Name: He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth
Price: 17.45 EUR
Availability: InStock
Author: Snyder, Gary ; Bringhurst, Robert ; Snyder, Gary
ISBN: 9781593761554

portada He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth

He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth

Type

Physical Book

Author

Epilogue by

Preface by

Publisher

Language

English

Pages

168

Format

Paperback

Dimensions

20.0 x 13.5 x 1.0 cm

Weight

0.20 kg.

ISBN

1593761554

ISBN13

9781593761554

Synopsis "He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village: The Dimensions of a Haida Myth"

In 1951, as a student of anthropology in Oregon, Gary Snyder set himself to the task of analyzing the many levels of meaning a single Native American myth might hold. He Who Hunted Birds in His Father's Village is the result of Snyder's critical look at a Haida tale that was told by the great oral poet Ghandl (Walter McGregor) to John Swanton sometime before 1905. A version of the ubiquitous "swan maiden" story, it tells of a chief's son who falls in love with a wild goose-girl, loses her, follows her into the sky, and returns to land as a seagull. Snyder goes deep into the transformations that occur in the myth, considering versions of myth from around the world, and explaining how the story might apply here and now. He writes: To go beyond and become what-a seagull on a reef? Why not. Our nature is no particular nature; look out across the beach at the gulls. For an empty moment while their soar and cry enters your heart like sunshaft through water, you are that, totally. We do this every day. So this is the aspect of mind that gives art, style, and self-transcendence to the inescapable human plantedness in a social and ecological nexus. The challenge is to do it well, by your neighbors and by the trees, and that maybe once in a great while we can get where we see through the same eye at the same time, for a moment. That would be doing it well. Old tales and myths and stories are the k_ans of the human race.

Gary Snyder

(Author, Epilogue by)

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Gary Sherman Snyder (San Francisco, May 8, 1930) is a poet, translator, essayist, lecturer, and American environmental activist belonging to the Beat Generation movement and the San Francisco Renaissance. He is considered one of the founders and forerunners of the 1960s countercultural movement. Among other awards, he has received the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. He has published more than 25 books between 1959 and 2007 (poetry, essays, travel books) and has been translated into more than 20 languages.

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