Fairy Tales

BIRD PHOENIX

IN THE GARDEN OF Eden, under the Tree of Knowledge, stood a hedge of roses. Inside the first rose that bloomed, a bird was born. Its flight was like light, glorious its colors and splendid its song.

But when Eve picked the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and she and Adam were chased from the Garden of Eden, a spark fell from the avenging angel’s sword of flame into the nest and ignited it. The bird died in the flames, but from the red egg a new bird arose—the only—the always only—bird Phoenix. Legend tells that it nests in Arabia and that every hundred years it burns itself up in its nest, and from the red egg a new Phoenix flies, the only one in the world.

The bird flutters around us, swift as light, glorious in color and splendid in song. When the mother sits by her child’s cradle, it’s by the pillow and sweeps a halo around the child’s head with its wings. It flies through the rooms of frugality and brings sunshine there, where the simple cupboards waft with the scent of violets.

But bird Phoenix isn’t just Arabia’s bird. It flutters in the glow of the northern lights over the icy fields of Lapland. It leaps amongst the yellow flowers in Greenland’s short summer. Under the copper mines of Fahlun¹ and in England’s coal mines, it flies like a moth with dust on its wings over the song book in the pious worker’s hand. It sails on the lotus leaf by the holy waters of the Ganges, and the eyes of the Hindu girl light up when she sees it.

Bird Phoenix! Don’t you know him? The bird of paradise, the sacred swan of song. It sat on the Thespian cart as a gossiping raven and flapped with its soiled black wings. With a swan’s red sonorous beak it glided over Iceland’s bards. It rested on Shakespeare’s shoulder as one of Odin’s ravens,² and whispered in his ear: Immortality. It flew with the song festival through the great hall of Wartburg.³

Bird Phoenix! Don’t you know him? He sang the Marseillaise for you, and you kissed the feathers that fell from his wings. He came in the glory of paradise, and perhaps you turned away to the sparrow with gilded wings.

Bird of paradise! Renewed each century, born in flames and dying in flames. Your picture framed in gold hangs in the galleries of the rich, while you yourself often fly wildly and alone—a legend only: Bird Phoenix of Arabia.

In the Garden of Eden when you were born under the tree of knowledge, in the first blooming rose, God kissed you and gave you your right name—Poetry.

NOTES

1 Copper-mining town northwest of Stockholm.

2 In Nordic mythology, Odin has two ravens, Hugin and Munin, who fly around the world every day and then whisper everything they see and hear in Odin’s ear.

3 According to legend, Wartburg castle was the site of a minstrels’ contest in 1207 ordered by Count Herman of Thüringen.