孤独的身影：世上最后一头雄性北白犀

2015-03-29byJonathanJones

疯狂英语·新策略 2015年8期

关键词：偷猎者岩洞犀牛

by Jonathan Jones

乌芜译

孤独的身影：世上最后一头雄性北白犀

A Picture of Loneliness: the Last Male Northern White Rhino

by Jonathan Jones

乌芜译

W hat is it like to look at the very last of something? To contemplate the passing of a unique wonder that will soon vanish from the face of the earth? You are seeing it. Sudan is the last male northern white rhino on the planet. If he does not mate successfully soon with one of two female northern white rhinos at Ol Pejeta conservancy, there will be no more of their kind, male or female, born anywhere. And it seems a slim chance, as Sudan is getting old at 42 and breeding efforts have so far failed. Apart from these three animals there are only two other northern white rhinos in the world, both in zoos, both female.

It seems an image of human tenderness that Sudan is lovingly guarded by armed men who stand1)vigilantly and caringly with him. But of course it is an image of brutality. Even at this last desperate stage in the fate of the northern white rhino, Sudan is under threat from2)poachers who kill rhinos and3)hack off their horns to sell them on the Asian medicine market—despite the fact that he has had his horn cut off to deter them.

看着世上最后仅存的某样东西是什么感觉？想到某样独一无二的珍宝很快就会从地球上消失是什么感觉？你正在目睹这样的事情。“苏丹”是世上最后一头雄性北白犀。如果它不能与奥佩杰塔自然保护区的两头雌性北白犀中的任何一头交配成功的话，那么世上将不会再有任何一头北白犀降生，无论是雄性还是雌性。但是成功的机率似乎很小，因为苏丹已经42岁高龄，而此前的交配繁殖都失败了。除了这三头北白犀，世界上仅剩下的另外两头都在动物园里，都是雌性。

这似乎是一个展现出人类柔情的画面——手携武器的男子正警惕而充满关怀地站在苏丹旁边守卫着它。然而事实上，这个画面展现出的是人类的残忍无情。尽管北白犀的命运已经到了生死存亡的关头，苏丹依然受到来自偷盗者的威胁，他们会把犀牛杀死，然后把它们的角砍下来卖到亚洲的药品市场——即便为了阻止他们，苏丹的角已经被砍掉了。

Sudan doesn’t know how precious he is. His eye is a sad black dot in his massive wrinkled face as he wanders the reserve with his guards. His head is a marvellous thing. It is a majestic rectangle of strong bone and leathery fesh, a head that expresses pure strength. How terrible that such a mighty head can in reality be so vulnerable. It is lowered4)melancholically beneath the sinister sky, as if weighed down by fate. This is the noble head of an old warrior, his armour battered, his appetite for struggle fading.

Under his immense looming shoulder, his legs protrude like5)squat columns from the tough tank of his body. The way his foreleg emerges from his thick coat of skin reminds us how long human beings have been wondering at the natural spectacle that is the rhino. For Sudan does not look so different from the rhinoceros that Albrecht Dürer portrayed in 1515. They have the same little legs stuck out of a majestic body and they even lower their heads in the same contemplative way. Dürer was a Renaissance artist picturing an exotic beast from the exotic lands that Europe was starting to see more and more of. In 1515 a live Indian rhinoceros was sent by the ruler of6)Gujarat to the king of Portugal: he in turn sent it to the Pope, but it died along the way in a shipwreck.

苏丹并不知道自己有多珍贵。它与其守卫在保护区里漫步，它的眼睛是它那满布皱纹的脸上一个悲伤的小黑点。它的头看上去奇妙而不可思议，一个神圣的矩形，由坚硬的骨头以及皮革似的皮肉所组成，是一颗表现出绝对力量的头。这样强大的头实际上却如此容易受到伤害，这是多么可怕的一件事。在无情的天空下，它忧伤地低着头，仿佛被命运压倒了一般。这是年迈的战士那高贵的头颅，他的盔甲破破烂烂的，他的斗志也已消失。

在巨大而下沉的肩膀下，它的四肢像圆短小柱子一样从那如坚缸的身躯下伸出。它的前腿从厚厚的表皮下伸出，这让我们想到人类对犀牛这类自然界奇观物种长久的惊叹。因为苏丹的样子与阿尔布雷特·丢勒在1515年所描绘的犀牛并没有很大的区别。它们雄伟的身躯下长着同样的小短腿，甚至它们低头沉思的方式也一模一样。丢勒是一位文艺复兴时期的画家，擅长描绘异国大陆的奇珍异兽，从他的画笔下，欧洲大陆开始看到越来越多的异国珍兽。1515年，古吉拉特的统治者给葡萄牙的国王赠送了一头活印度犀，葡萄牙国王随后把它转送给教皇，但在运送的过程中遇到船难，印度犀死了。

