What Are the Rules of the Game? Some Remarks on The Yellow Jacket

Abstract

The vast caravan out of Ceylon … arrived safely in Europe in April 1884 … There were sixty-seven people, twenty-five elephants … and a great many oxen of various kinds. The ethnographic exhibition included hundreds of different shows, and even the vegetative world was represented in numerous exhibits … My Singhalese troupe was veiled in the ancient wondrous world of India; not only had we captured the vibrant, picturesque, outward appearance of India, but also the shimmer of its mystique. The colourful, captivating sight of the caravanserai, the majestic elephants, partly bedecked in golden saddlery, partly in work harnesses, pulling gigantic loads; the slim, attractive, doe-eyed dancers with their sensuous movements and last of all the great religious Perra-Harra procession-conjured up a magic web which subjected the public entirely to it … The exhibition was opened in Hamburg… After Hamburg came Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, and Vienna … From Vienna it went to Berlin … In the following years, 1885 and 1886, I traveled with the same exhibition through southern Germany, Switzerland and Vienna a second time, and finally set out for England … It was in Paris, at the height of its success, that the Ceylon exhibition finally came to an end. The average number of visitors to the Jardin d'Acclimatisation on a Sunday was 50,000-60,000. Throughout the two and a half month duration of the exhibition, the number of visitors was nearly one million.