Read Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory Online
Authors: Patrick Wilcken
Tags: #Biographies & Memoirs, #Professionals & Academics, #Social Scientists & Psychologists, #History, #Americas, #South America, #Brazil, #Politics & Social Sciences, #Anthropology, #Cultural
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BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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From the outset he was fascinated by the arts, especially music. “I have always dreamed since childhood about being a composer, or at least, a conductor,” he said, but it was not to be. His early experimental compositions showed up a fundamental limitation—“something lacking in my brain.”
64
In compensation, he would inject an artistic sensibility into his academic work both in form and content, from his use of textual collage and literary allusions to the parallels that he would repeatedly draw between indigenous cultural artifacts and classical music and art.
64
In compensation, he would inject an artistic sensibility into his academic work both in form and content, from his use of textual collage and literary allusions to the parallels that he would repeatedly draw between indigenous cultural artifacts and classical music and art.
Lévi-Strauss often said that as a student he was in revolt against what he later called the “claustrophobic, Turkish bath atmosphere . . . of philosophical reflection” found in the French university system. Yet at the same time he had been grounded in this very style of thought. In spite of his oft-professed contempt for philosophical intellectual games, he was clearly at home with abstract arguments and metaphysical concepts, and all his subsequent work would end up having a philosophical ring to it. His study of the law, however halfhearted, had given him a systematic—at times dogmatic—approach to intellectual arguments. In skirmishes with intellectual opponents later in his career his approach could be bruising, like a barrister taking apart a witness.
Lévi-Strauss clearly had an exceptional intellect, but it was not without shortcomings. He absorbed ideas quickly and economically, but in the process stripped them of their content, converting them into a kind of intellectual shorthand. After consuming a huge amount of material, he would boil it down into a demi-glace of axioms and intellectual reflexes. His “three mistresses”—Freud, Marx and geology—had been reduced to simple principles: that surface reality deceives, that truth lies in an under-girding of abstraction. It is worth looking back for a moment at some of the words used in Léon Cahen’s assessment: “knows a lot,” “sharp, penetrating mind,” a “rigour” that is “almost sectarian,” a tendency to argue “absolute, black-and-white theses” and a lack of “nuance”—harsh, perhaps, but a recognizable assessment, especially in relation to Lévi-Strauss’s early intellectual output.
It was Lévi-Strauss’s great fortune that he had a chance early on to gain some perspective on his multiplicity of interests. As he prepared to leave for Brazil, after years cooped up in the French university system, the New World beckoned. But what he found there would at first baffle him. It would only be through the slow burn of intellectual discovery—more than a decade of reading and reflection—that he would finally grasp its significance.
Claude Lévi-Strauss in Brazil
(1935-39)
(1935-39)
2
Arabesque
My memory calls them by their names, Caduveo, Bororo, Nambikwara, Mundé, Tupi-Kawahib, Mogh and Kuki; and each reminds me of a place on earth and a moment of my history and that of the world . . . These are my witnesses, the living link between my theoretical views and reality.
CLAUDE LÉVI-STRAUSS
1
1
IN EARLY FEBRUARY 1935, accompanied by his wife, Dina, Lévi-Strauss boarded the
Mendoza
at the port of Marseille, pulling out into the Mediterranean for the first leg of the journey. In his memoir,
Tristes Tropiques
, he recalled the moment as a haze of sensations, which was in reality a blend of memories of the many departures for the Americas that he would subsequently make. As the ship eased into the Mediterranean, the oily odors of the port vanished on the sea air. Drifting in and out of sleep, he breathed in a mix of salt, fresh paint and cooking smells rising from the galley while listening to “the throbbing of the engines and the rustling of the water against the hull.”
2
He was twenty-six years old, leaving Europe for the first time, setting out for Brazil.
Mendoza
at the port of Marseille, pulling out into the Mediterranean for the first leg of the journey. In his memoir,
Tristes Tropiques
, he recalled the moment as a haze of sensations, which was in reality a blend of memories of the many departures for the Americas that he would subsequently make. As the ship eased into the Mediterranean, the oily odors of the port vanished on the sea air. Drifting in and out of sleep, he breathed in a mix of salt, fresh paint and cooking smells rising from the galley while listening to “the throbbing of the engines and the rustling of the water against the hull.”
2
He was twenty-six years old, leaving Europe for the first time, setting out for Brazil.
He traveled first-class as one of a handful of passengers on the eight-thousand-ton two-funneled steamer, which was freighting cargo across the Atlantic. Free to stroll the empty decks, he and his colleagues enjoyed long lunches in ballroom-sized refectories and smoking rooms, and spent hours reading in their substantial cabins. Mustachioed stewards dished out huge portions of
suprême de poularde
and
filets de turbot
; sailors dressed in blue overalls cleaned the empty corridors and dabbed paint onto ventilator shafts as the
Mendoza
slipped through the Mediterranean. From the passengers’ perspective, it was a luxury ghost ship, whose limitless space and amenities Lévi-Strauss would fully appreciate only after he had suffered the squalor and overcrowding of the refugee boat that rescued him from Nazi Europe.
suprême de poularde
and
filets de turbot
; sailors dressed in blue overalls cleaned the empty corridors and dabbed paint onto ventilator shafts as the
Mendoza
slipped through the Mediterranean. From the passengers’ perspective, it was a luxury ghost ship, whose limitless space and amenities Lévi-Strauss would fully appreciate only after he had suffered the squalor and overcrowding of the refugee boat that rescued him from Nazi Europe.
