The
natural world in all its richness, glimpsed variously in the house, the
barnyard, and the garden, in ponds and streams, and at large in the
woods and the fields, including old friends like the dog, the cat, the
cow, and the pig, along with more unusual and sometimes alarming
characters such as the weasel, the dragonfly, snakes of several sorts,
and even a whale, not to mention ants in their seeming infinitude and a
single humble potato—all these and more are the subjects of what
may well be the most deft and delightful book of literary miniatures
ever written.
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In Jules Renard’s world, plants and animals not only feel but speak
(one species, the swallow, appears to write Hebrew), and yet, for all
the anthropomorphic wit and whimsy the author indulges in, they guard
their mystery too. |
Sly, funny, and touching, Nature Stories, here beautifully rendered
into English by Douglas Parmée and accompanied by the wonderful
ink-brush images of Pierre Bonnard with which the book was originally
published, is a literary classic of inexhaustible freshness.
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Nature Stories
by Jules Renard
The New York Review of Books,
2010
Order
a copy
Reviewed in
The Nature Pages
|
