Venins

When one of William Henry Hudson's most famous books was published in France, Le naturaliste à La Plata (1930), no one — or almost no one — noticed that the text had been carefully expurgated. Pampas were great, gauchos fine, but not so those dreadful beasts like snakes, wasps, spiders, and the like. Only very clean and friendly animals were acceptable, not difformed insects. Texts could not shock or frighten – women were delicate creatures – but are they still today? More likely daring, it seems to me. One is a spider, another in love – but Gabon's vipers, like those of Hudson's New Forest – all that is far away and long ago.

Very far away and long ago. And when I close my eyes, it seems as though I'm seeing some things again: a Moorish villa in the middle of a big garden, with centipedes in the low walls, and two little boys inventing a museum. Then I become ill; I have a palm tree thorn imbedded in my tibia. Later a radiant young woman, a cave with rats. Father Freud goes off to hunt, a butterfly net in his hand. Forgets about me, invites statues to dinner. Finally, the horseflies come.

Ah, the horseflies. Scorpions, vipers, flies, horseflies. We hear the sounding of the Angel's trumpet.
– The Apocalypse, already?
– That of memory.
– The grasshoppers are missing.
– That will be for another time.
Patrick Reumaux

William Henry Hudson (1841-1922), an Argentinean ornithologist, naturalist and writer, was of British origin. He is a founding member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, in Great Britain, where he settled in 1869. It was his books on the English countryside which brought about a return-to-nature movement in the 1920s and 1930s and established his reputation in Europe. Among his numerous works, those translated into French are: Vertes Demeures (Seuil, 1984, out-of-print), Sous le vent de la pampa (Payot, Voyageurs, 2002), Un flâneur en Patagonie (Payot, Voyageurs, 2002), Contes méphitiques (J'ai lu, 2011) and Terre pourpre (La Table Ronde, 2012).