Believe in People by Karel Capek

Author:Karel Capek [Šárka Tobrmanová-Kühnová]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571271702
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2010-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

About Birdsong

The People’s Paper, 9 June 1929

Various commonplace ideas about birdsong are pervasive: that birdsong is delectable, for instance. Conversely I heard the other day a lady, who lives near Rieger’s Orchards, lament that she must move out. Apparently the birds in the park keep shouting so loudly from four o’clock in the morning that they don’t let her sleep. I consoled her by saying that all birds didn’t do this, only blackbirds. Where blackbirds are concerned, it’s of course necessary to admit that they are black, rumbustious scoundrels who don’t have a tang of feeling for poetry. Besides, blackbirds have almost entirely alienated themselves from nature; they have become townies and, consequently, turned into boors. They’ve got used to the city as sparrows have; more precisely, they’ve seized control of the city and don’t suffer any decent species of bird into it. A thrush wanted to settle down in my garden. He sat on the fence, tilted his head to one side and whistled that, basically, he’d like it there. That very moment a pair of blackbirds pounced on him ruthlessly with a hell of a racket and drove him away, somewhere beyond Červený Dvůr. With that this black, yellow-beaked louse hopped about victoriously on the palings of his garden, bawling out: ‘See him? See him? See him? He’s gone!’ Then he wagged his little tail and spat energetically.

That was last year’s blackbird, a big shouter and a lout in the sight of the Lord. He had his favourite hackneyed utterances, which only uninformed people took for singing – they were actually insults. For example, he enjoyed shouting around at full blast:

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