The birds (Du Maurier)

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Daphne du Maurier (1947)

The birds (original title: The Birds ) is a fantastic novel by Daphne du Maurier published in 1952 . It has both horror elements and sci-fi features and is about sudden attacks by huge flocks of birds on people in wintry England - and perhaps around the world. The protagonist is a war veteran who lives with his family in rural Cornwall and has observed what is going on from the start.

The novella is the basis for the famous film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock from 1963, which deviates significantly from the literary model.

content

Nat Hocken, who was wounded in the war, lives with his wife and two children in a secluded and modest place in a cottage on the Cornish coast and works three days a week on a neighboring farm. On a December day, after the onset of winter, he observed conspicuous flocks of birds, but initially did not attach any particular importance to them. That changes when he hears his children screaming at night. A large number of small birds - robins , blue tits , sparrows and the like - have entered through an open window in their room and attack him in the dark when he comes to look. When morning came, he found 50 dead birds in the room. He reports the incident to his neighbors on the farm, but is not taken seriously. As he tries to bury the dead birds on the beach, he notices that tens of thousands of seagulls are floating on the waves and seem to be waiting for something. When he returned home, he heard a report on the radio that reports of unusually behaving flocks of birds had arrived from all over England and that there had been isolated attacks, which prompted him to close the windows with boards as a precaution and also to secure the chimneys.

When Nat picks up his daughter Jill from the school bus, he meets his neighbor, who is unimpressed by the reports and intends to shoot some of the seagulls for fun. The neighbor takes Jill in the car and Nat walks back to the cottage. Shortly before he reaches the house, he is attacked and with difficulty escapes the birds that suicidally pounce on him. The family barricades themselves in the kitchen. One hears on the radio that there is a national emergency and that everyone is called upon to ensure their own safety. Further messages and instructions on how to behave should follow the next morning. In the morning, however, the radio remains silent and the other stations are also silent. Since there is a lack of supplies, Nat and his family go on an expedition to the neighboring farm while the birds are resting, where he finds the bodies of the farmer, his wife and the farm worker. He returns to his house with the family with the supplies from the farm. Then the birds attack again. Nat sits in the kitchen in front of the fireplace and smokes his last cigarette.

background

The Birds first appeared in 1952 as part of The Apple Tree , the first collection of short stories published by Du Maurier. An expanded version of The Apple Tree appeared the following year under the title Kiss Me Again, Stranger . The volume of stories was received unfavorably by the press. One took offense at the new tone of the stories of an author who had previously been classified as a writer of sentimental stories. Journalist Nancy Spain wrote in the Daily Express that the tales in the tape were inspired by "deformity, hatred, blackmail, cruelty and murder". This did not detract from the success with the audience.

Alfred Hitchcock had already secured the film rights in the year of its appearance and in 1959 the story appeared as the first piece in the anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites in Suspense, edited by Hitchcock . Together with Do not turn around (original title: Don't Look Now , 1970, also as a translation under the title When the gondolas carry mourning , the 1973 film adaptation of Nicolas Roeg ), The Birds is Du Maurier's best-known story. The popularity that the story gained through Hitchcock's 1963 film adaptation is also reflected in the fact that the Penguin paperback edition of The Apple Tree was now published in the same year under the title The Birds and Other Stories .

The story is said to have been inspired by an attack by seagulls on a farmer in an open field that Du Maurier observed.

Adaptations

Movies

Du Maurier was not very satisfied with the film adaptation by Alfred Hitchcock. She had seen the film in England in the year it was released and, while impressed by the special effects, disapproved of the extensive reworking of the plot in Evan Hunter's script . The relocation of the action from Cornwall to Bodega Bay, California, did not meet with approval either. At least the film was an international success, but Du Maurier was irritated that Hitchcock hardly mentioned her as a writer, although The Birds - after Riff Piraten and Rebecca - was already the third film adaptation of a model by Hitchcock.

In 2007 Sheldon Wilson filmed the material again with The Birds - Attack From Above (original title: Kaw ).