After calling at Algiers and ports along the Spanish and Moroccan coasts, loading cargo by day, sailing through the night, the
Mendoza
dropped down to Dakar. Once on the high seas, the schools of dolphins and seabirds vanished, leaving only the “adjoining surfaces” of ocean and overcast sky.
3
Lévi-Strauss spent much of the three-week crossing in a state of intense intellectual excitement, “strolling on the bridge, almost always alone, his eyes wide open, but his being shut off to the world, as if he was scared of forgetting what he had just seen.”
4
In a strange inversion, he would later describe the ship as the fixed point around which the changing scenery was maneuvered—like rotating theater sets on a stage.
Mendoza
dropped down to Dakar. Once on the high seas, the schools of dolphins and seabirds vanished, leaving only the “adjoining surfaces” of ocean and overcast sky.
3
Lévi-Strauss spent much of the three-week crossing in a state of intense intellectual excitement, “strolling on the bridge, almost always alone, his eyes wide open, but his being shut off to the world, as if he was scared of forgetting what he had just seen.”
4
In a strange inversion, he would later describe the ship as the fixed point around which the changing scenery was maneuvered—like rotating theater sets on a stage.
On one occasion he jotted down notes as he watched the sun sink behind the ocean in a welter of color. His long, lyrical description of the sunset survives, reprinted in
Tristes Tropiques
, a passage that is an intriguing intimation of what could have been. Like many early attempts at creative writing, it is a heaping of literary effects, a runaway production of images, metaphors and ideas. In the space of seven pages he likens clouds to pyramids, flagstones, dolmens, celestial reefs, vaporous grottoes and even, at one point, an octopus. There are invisible layers of crystal, ethereal ramparts, blurred blues, and “pink and yellow colours: shrimp, salmon, flax, straw.” An extended theater metaphor involves floodlights, stage sets and a postperformance “overture” (as they apparently used to be performed in old operas).
5
Amid this overwrought experiment were stylistic elements that would later reappear. Even in his densest academic articles, Lévi-Strauss had an eye for descriptive detail and a fondness for metaphor, as well as a fascination for natural forms and processes.
Tristes Tropiques
, a passage that is an intriguing intimation of what could have been. Like many early attempts at creative writing, it is a heaping of literary effects, a runaway production of images, metaphors and ideas. In the space of seven pages he likens clouds to pyramids, flagstones, dolmens, celestial reefs, vaporous grottoes and even, at one point, an octopus. There are invisible layers of crystal, ethereal ramparts, blurred blues, and “pink and yellow colours: shrimp, salmon, flax, straw.” An extended theater metaphor involves floodlights, stage sets and a postperformance “overture” (as they apparently used to be performed in old operas).
5
Amid this overwrought experiment were stylistic elements that would later reappear. Even in his densest academic articles, Lévi-Strauss had an eye for descriptive detail and a fondness for metaphor, as well as a fascination for natural forms and processes.
Long before the Brazilian littoral was visible, he had picked up the scent of forest, fruit and tobacco, drifting off the landmass out into the ocean. In the early hours of the following day, a dim outline of the coast came into view—the jagged cordillera of the Serra do Mar escarpments. The
Mendoza
followed the ranges down the coast, gliding past stretches of beach, tropical forest and blackened rock. Dodging a scattering of globe-shaped islands, the ship approached the famous heads of Rio’s Guanabara Bay, with its backdrop of polished mounds, fingerlike peaks and granite slabs.
Mendoza
followed the ranges down the coast, gliding past stretches of beach, tropical forest and blackened rock. Dodging a scattering of globe-shaped islands, the ship approached the famous heads of Rio’s Guanabara Bay, with its backdrop of polished mounds, fingerlike peaks and granite slabs.
Years later Lévi-Strauss wrote of the thoughts that ran through his mind as he viewed this spectacle, so alien from the European panoramas that he was familiar with. Here was landscape of a different order, on a grander scale than anything he had experienced before. Its appreciation, he wrote, required a mental adjustment, a rejigging of perspective and ratio, as the observer shrank before nature’s immensity. But when the ship pulled into Rio’s harbor, Lévi-Strauss was famously disappointed. Despite his mental efforts, the scenario offended his sense of classical proportions. The Sugarloaf and Corcovado mountains were too big in relation to their surroundings, like “stumps . . . in a toothless mouth,” as if nature had left behind an unfinished, lopsided terrain. The towering rocks and supersized bay had left little room for the city itself, which was forced into the narrow corridors, “like fingers bent in a tight, ill-fitting glove.”
