Editing Common nightingale (section)

==Cultural connotations==
{{further|Birds in culture}}

The common nightingale is an important symbol for poets from a variety of ages, and has taken on a number of symbolic connotations. [[Homer]] evokes [[Aëdon]] the nightingale in ''[[Odyssey]]'', suggesting the myth of [[Philomela]] and [[Procne]] (one of whom, depending on the myth's version, is turned into a nightingale<ref>{{Citation |last=Salisbury |first=Joyce E.|author-link= Joyce E. Salisbury |title=Women in the ancient world |year=2001 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-57607-092-5 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HF0m3spOebcC&pg=PA276 |page=276}}</ref>).<ref>{{Citation | last=Chandler | first=Albert R. |  title=The Nightingale in Greek and Latin Poetry | journal=The Classical Journal | volume=XXX | pages=78–84 | year=1934 | jstor=3289944 | issue=2 | publisher=The Classical Association of the Middle West and South}}</ref> This myth is the focus of [[Sophocles]]'s tragedy, ''[[Tereus (Sophocles)|Tereus]]'', of which only fragments remain. [[Ovid]], too, in his ''[[Metamorphoses]]'', includes the most popular version of this myth, imitated and altered by later poets, including [[Chrétien de Troyes]], [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], [[John Gower]], and [[George Gascoigne]]. [[T. S. Eliot]]'s "[[The Waste Land]]" also evokes the common nightingale's song (and the myth of Philomela and Procne).<ref>{{Citation | first=T. S. | last=Eliot | year=1964 | title=The Waste Land and Other Poems | edition=Signet Classic | publisher=Penguin Group | location=New York, NY | pages=32–59 | isbn=978-0-451-52684-7}}</ref> Because of the violence associated with the myth, the nightingale's song was long interpreted as a lament.

The common nightingale has also been used as a symbol of poets or their poetry.<ref>{{Citation | last=Shippey | first=Thomas | title=Listening to the Nightingale | journal=Comparative Literature | volume=XXII | pages=46–60 | year=1970 | issue=1 | publisher=Duke University Press | jstor=1769299 | doi=10.2307/1769299 }}</ref> Poets chose the nightingale as a symbol because of its creative and seemingly spontaneous song. [[Aristophanes]]'s ''[[The Birds (play)|The Birds]]'' and [[Callimachus]] both evoke the bird's song as a form of poetry. [[Virgil]] compares the mourning of Orpheus to the "lament of the nightingale".<ref name="10.2307_449753">{{Citation | last=Doggett | first=Frank | title=Romanticism's Singing Bird | journal=SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 | volume=XIV | pages=547–561 | year=1974 | jstor=449753 | issue=4 | publisher=Rice University | doi=10.2307/449753 }}</ref>

In [[Sonnet 102]] Shakespeare compares his love poetry to the song of the common nightingale (Philomel):

::"Our love was new, and then but in the spring,
::When I was wont to greet it with my lays;
::As Philomel in summer's front doth sing,
::And stops his pipe in growth of riper days:"

During the [[Romanticism|Romantic]] era the bird's symbolism changed once more: poets viewed the nightingale not only as a poet in his own right, but as "master of a superior art that could inspire the human poet".<ref name="10.2307_449753"/> For some romantic poets, the nightingale even began to take on qualities of the muse. The nightingale has a long history with symbolic associations ranging from "creativity, the muse, nature's purity, and, in Western spiritual tradition, virtue and goodness."<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Walker|first=Stuart|year=2012|title=The Object of Nightingales: Design Values for a Meaningful Material Culture|journal=Design and Culture|volume=4|issue=2|pages=149–170|doi=10.2752/175470812X13281948975459|s2cid=145281245}}</ref> Coleridge and Wordsworth saw the nightingale more as an instance of natural poetic creation: the nightingale became a voice of nature. [[John Keats]]' "[[Ode to a Nightingale]]" pictures the nightingale as an idealized poet who has achieved the poetry that Keats longs to write. Invoking a similar conception of the nightingale, [[Percy Bysshe Shelley|Shelley]] wrote in his "A Defence of Poetry":<ref>{{Citation| first=Percy | last=Bysshe Shelley| year=1903| title=A Defense of Poetry| publisher=Ginn & Company| location=Boston, MA| page=11}}</ref>

::A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.

The nightingale is the [[national bird]] of [[Ukraine]]. One legend tells how nightingales once only lived in [[Indian subcontinent|India]], when one nightingale visited Ukraine. Hearing sad songs from the people, the nightingale sang its song to cheer them up. The people responded with happy songs, and since then, nightingales have visited Ukraine every [[spring (season)|spring]] to hear [[Music of Ukraine|Ukrainian songs]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://proudofukraine.com/ukrainian-animal-and-bird-symbols/#Nightingale|title=Ukrainian animal and bird symbols|website=proudofukraine.com}}</ref> National poet [[Taras Shevchenko]] observed that "even the memory of the nightingale's song makes man happy."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ew7UAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Even+the+memory+of+the+nightingale's+song%22|title=The Ukrainian Review|date=24 September 1962|publisher=Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain, Ltd.|via=Google Books}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m6JiAAAAMAAJ&q=nightingale+|title=Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism|first=Edyta M.|last=Bojanowska|date=24 September 2018|publisher=Harvard University Press|via=Google Books|isbn=9780674022911}}</ref>

The nightingale is the official [[national bird]] of [[Iran]]. In medieval [[Persian literature]], the nightingale's enjoyable song made it a symbol of the lover who is eloquent, passionate, and doomed to love in vain.<ref name="A'lam2012">{{cite encyclopedia|last=A'lam|first=Hushang|title=BOLBOL "nightingale"|encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Iranica|year=2012|volume=IV|pages=336–338|url=https://iranicaonline.org/articles/bolbol-nightingale|access-date=2 July 2021|editor-first=Ehsan|editor-last=Yarshater|publisher=Routledge|location=London and New York}}</ref> In Persian poetry, the object of the nightingale's affections is the [[rose]], which embodies both the perfection of earthly beauty and the arrogance of that perfection.