Talking Birds?
This post contains some musings prompted by similarities I noticed between Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven and Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel. Further thought on these similarities caused me to think about the roles of talking birds in art. As a quick way to get started I will outline some of the similarities and differences that can be observed via a quick survey of both works.
Similarities
Both the poem and the song have a talking bird (this one probably goes without saying, given the title of the post).
The rhythmic structure, kind of, but certainly the patterns of stresses, is/are similar. If you’re happy for half of a word to fall onto the next line you can sing The Raven to the tune of Solsbury Hill (although it should be noted that neither is improved by this).
Both works contain the overall idea of a major life change.
Both employ a simple verse form, with a repeated stanza or strophe at the end of each.
There is a significant change in the pattern of stresses at the end of each verse in both works.
Differences
Subject matter is an obvious difference: The Raven is about a young academic who goes slowly mad over lost love, whilst Solsbury Hill seems to be about receiving the inspiration to make a positive life change (it’s often claimed this is about Gabriel’s decision to leave Genesis).
Genre: poetry and song aren’t really the same thing.
The Raven is a lot longer than Solsbury Hill.
A raven and an eagle have quite different connotations.
The two works were written/recorded and published more than one hundred years apart and so are products of very different societies.
The last point under ‘differences’ is an important one for me: although many similarities can be identified, these could be said to be tropes in art which were perhaps understood by Peter Gabriel through his knowledge of The Raven and many other poems and songs which bridge the gap between the two works I am discussing; it’s not unlikely, therefore, that he might use them in his song as well. For this reason I think the link of the talking birds is the most interesting line of enquiry—the other tropes mentioned might be found in many other songs and poems but in the popular music of the late 1970s talking birds are not as prominent as they might be.
Whilst preparing to write the opera green angel I spent a lot of time investigating the various roles of bird imagery in art, and particularly Anglo-Saxon art. It can be said that Poe’s Raven and Gabriel’s Eagle carry the connotations of this tradition. But since they are also talking birds they also carry the connotations of the oracle. This means that they are instruments of the truth since oracles (either animals or statues) are considered as being incapable of lying since they are not sentient, reasoned beings in the same way that humans are (and thus they are a convenient way to get characters out of sticky corners in Greek/Roman drama and in opera: what they say can’t possibly be questioned). Although pushed to speak the truth, talking birds can still misbehave. In Christian and Greek mythology the Raven ends up black as a punishment for either being too slow to give a message or for being the carrier of bad news. The eagle, on the other hand, is a symbol of positivity, strength and truth.
Interestingly in both works the birds don’t give a real message: Poe’s academic projects his own interpretation onto the Raven’s only word (“nevermore”) while we never hear the full message of Gabriel’s Eagle except the final outcome (“Grab your things, I’ve come to take you home.”) In both cases the link between the words of the bird and the eventual outcome is not a direct one: whereas an oracle would describe to the audience the events of the future (and usually gain the subject’s trust by first explaining the events of the past) here the birds function more as the impetus for change (from sanity to madness or form an undesirable life situation to freedom). There’s also a spiritual connection: the jangling guitar sound which links with folk song and its tradition of storytelling; the recourse to folk imagery by the placement of the first scene on the top of a hill; the use of the word “son” about a grown man; and the unlikelihood of an eagle being anywhere near Bath, all create the image of the character in Gabriel’s song being looked after by a higher power. On the other hand the suggestions that the raven has been sent either from God, from a previous master who suffered some sort of demise, or is the prophet of the man’s downfall also create the image of a higher power being behind the scene, albeit a malevolent one.
So what is the relevance of talking birds in art today? If oracles and talking animals speak the truth, and aesthetics, to some extent, seeks the truth in art, what does aesthetics have to say about talking birds? In order to fully answer this question then perhaps a more contemporary example of a talking bird than from 1977 is needed. However both talking birds seem to give the rather postmodern (for Poe, at least) message of ‘find your own truth’. In both cases the outcome for the protagonist seems to be that which was desired at the outset—as much as one could wish one’s own downfall as Poe’s character seems to do (but there is a long tradition of this in tales of courtly love). The extent to which the oracle has ever been a believable character in that they might be accepted to genuinely appear in everyday life in debateable, but their artistic tradition of sorting out the storyline and hastening the outcome seems unchanged. What can be concluded, perhaps, is that the relevance of talking bird in art—whilst their historical imagery might not be at the forefront of a present consciousness—is as it ever was. The social change between 1845 and the 1970s has not reduced the agency of the bird and both birds achieve the same agency as a classical oracle through more subtle delivery, possibly suggesting that the talking bird as a symbol has the effect of an oracle without the need for a lengthy explanation of the past and the future as found in Greek and Roman drama.
As a concluding statement I might then say that these artworks show that mythical figures, which might be considered less believable in the 19th and 20th centuries when compared with the past, are as useful and effective as symbols as they ever were.
