Peregrine Falcon

The Peregrine

🦅【Editor's Recommendation】
★A long-out-of-print classic, now back in style. A masterpiece that has influenced over half a century, a pinnacle of nature literature.
Published in 1967 and winner of the Duff Cooper Award that year, "The Peregrine Falcon" is one of only two books J.A. Baker published. Baker, severely nearsighted since childhood and suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis, never truly left his native Essex. For a full decade, he exiled himself from the world, dedicating his entire life and soul to peregrine falcons. Day after day, he searched and observed, recording over 1,600 pages of notes. He then repeatedly revised and refined these notes, ultimately condensing them into this diary, spanning just six months and leaving behind a masterpiece of nature literature. It was the winter of the 1960s, and it was any winter.
A steadfast and pure soul watches over the world, a timeless masterpiece of living in the face of death. It tells the story of a person who longs to be something more than human.
For the ill and restricted Baker, the peregrine falcon, soaring freely in the sky, was undoubtedly the embodiment of all ideals. He lived his life in anonymity, almost spurning human identity. In his restrained prose, he exhausts all his imagination, traversing the edge of the world to feel the eagle's feelings, leaving behind a poignant elegy for the peregrine falcon and himself. He then quietly spent the rest of his life on his sickbed, vanishing from the world. This is not a book about birds, but about becoming a bird. It's about a person yearning to be something more than human.
★ This is a "translation that doesn't seem like a translation" that combines the precision of a documentary with the elegance of a prose poem and can only be achieved by truly entering the author's heart.
Baker uses striking metaphors and a freehand brushstroke to depict scenes he has repeatedly observed and depicted over the past decade. Using precise, concise, and poetic language, he vividly recreates every sound, every color, and even the varying density of the air in the winter countryside where the peregrine falcon rests. This gives readers a near-documentary experience, a dual baptism of nature and literature. Translator Li Siben, understanding the author's "quietist heart," carefully considered and refined his choice of words in response to his free and bold linguistic experiments, blurring the boundaries of language and completing a brilliant interpretation.
★ Featured on The New York Review of Books' "Classics Revisited" list, designated a must-read by film master Herzog, and ranked among the top two foreign literature works of 2017 on Douban. Rated 9.1 on Douban by over 1,000 readers, and receiving rave reviews, Baker is considered a pioneer of "New Naturalist Writing." British naturalist Richard Maybee called it "the single most important inspiration for all who followed." Renowned director Werner Herzog called The Peregrine a work on the level of Joseph Conrad and listed it among the must-reads of the Rogue Film School, alongside works by Virgil and Hemingway. British Poet Laureate Ted Hughes and Robert Macfarlane, one of the greatest contemporary writers of walking literature, have both hailed the book as "one of the most important works of 20th-century nature literature."
🌳【Content Introduction】
From autumn to spring, across the flat wetlands of eastern England, JA Baker chased peregrine falcons. He became obsessed with following these birds, observing them—in the sky, on the ground, chasing, hunting, eating, resting... Day after day, his sense of humanity gradually faded, inevitably replaced by that of an eagle...
This is not a book about birdwatching, it is a book about becoming a hawk, about a man who longs to be something more than a human.
🌺【Media Recommendation】
One of the most beautifully written, meticulously observed, and moving descriptions of wildlife I have ever read.
—Barry Lopez, National Book Award winner I, too, am obsessed with Peregrine Falcon, in a different way, but equally addictive. Just as Shepard changed the way I see mountains, Baker changed the way I see coasts and skies.
- Robert Macfarlane, a leading figure in contemporary British nature literature. In Baker's writing, he seems to be the last man in the world, and the peregrine falcon he is watching is a ghost from the sky, a lost soul.
—Helen Macdonald, author of His for Hawk I think it's a defining book for anyone who wants to make films, and anyone who wants to be a writer. You have to read it, memorize it, memorize the whole book.
—Werner Herzog, Cannes Best Director and legendary German filmmaker. He (Beck) sought to escape the fear that what humans see is what he wants to see. Even if he hasn't escaped this world, at least he has approached the edge of human vision. He can't truly see through a bird's eyes, but he has stripped away as much of his original self as possible. His eyes are no longer the same as before, allowing him to see things he's never seen before.
- John Gray, a famous contemporary British philosopher "The Peregrine Falcon" can be regarded as one of the best works of all about nature... His language is precise, poetic and emotionally powerful, as if the author was under great pressure when choosing words, a pressure that came from both his feelings for the bird and the weight of the experience he wanted to convey.
—BBC Wildlife magazine
“The Peregrine Falcon” is undoubtedly the most accurate and poetic description of a bird, perhaps of any non-human creature, ever written in the English-speaking world.
—DailyMail
Mr. Baker is above all a descriptive writer, but his obsession leads him to an almost manic empathy that elevates his book beyond mere observational notes.
—The New Yorker

2023-02-01

北京日报出版社

Ideal Country

320

9787547744277