In a sense I did not do a great deal of in-depth research about the Canada Goose. That said, in another sense I’ve performed the deepest of researches considering that I have not only seen them in person but have stepped on their little cylindrical turds, and stepped on them repeatedly. How much more intimate can one get with an object of research? These birds, they are my brothers.
Despite my “expertise,” however, I am not going to talk about this goose so much as Audubon’s biography of the goose. To me, this sketch is a fascinating one, employing as it does a surprising wealth of stories and storytelling techniques. Note, for example, the way that the first full paragraph on page 363 consists of quick-moving narration, a condensed scene-setting that transitions elegantly into the next paragraph’s scene of group flight. Just as his “watercolors,” when subjected to close examination, reveal a variety of techniques, so Audubon’s biographical entries reveal a number of discourses, including a number of types of narrative.
These different discourses are most obvious, and to my mind, most fascinating in the places when Audubon repeats himself. In this entry Audubon repeats himself a considerable amount, but when he does so he almost always makes certain that the second iteration of some goose fact is offered in a different register than the first appearance of said fact.
The long full paragraph on page 366 features two significant repetitions. The first sentence, noting that “The young follow their parents to the water a day or two after they have issued from the egg” (366), recalls his earlier narrative account on page 362: “Toward the water they now follow their careful parent, they reach the border of the stream, their mother already floats on the loved element, one after another launches forth, and now the flock glides gently along. What a beautiful sight!” (362). These passages contain a roughly identical content but are presented in distinctly different forms. The first strives for a matter of fact, scientific tone, while the second is part of what I would call a “hypothetical scene.” For in this passage, which opens with Audubon saying, “Suppose all to be peaceful and quiet” (362), he is not describing any specific trip to the water but rather a hypothetical, representative one.
Also on page 366 one finds Audubon’s story of a bold gander who in protecting his mate and his nest, struck the author so powerfully that he believed that his arm might be broken. Again, this passage repeats something from page 362. Indeed, surely it is this very narrative that serves as the the source of Audubon’s contention that “I doubt if man himself, if unarmed, would come off unscathed” (362) in an encounter with a gander protecting his eggs. Here we have two more discourses: that of autobiographical, concrete narrative and that of learned speculation.
Now, what to make of these repetitions? When James Joyce does this sort of thing I go into a reverie wherein we gaze at one another across a candlelit table and talk about how smart he is. Should I treat Audubon with this same reverence? Well, please allow me to take what he’s doing very seriously for the moment. What does this repetition in different registers accomplish? For one thing it gives a fuller picture of the goose, allowing us to see it from multiple perspectives, through multiple lenses. The two accounts of the hatchlings heading for the water are particularly evocative for me, suggesting almost a kind of cubist flock of babes, one seen from multiple angles at once.
Even if Audubon’s repetition is not especially intentional it is still laden with meaning. To me, his need to repeat information in at least two different ways evokes the mixed ambitions that he harbored for his paintings. Like the passages I quoted, Audubon’s paintings try to show his birds in more than one light. They try to maintain both a scientific objectivity and an artistic beauty. The figures are based on a single, dead bird and yet they attempt to provide a representative example of what this entire species looks like—a representative example that is also in some sense an ideal example, what he calls in another entry a “good specimen” (235).
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