The Bird

by Jules Michelet

English, French (translation)

350 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1856

About the author

His father was a master printer, not very prosperous, and Jules assisted him in the actual work of the press. A place was offered him in the imperial printing office, but his father was able to send him to the famous Collège or Lycée Charlemagne, where he distinguished himself. He passed the university examination in 1821, and was soon appointed to a professorship of history in the Collège Rollin.

Soon after this, in 1824, he married. This was one of the most favourable periods ever for scholars and men of letters in France, and Michelet had powerful patrons in Abel-François Villemain and Victor Cousin, among others. Although he was an ardent politician (having from his childhood embraced republicanism and a peculiar variety of romantic free-thought), he was above all a man of letters and an inquirer into the history of the past. His earliest works were school textbooks. Between 1825 and 1827 he produced diverse sketches, chronological tables, etc, of modern history. His précis of the subject, published in 1827, is a sound and careful book, far better than anything that had appeared before it, and written in a sober yet interesting style. In the same year he was appointed maître de conferences at the École normale supérieure. Four years later, in 1831, the Introduction à l'histoire universelle showed a very different style, exhibiting the idiosyncrasy and literary power of the writer to greater advantage, but also displaying, in the words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, "the peculiar visionary qualities which made Michelet the most stimulating, but the most untrustworthy (not in facts, which he never consciously falsifies, but in suggestion) of all historians."

Reviews

[Dusty · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Man, bird, all nature, utter the same desire", Michelet says, and that's more or less this book encapsulated in one sentence. As I understand it, The Bird is a sort of side project -- a distraction -- to the other, heavier work the author was doing concurrently into the history of France. Buried in old documents, the names of conquerors, and a past mostly remembered by its wars and inequalities, Michelet must have begun to wonder why it is that humans can't live as peacefully and harmoniously as birds and other animals do. Of course, there's a good deal of impossible idealism, sweeping generalization and contradiction involved here, especially as regards Michelet's peculiar opinions on the superiority of even Europe's nature over that of the rest of the world. Ultimately I agree with his conclusions (humans should be the stewards rather than the tyrants of the environment) but I find the routes he takes to those conclusions in many cases suspicious and even offensive. The book isn't badly written so much as it's a product of its time, I guess -- the kind of book you'd find in a charming faded leather cover at an antiques shop and think I'd never want to read this, but wouldn't it look distinguished on my coffee table? (Note: You can read the whole book for free at Google Books.)