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Quotation

I found there were myriad definitions of this thing called tragedy that had wormed its way through the history of literature; and the simplest of all was this: that it is the story of a figure who, through some moral flaw or personal failing, falls through force of circumstance to his doom. I saw those nineteenth-century falconers were projecting onto their hawks all the male qualities they thought threatened by modern life, wildness, power, virility, independence and strength. I look again she seems neither bird nor reptile, but a creature shaped by a million years of evolution for a life she’s not yet lived. The tiny, hair-like feathers between her beak and eye – crines – are for catching blood so that it will dry, and flak… He walks around the chapel, imaging the earth beneath him turning and muttering ad it senses the familiar hawk above, as the bones of farm labourers mutter when agricultural machinery passes over their forgotten tombs.