Ignorant of the eels, he thought that the place where they appeared should naturally be the dining table, until he read the Swedish writer Patrick Svensson's "The Journey of the Eel" and was in awe of this humble creature.
Not only did I know nothing about eels, eels have been a mystery to people for thousands of years: people don't know where eels come from. The erudite Aristotle had studied eels carefully, and he was convinced that eels grew from the soil; Freud tried his best to find out how eels were bred in his youth, but found nothing... There are many mysteries in the natural sciences, but few are as enduring and difficult to crack as the eel mystery. So many people spend a lot of time and effort trying to understand them and still get nothing, which is also known as the "eel problem".
"The Eel's Journey" is first and foremost a scientific work, and Svensson uses a technique similar to a speculative novel to present this "eel problem" puzzle to the reader, and then solve the mystery layer by layer.
But this is a very peculiar book, and the suspense about the life and death of eels is fascinating enough, but for the author, the secret of eels is only the first purpose of his writing. In solving the eel mystery, he also brings up the second topic, how humans are driven by curiosity and tirelessly study the unknown. For example, the book says that Danish scientist Johannes Smit spent decades risking his life in the Atlantic Ocean just to figure out where eels were born.
Another peculiar feature of the book, which is that in many chapters, the author writes a lot of childhood and father's time catching eels by the stream, why does such a text appear in this book that should be a history of science?
It turns out that the author has greater ambitions in this book, he is not only writing about eels, but also about us humans ourselves. It's the eel's journey, it's a journey of father-son relationship, it's a story of finding the origin of things, and it's also a story of finding your own origins. The time between father and son fishing for eels and spending time together is like a water weed in a pond, entangled with eels. Memories and searches collide with each other, and the ultimate answer is also somewhere in the sea or deep within.
It's hard to classify this kind of book in that category, if it's a scientific reading, it's precise and interesting; if it's a novel, it has a gripping story that advances layer by layer; if it's prose, it also has moving and philosophical language. What exactly is it? It's like another "eel problem."
The Eel's Journey was Svensson's debut novel, but the Swedish literary community did not hesitate to award him the August Prize, the literary prize. They must have been overwhelmed by this mixed cocktail. The Chinese edition of this book is translated directly from Swedish, and the words have the coldness of Nordic literature and the warmth of Chinese, which makes us fully enjoy reading.
For a long time after reading this book, I thought about these eels, and this is how they spent their lives: they were born in a sea called the Sargasso Sea in the northwest atlantic ocean, when they were willow-leaf-shaped glass eels, and when they reached the coast of Europe, most of them swam upstream into the river, and then they became yellow eels. The yellow eel swims downstream into rivers and streams, burrows through swamps and ditches, and one day it settles down—a stream or an inner lake with a muddy bottom, or a rock and cave where it can hide, and it stays quietly there. Until some point in their lives, usually between the ages of 15 and 30, they swam toward the sea again, this time, the yellow eels turned into silver eels. In the Sargasso Sea, they found their home and laid down fish eggs.
The story of the eels is over, and they also die in the Sargasso Sea. At the end of the book, the author bids farewell to his father at the hospital bed, and the story of father and son ends. I think the reason this book fascinates me, I'm afraid, is not because of the eels, but because of life itself. The life of an eel, or the life of us humans, is equally great and small, strong and fragile.
When eels turn into delicious food on the dinner plate, they can't tell you that they have traveled tens of thousands of kilometers and experienced all kinds of dangers. This reminds me of the writer Virginia Wolfe's The Death of the Moth, "In the absence of anyone to know, this insignificant little moth, in order to maintain a life that no one else values nor wants to preserve, has made such a fierce struggle for such a great power, which makes people even more moved." ”
Any seemingly insignificant life is worthy of awe.
The author | Cen Rong
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