Maybe elephants are more than just elephants
When watching the Spring Festival Gala program, I did not expect that the "elephants" of "Vientiane Rejuvenation" were really elephant elephants, and I did not expect that this group of wild elephants from the southern rainforest but migrating all the way north left their familiar habitats, broke into unfamiliar human villages, stole grain and rice wine, and walked at night on human roads. The journey is simply a long epic.
Spring Festival Gala Musical Short Drama "Vientiane Rejuvenation"
Elephants: Migration, Patience and Tolerance
Compared to the attention received by the wild elephants in Yunnan, an elephant's journey from Lisbon, Portugal, to Vienna, Austria, in 1550 is rarely recorded. We can only imagine the elephant's possible experience together in Saramago's writings.
Elephant Travels
Author: [Portuguese] José Zaramargo
Publisher: Writers Press
Translator: Wang Yuan
Published: 2015-5
Two years after crossing the sea from India to Portugal, a conversation in the Portuguese royal family suddenly decided the departure of solomon the elephant, which would be sent to Austria as a gift commensurate with the blood and talents of the king's cousin. "But how is it going to go, the king asked; ah, it is none of our business, since Maximilian's cousin is its new master, it is up to him to settle it, and I guess he will stay a little longer in Valladolid... Of course Solomon had to go to Valladolid, which naturally had the ability; then he had to go to Vienna on his own, and there was no other way; the long road was long, said the queen, and the king agreed... "Of course, we have no way of knowing how much such a decision has to do with the fact that Solomon "will never be useful", but who has to keep the tank full and the fodder piled up, let us conclude that he left Portugal as a matching gift.
Looking at the distance from Lisbon to Vienna on the map, it may be hard to imagine that Solomon has traveled such a long distance, let alone the Alps in the middle. According to the migration process described by Saramago, Solomon should have set off from Lisbon, Portugal, in mid-August 1550, arrived at the port of Roses in Spain, then took a boat by sea to Genoa, Italy, and then crossed the Alps from Trento, Italy, crossing the Brenner Pass to the Austrian town of Innsbruck in the Alpine Valley, which was already the main feast of 1552, that is, January 6. After that, they followed the waterway of the River Inn all the way down the mountain to Passau, Germany, and then continued to take a boat along the Danube all the way into Austria, and when they reached Linz, they switched to land again and reached their final destination, Vienna.
Solomon's Migration Route:
Mid-August 1550 Lisbon – castelo Rodrigo Portugal – Valladolid (Spain) – Port of Rosas (near the French border) (by boat) – Genoa (Italy) – Mantua (Lombardy, Italy) – Verona (Italy) – Padua – Trento – Beginning of the Alps – Bolzano – Brixen – Through the Brenner Pass – to Innsbruck (Austria) (1552 Epiphany). 6 January) – Down the River Inn – Passau (Germany) – Along the Danube – Linz – Amstetten – Melk – Austria (Photo: Deng Jiefang)
Fortunately, Solomon was not alone, and his Fellow Indian compatriot, the Elephant Husband Sobuhru, accompanied him across the ocean and over the mountains. Thanks to Subhukhru's vigorous maintenance of Solomon during his migration, the situation was not worse, "We should arrange manpower according to Solomon's habits and needs." Although the fellow officers have always expressed dissatisfaction, everyone still tries to follow Solomon's elephant time. Solomon had his own habitual nap time; food needed to be pulled by an ox cart, and in order for the cattle to catch up with Solomon, someone needed to take turns helping the oxen to push the cart; not to mention Solomon's happy and long bath time rolling in the mud from time to time.
"Elephants are a very different species. It is so different that it has nothing to do with the world, and the rules that govern it are not found in any known moral code... "It does not care whether it is walking in front of or behind the procession, whether it is called "God is an elephant" or whether the priest gives it an exorcism, does not care that the Archduke of Austria wants to change its Indian name to Suleiman. Solomon the elephant has its own laws of operation, it is an Indian elephant, so whether it walks in the elephant house in Lisbon, on the country lanes of Valladolid, or through the narrow passes of the Alps, the place it is in is India, "this India, whatever happens, will remain intact in its heart." Perhaps Subhur was so comforted when he was forced to change his name to Fritz.