1) vigilantly ['vɪdʒɪləntlɪ] adv. 警觉地，警惕地

2) poacher ['pəʊtʃə] n. 偷猎者

3) hack off 砍断

4) melancholically [,melən'kɒlɪkəlɪ] adv. 忧郁地

5) squat [skwɒt] adj. 矮胖的

6) Gujarat [guːdʒe'rɑː] n. 古吉特拉邦（印度西部的邦）

Human beings—we always kill the things we love. We have been doing so since the Ice Age. There are beautiful pictures of European woolly rhinos in caves in France, that were painted up to 30,000 years ago. These ancient relatives of Sudan share his heroic7)bulk, mighty power and paradoxical air of gentleness. A woolly rhino in Chauvet cave seems8)agile and young, a creature full of life. But the same people who painted such sensitive portraits of ice age rhinos helped to kill them off. As climate turned against the woolly9)megafauna with the end of the last ice age, human spears probably delivered the10)coup de grace.

Today, immense love is invested in rhinos, yet they are being slaughtered in ever greater numbers. The northern white rhino is the rarest species of African rhino. There are far greater numbers of southern white rhinos and black rhinos. But the demand in Asian countries such as Vietnam for rhino horn as a traditional medicine believed to cure everything from the fu to cancer is fuelling a boom in poaching. From 2007, when just 13 rhinos were killed by poachers in South Africa, the killings have grown horrifically. Last year 1,215 rhinos were slaughtered for their horns in South Africa. And this year already looks certain to beat that dreadful record.

This is a photograph from the front line of a crisis. The vulnerable northern white rhino has been hunted virtually to extinction—in spite of every precaution, in spite of these guards and their guns—and other varieties of African rhino are under a sustained attack from poachers that is totally out of control. The Javan rhinoceros is also on the verge of extinction. India has successfully protected the Indian rhinoceros after it was almost wiped out by British hunters in colonial times, but here too poaching is a menace. What a majestic creature this picture records, and what11)futile human destructiveness. Have we learned nothing since the Ice Age? Can the better angels of our nature not defeat the impulse to kill?

我们人类总是在毁灭自己喜爱的东西。从冰河时期起，我们就已开始这么做。法国的山洞里发现了描绘欧洲毛犀牛的美丽绘画，绘画时间可追溯到3万年以前。苏丹的这些古代亲戚同样有着雄壮的身躯，强大的力量，以及看似矛盾的温和气质。肖维岩洞里的一头毛犀牛看起来年轻敏捷，充满生命力。但同样地，冰河时期的人们描绘出如此精妙的图画是为了捕杀它们。当冰河时期的最后阶段来临，气候变得不利于毛犀牛生存之时，人类的长矛可能给了它们致命的一击。

今天，人类对犀牛倾注了许多爱，但它们却遭到大量屠杀。北白犀是非洲犀牛中最珍稀的一种，南白犀和黑犀牛的数量还有不少。但许多亚洲国家，如越南，对犀牛角的需求正在刺激偷猎行为的增长，这些国家把犀牛角视为能治百病（从流感到癌症）的传统药物。2007年，南非被偷猎者杀害的犀牛仅有13头，此后，被猎杀的犀牛数目的增长达到了令人恐怖的程度。去年，南非有1215头犀牛因头角被觊觎而遭受屠杀。现在看来，今年肯定会打破那个可怕的记录。

这是一张来自危机前线的照片。尽管做了所有的预防措施，尽管有这些守卫和他们枪支的保护，脆弱的北白犀似乎已经免不了灭绝的命运，而其他种类的非洲犀牛也正在不断地受到偷猎者的疯狂攻击。爪哇犀也同样面临着濒临灭绝的困境。殖民时期，英国猎人几乎把所有的印度犀杀光了，后来，印度成功地保护了它们，但现在印度也同样面临着偷猎的威胁。这张照片记录的生物是多么神圣，人类的破坏是多么无益。难道自冰河时期起，我们就一直没有长进吗？我们人性中的善良天使难道就无法让我们克制杀戮的冲动吗？

小资料

Chauvet cave 肖维岩洞