Literary Gem

Here is, at long last, a literary post.

I wish to share with you one of the most profound short pieces I have ever read. It is a prose poem by Turgenev, one that I first encountered via A.C. Bradley's wonderful (but nearly unknown) lecture on the sublime, in which he challenges some of Burke's ideas on the subject. Here is the piece in its entirety, which should take no more than 2 minutes to read.

THE SPARROW

"I was returning from hunting, and walking along an avenue of the garden, my dog running in front of me.

Suddenly he took shorter steps, and began to steal along as though tracking game.

I looked along the avenue, and saw a young sparrow, with yellow about its beak and down on its head. It had fallen out of the nest (the wind was violently shaking the birch-trees in the avenue) and sat unable to move, helplessly flapping its half-grown wings.

My dog was slowly approaching it, when, suddenly darting down from a tree close by, an old dark-throated sparrow fell like a stone right before his nose, and all ruffled up, terrified, with despairing and pitiful cheeps, it flung itself twice towards the open jaws of shining teeth.

It sprang to save; it cast itself before its nestling ... but all its tiny body was shaking with terror; its note was harsh and strange. Swooning with fear, it offered itself up!

What a huge monster must the dog have seemed to it! And yet it could not stay on its high branch out of danger.... A force stronger than its will flung it down.

My Tr�sor stood still, drew back.... Clearly he too recognised this force.

I hastened to call off the disconcerted dog, and went away, full of reverence.

Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverence for that tiny heroic bird, for its impulse of love.

Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.

Bradley uses this example to counter Burke's claim that the sublime always implies grandeur or largeness.