You see, elephants are such animals that can be called "innocent", and they can accommodate many human thoughts and behaviors. It could allow the bishop to force Subhhhru to train it to perform a "miracle," or it could allow the Archduke of Austria to drape a thick and ornate saddle over it, and when crossing the Alps, it calmly accepted the things that it could not understand genetically frozen on its ass.
"Maybe it's because elephants are more than just elephants." This is how Subhukhru explained elephants.
Elephants: Authenticity, Regression and Meaning
Elephants have an important meaning to the reality of the world. But apparently, just by looking at how much Solomon had to eat in a day, the price of this "meaning" was enormous, and for a small zoo, especially for an ambitious zookeeper, it didn't matter whether or not it had a real elephant that ate an astonishing amount of food. So, with the beautiful idea of saving money for a country that is in a state of development, they found a brilliant way to replace a real elephant with a rubber elephant. It is so close to the "meaning", but without expending any manpower and material, as long as it is quiet, it can show the temperament of the elephant "particularly bulky - it will not run at all", but if the wind blows, you can not predict, the stupid elephant may "suddenly shake up and begin to float into the air..." (Mrowzek, "The Elephant") Unfortunately, this zoo also bears the responsibility of educating the children, and often the school organizes students to visit, After seeing this stupid rubber elephant that suddenly climbed into the blue sky, the students no longer believed that elephants really existed in the world. Because they had lost confidence in the existence of the elephant, they may not have set foot in the zoo again, and they could not even enter the school again, because they could not forget the teacher pointing to the elephant and saying that it weighed four thousand kilograms, but the next moment the four thousand kilograms of the behemoth was blown away by the wind, and they dropped out of school one by one, drank heavily, wandered the streets, and could not get rid of the life full of doubts.
The Elephant
Author: [Polish] Słovamir Mrogzek
Publisher: People's Literature Publishing House
Translator: Mao Yinhui / Yi Lijun
Published: 2017-10
And in "The Elephant Sits on the Ground", the protagonists are already people who have lost their souls and are vague on the road of fate, wang Jin, an old man who lives on the balcony and is driven out of his house by his children, Webb, a teenager who lives in his father's curse and injures his classmates and prepares to run, Huang Ling, a young girl who lives with his mother but has never been cared for by his mother, and can't wait to escape from the chaotic life, and the young man Yu Cheng, who causes his friends to jump off the building and witness his death, they are betrayed by family affection, friendship or betray their relatives and friends. Life is broken and meaningless, which is probably why they are attracted to the sitting elephant in the Manchuria Zoo. They need to witness an elephant so that their lives can sit quietly like elephants in the noisy crowds of people. If Mrośek's students have been living on the streets because they can't believe in the reality of elephants, then these people who have fallen down may want to meet the sitting elephant and pray that their lives will return to somewhere.
The elephant sits on the ground movie poster
People need a sense of belonging and direction from the elephant, the elephant is like a father, or the father is like an elephant. Father carried me on his neck and continued to walk forward. I pretended he was an elephant. I don't know where we're going. (Raymond Carver, "The Elephant") Although Carver did not seem to let him know where his father would take him in the dream, when he woke up, he seemed to have some kind of guidance, even if nothing had changed, the elderly mother, the divorced wife, the husband's alcoholic and idle daughter, the son who threatened him not to give money and would go to the drug dealer, the brother who always guaranteed that the next time things would be better - five people like a black hole needed him to keep throwing money into it, and he would never be satisfied. He had angrily written to them that he was going to Australia and leaving them forever, but after waking up from this long dream, he realized that he had never wanted to go to Australia. It was as if he had acquired from his father, whom he had not remembered for a long time, the gentle, thick and solid pace and rhythm of the elephants, and the deep emotional connection between the elephants, who loved their companions and loved ones so much that they would never abandon them. He made himself lunch and walked to work with a lunch box, and the weather was nice, and he thought to himself that maybe it would all get better in the fall, and everyone would have hope in the fall. On the way he meets his colleague George, who is driving a new car with a loan, "Hey, man, get in the car." George pushed the throttle to the end, and they went full speed and ran all the way down in the big car that owed money.
Editor: Deng Jiefeng
Second instance: Liu Ya
Third trial: Chen Tao, Wang Yang