In addition to these feature films, there were other adaptations in television series.

radio play

As early as 1952, Südwestfunk, together with Bayerischer Rundfunk and Radio Bremen, produced a 73-minute radio play version by Bruno E. Werner , for which Siegfried Franz wrote the music. Speakers directed by Karl Peter Biltz included Josef Sieber (Nat Hocken), Otti Schütz (Ann Hocken), Victor Weiss (Tom Hocken), Gudrun Gewecke (Jill Hocken), Tim Elstner (Jonny Hocken) and Kurt Ebbinghaus (Harry Trigg) . It was first broadcast on December 2, 1952.

expenditure

  • First printing: The Birds. In: Good Housekeeping . October 1952.
  • UK first edition: The Birds. In: The Apple Tree: A Short Novel and Some Stories. Gollancz, 1952.
  • US first edition: The Birds. In: Kiss Me Again, Stranger. Doubleday, 1953.
  • Paperback: The Birds. In: The Birds and Other Stories. Penguin, 1963.
  • EBook: The Birds. In: The Birds and Other Stories. Little, Brown, 2013, ISBN 978-0-316-25360-4 .
  • German:
    • The birds. Bertelsmann, Gütersloh 1958.
    • The birds. In: The birds / When the gondolas bear mourning: stories. Translated by Eva Schönfeld. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16673-X .
    • The birds. In: The Birds & When the Gondolas Mourn: Two Tales. Translated by Christel Dormagen and Brigitte Heinrich . Insel, Frankfurt am Main 2018, ISBN 978-3-458-36321-7 , ISBN 978-3-458-75180-9 (e-book).
  • Audio book:

literature

  • Richard Allen: Daphne du Maurier and Alfred Hitchcock. In: Robert Stam, Alessandra Raengo (Eds.): A Companion to Literature and Film. Blackwell, 2004, ISBN 0-631-23053-X , pp. 299-325 (chap. 18, PDF ).
  • Mary Ellen Bellanca: The Monstrosity of Predation in Daphne du Maurier's “The Birds”. In: ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment , Vol. 18, Issue 1 (Winter 2011), pp. 26–46, doi : 10.1093 / isle / isq123 , ( PDF ).
  • Helena Habibi: 'Restless Birds': Avian Encounters in the Fiction of the Brontës and Daphne du Maurier. Dissertation Durham University 2020, pp. 215-237 ( PDF ).
  • Nil Korkut-Nayki: The Supernatural and the Functions of the Gothic in Daphne du Maurier's 'The Birds' and 'Don't Look Now'. In: Katarzyna Więckowska (Ed.): The Gothic: Studies in History, Identity and Space. United Kingdom Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-1-84888-099-3 , pp. 127-133.
  • Maria Antónia Lima: Visions of Fear: The Power of Shock of du Maurier's Suicide Birds. In: Carlos Ceia, Miguel Alarcão, Iolanda Ramos (eds.): Letras & Ciências. As Duas Culturas de Filipe Furtado. Caleidoscópio, Lisbon 2009, ISBN 978-989-658-031-5 , pp. 111-116.
  • Andrew Maunder: The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story. Facts on File, 2007, ISBN 978-0-8160-5990-4 , p. 128.
  • Tatiana de Rosnay : Manderley Forever: The Life of Daphne Du Maurier. St. Martin's Press 2019, ISBN 978-1-250-09913-6 .
  • Mary Ellen Snodgrass: The Birds. In: (dies.): Encyclopedia of Gothic Literature. Facts on File, 2004, ISBN 0-8160-5528-9 , pp. 28f.
  • Terry W. Thompson: “They had Everything They Needed”: Autonomy as Sub-Text in Du Maurier's “The Birds”. In: The North Dakota Quarterly , 76 (2009), pp. 63-74.
  • Gina Wisker: 'Don't Look Now! The Compulsions and Revelations of Daphne du Maurier's Horror Writing. In: Journal of Gender Studies , 8 (1999), pp. 19–33 ( PDF ).
  • A Study Guide for Daphne du Maurier's The Birds. Gale, Cengage Learning, Farmington Hills 2016, ISBN 978-1-4103-4137-2 (e-book).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rein A. Zondergeld : Du Maurier, Daphne. In: Lexicon of fantastic literature. Fantastic Library, Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1983, p. 84.
  2. ↑ a b Tatiana de Rosnay: Manderley Forever. 2019, ISBN 978-1-250-09913-6 , Part IV.
  3. ^ Alfred Hitchcock Presents: My Favorites in Suspense. Random House, 1959, OCLC 299612 .
  4. ^ A b Andrew Maunder: The Facts on File Companion to the British Short Story. Facts on File, 2007, p. 128.
  5. ↑ ARD audio game database The Birds (SWF / BR / RB 1952)