JIVS 6 (1) pp. 27–38 Intellect Limited 2021 Journal of Interdisciplinary Voice Studies Volume 6 Number 1 www.intellectbooks.com 27 ABSTRACT The ‘Elegy on the Nightingale’ is a curious Latin poem of uncertain (but probably post-classical) date and authorship that is transmitted by several medieval manu- scripts. It offers a catalogue of animal sounds rich in what linguists call iconicity, and literary scholars, onomatopoeia: to read these verses aloud is to imitate the sounds being described. The poem begins in address to the nightingale of its title, praised for her ability to make music by mimicking all she hears. By the end has the poem itself done the same? For all their playfulness, the verses strike at the heart of our own theoretical commonplaces, starting with the supposed arbitrariness of the sign, always unsettled by such examples, exceptional though they may be. So too did the writing down of non-human sounds preoccupy ancient linguists, who sought to segregate them from language proper. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that these sound-words conjure what they name, especially since, in many cases, it is only our ability to match their sounds to animals we can still hear that enables us to know what the poem is saying. What happens to our understanding of the poetic text as a transcription of human speech or song when we take it seriously as a recording of non-human sound? And even more dramatically, what happens to our understanding of human language when we strive (as this poem strives, albeit surreptitiously) to listen with non-human ears? With some help from the animal imaginings of Jakob von Uexküll, this article attempts some preliminary answers. It should go without saying that doubt about the alleged distinctiveness of human beings from (other) animals long predates recent turns to post- humanism and the like. Much of that doubt, new and old alike, can be crudely © 2021 Intellect Ltd Article. English language. https://doi.org/10.1386/jivs_00035_1 Received 7 September 2020; Accepted 17 October 2020 SHANE BUTLER Johns Hopkins University Animal listening KEYWORDS birdsong poetry non-human Latin iconicity onomatopoeia linguistics Uexküll