Death of an elephant…

This post is a day late. 19th March was the bicentenary of a lesser-known event in Venetian history, the shooting of an elephant in the church of Sant’Antonin, Castello. ‘Lesser-known’ is, of course, a relative term; the elephanticide (a term used at the time by at least one writer) is obviously not as famous as the Battle of Lepanto or the fall of the Campanile, but by its very nature the event could hardly go unobserved at the time—and it has been preserved for posterity not only by the chronicles of the day but also by the poets.

The most famous poet to record the event is Lord Byron, who commented on the episode in a post-script to a letter to his friend John Cam Hobhouse, dated 6th April 2019:

P.S. – We have had a fortnight ago the Devil’s own row with an Elephant who broke loose – ate up a fruitshop – killed his keeper – broke into a Church – and was at last killed by a Cannon shot brought from the Arsenal. – I saw him the day he broke open his own house – he was standing in the Riva & his keepers trying to persuade him with peck-loaves to go on board a sort of Ark they had got. – I went close to him that afternoon in my Gondola – & he amused himself with flinging great beams that flew about over the water in all directions – he was not then very angry – but towards midnight he became furious – & displayed the most extraordinary strength – pulling down every thing before him. – All Musquetry proved in vain – & when he charged the Austrians threw down their musquets & ran. – At last they broke a hole & brought a field-piece the first shot missed the second entered behind – & came out all but the Skin at his Shoulder. – I saw him dead the next day – a stupendous fellow. – He went mad for want of a She it being the rutting month –

The church of Sant’Antonin, where the elephant took refuge; permission had to be obtained from the Patriarch of Venice for the shooting, since the elephant could be claimed to have sought sanctuary…

Another poet has left a far more detailed account in verse, the Venetian satirist Pietro Buratti. His satirical poem, L’elefanteide, was written shortly after the event and distributed privately—but, unfortunately for the poet, not privately enough, as he ended up with a one-month prison sentence for his satirical treatment of the local authorities (and even of the Austrian Emperor himself). it wasn’t his first time in prison; he had ended up there in the days of the French dominion, after describing Napoleon as a plunderer.

The response of the Austrian authorities wasn’t surprising. Buratti’s poem, all in Venetian dialect, is an often hilarious account of the ineptitude of the authorities in dealing with the crisis, and is also extremely obscene. It is written in vigorous ottava rima.

Anybody wanting to get an idea of the poem’s satirical power (and its obscenity) can see the very effective version, entirely in English ottava rima, by the Byron scholar, Peter Cochran, available on his website. I played a slight hand in this version, as Peter, who could read Italian without any problems, had some problems with the Venetian; I provided him with a prose crib from which he created his remarkable poem. He also gives a good account of what actually happened at the time and provides photos (taken by his daughter, Abi) of the route followed by the hapless animal.

The photograph on the first page of Peter’s pdf file gives a fair enough idea of what to expect from the poem itself. You are warned…

The comic effectiveness of the original Venetian version was proved yesterday at the Ateneo Veneto, at a performance conceived and directed by Enrico Ricciardi, with readings by the actors Roberto Milani and Silvia Piovan. The subsequent history of the elephant’s carcass, now preserved at the “Museo Zoologico” in Padua, was recounted by Professor Loriano Ballarin.

Performance at the Ateneo Veneto (19/3/2019)

Little of Buratti’s poetry was published in his lifetime, and on his death (20 October 1832) the Austrian police invaded his home and took away all the manuscripts they found and destroyed them. Fortunately a friend and admirer, Matteo da Mosto, had made copies of them and these are now preserved in 15 volumes in the Museo Correr (55,824 lines, as da Mosto punctiliously observes on the very last page – four times the Divine Comedy). There is still no handy Selected Poems. By way of compensation, he does, however, have a street named after him on the Lido…

2 Comments

  1. Scribe Doll

    What a brilliant – and very sad – story! I’d forgotten about it.

    Reply
    • Gregory

      That’s what centenaries are for – to remind ourselves!

      Reply

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