Wordie: Petrel: Comments

Comment by reesetee, 11 months ago

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 19:25:01 +0000

But not fueled by petrol. ;->

Sarra: Worders and birders. I love it! Rolig, thanks for that link. I'm not as familiar with Russian literature as I should be. :-)

Comment by rolig, 11 months ago

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 00:07:54 +0000

Reesetee, the full text in both English and Russian can be found here.
Thanks, Sarra, for confirming my suspicion! As the Wikipedia article states, this prose poem got Gorky sent to prison. One might even say that to some small degree the Russian Revolution was fueled by the Petrel.

Comment by sarra, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:56:44 +0000

Veda is connected to wit, you're right. The OED's etymological entry for the latter is beautiful: a vast journey across a swathe of Teutonic languages, to Old English, down to the mythical Indo-European, and of course to Sanskrit, taking in quite a tapestry of cognates along the way.

The variety of bird species and that of languages are becoming quite intertwined in my mind, now. Ancestry, migrations… and of course, etymologists and ornithologists; linguaphiles and birdwatchers. Worders and birders.

Comment by bilby, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:53:58 +0000

Excellent background rolig. I feel like having a petrel right now but Scotland is only giving me rain in my face :-( Trieste's quite a place, I can understand why Joyce tarried awhile. Thanks.

Comment by reesetee, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:46:18 +0000

Rolig, what a wonderful excerpt--beautiful description of storm petrels. Thanks!

Comment by rolig, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 23:15:13 +0000

Thanks, bilby. The Russian word "vestnik" is commonly used in the sense of "bulletin" by learned societies. The Slavic root is -ved-, which has to do with knowing (in this case, making known); in Slovene, "to know" is "vedeti", for example. It's the same IE root that shows up in the Hindu Vedas, and in English in wit (I think that's true). As for bure-, that comes from the Russian word burya, "storm". In Slovene, this same word, as "burja" has come to mean, specifically, the strong wind that blows toward the Adriatic. The Italians in the area (esp. Trieste) have borrowed the Slovene word and call this wind "bora". And there you have it.

Comment by bilby, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:57:44 +0000

Really liked that rolly. I got the bit about vestnik as in herald ... isn't there a newspaper by that name? But the image is quite gorgeously constructed.

Comment by rolig, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 22:46:30 +0000

Shifting the discussion a little to the east, my primary connotation for "petrel" comes from Gorky's 1901 prose poem "The Song of the Stormy Petrel" (Pesnya o burevestnike – the Russ. "burevestnik" – petrel – means literally "storm-herald"). The opening sentences are:

"Over the gray flatness of the sea the wind gathers storm-clouds. Between the clouds and the sea proudly soars the stormy petrel, as a streak of black lightning.
Now the waves on wingtip touching, now as an arrow shooting to the clouds, he screams, and — the clouds hear joy in the bird's proud cry."

Comment by bilby, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 21:31:21 +0000

Well, despite being in Finland for 2 weeks over Moneymas and New Year, and taking 300 photos, there are almost no faces in same. Finns, probably wisely, do not indulge in Ostentatious Proboscis Displays when it's minus 20. I have no idea.

Comment by reesetee, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:53:07 +0000

Yes, but do Finns really have that extra tunnel above their regular old noses? If so, it would be fitting to call them tube-nosed. Now, that junkyard part, I don't know about.

Comment by bilby, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:37:19 +0000

I admire tube-nosed for its expressive qualities but it's not that flattering really. I mean, we humans use all these terms for other species. But if imagine if the Burundi Encyclopaedia described Finns as: a blonde, tube-nosed people living on a junkyard of snow. All hell would break loose, and petrels would still hover above it. But I like stormy petrels, I do.

Comment by reesetee, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:20:36 +0000

Always liked that phrase, too. Tube-nosed. Perhaps they should be required to have emissions inspections. :-)

These are amazing birds, really. The word "petrel" derives from the Latin for Peter--St. Peter, that is. It refers to some petrels' ability to hover just above the waves, with their feet barely touching the surface, so they appear to be walking on water.

Comment by bilby, 11 months ago

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 20:15:37 +0000

I'm concerned about the carbon footprint of petrels. Don't blame SUV's, the problem is RSL-WT-NBs.