6
Rio’s palm-lined boulevards and turn-of-the-century architecture were like nineteenth-century Nice or Biarritz. “The tropics,” he later wrote, “were less exotic than out of date.”
7
(His dismissal of the beauties of Rio de Janeiro still smarts in Brazil, even featuring in a famous Caetano Veloso song: “
Claude Lévi-Strauss detestou a baía de Guanabara
”—meaning “Lévi-Strauss hated Guanabara Bay”). But Lévi-Strauss told me that this was merely a first impression, and that in subsequent visits he came to love the city.
8
6
Rio’s palm-lined boulevards and turn-of-the-century architecture were like nineteenth-century Nice or Biarritz. “The tropics,” he later wrote, “were less exotic than out of date.”
7
(His dismissal of the beauties of Rio de Janeiro still smarts in Brazil, even featuring in a famous Caetano Veloso song: “
Claude Lévi-Strauss detestou a baía de Guanabara
”—meaning “Lévi-Strauss hated Guanabara Bay”). But Lévi-Strauss told me that this was merely a first impression, and that in subsequent visits he came to love the city.
8
He spent a few days in Rio, exploring the city on foot. The walkways were inlaid with small off-white and slate-colored stones from Portugal hammered into the pavement, arranged into a repeating pattern of swirls and organic shapes, like a mosaic from antiquity. Wending his way through the backstreets, he was impressed by the apparent lack of distinction between inside and outside, with shops spilling onto the pavement and cafés piling up green coconuts on the street. “My first impression of Rio was of an open-air reconstruction of the Gallerias of Milan, the Galerij in Amsterdam, the Passage des Panoramas, or the concourse of the Gare Saint-Lazare,” he wrote.
9
9
Armed with a copy of Jean de Léry’s
L’Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil
, Lévi-Strauss tried with difficulty to imagine the Tupinambá villages that had once dotted the bay. From the busy downtown commercial district, a smattering of favelas were visible on the hillsides—more like rustic wattle and mud villages than the breezeblock slums of today. The more affluent suburbs of Flamengo and Botafogo clustered around the bay, while on the ocean-facing side, through a connecting tunnel, lay Copacabana, then a bucolic town beginning its rapid ascent as a super-Cannes.
L’Histoire d’un voyage fait en la terre du Brésil
, Lévi-Strauss tried with difficulty to imagine the Tupinambá villages that had once dotted the bay. From the busy downtown commercial district, a smattering of favelas were visible on the hillsides—more like rustic wattle and mud villages than the breezeblock slums of today. The more affluent suburbs of Flamengo and Botafogo clustered around the bay, while on the ocean-facing side, through a connecting tunnel, lay Copacabana, then a bucolic town beginning its rapid ascent as a super-Cannes.
On his last evening in Rio, Lévi-Strauss took the funicular halfway up Corcovado Mountain, where he dined with some American colleagues on a platform with sumptuous views over the bay. Later that night he embarked on the
Mendoza
for the final leg to Santos. Rain sluiced down as the ship tracked down a barely settled coastline, passing run-down colonial ports built during the eighteenth-century gold rush. The flagstone roads that had once connected them to gold fields in the interior were now lost, hidden under the leaf litter of the rainforest. All that remained of the mule trains that had plied the route were rusty horseshoes strewn about the forest floor. The wealth that had built the towns was long gone, siphoned off across the Atlantic into the follies—the monasteries, palaces and villas—of the Portuguese court.
Mendoza
for the final leg to Santos. Rain sluiced down as the ship tracked down a barely settled coastline, passing run-down colonial ports built during the eighteenth-century gold rush. The flagstone roads that had once connected them to gold fields in the interior were now lost, hidden under the leaf litter of the rainforest. All that remained of the mule trains that had plied the route were rusty horseshoes strewn about the forest floor. The wealth that had built the towns was long gone, siphoned off across the Atlantic into the follies—the monasteries, palaces and villas—of the Portuguese court.
The
Mendoza
reached the port of Santos, docking beside cargo boats piled high with sacks of coffee beans. In pouring rain, the French entourage disembarked onto the quays where Júlio Mesquita, the owner of the newspaper
Estado de São Paulo
and one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the university, was waiting to receive them. Mesquita drove them on to São Paulo, a hundred-kilometer trip along the now disused Caminho do Mar. After crossing a humid plain of lush banana plantations, the road rose steeply through wisps of vapor into the cooler airs of the Serra do Mar tropical forests. Lévi-Strauss was captivated, marveling through the car window at the galleries of novel vegetation “arranged like tiers of specimens in a museum.”
10
From the summit there were spectacular views back toward the sea; “water and land mingled like in the world’s creation,” wrote Lévi-Strauss, “veiled in a pink mist that barely cloaked the banana plantations.”
11
From here the road rolled down the gently sloping plateau on the other side, past exhausted coffee plantations and the odd hut of a Japanese settler, down into the outskirts of São Paulo.
Mendoza
reached the port of Santos, docking beside cargo boats piled high with sacks of coffee beans. In pouring rain, the French entourage disembarked onto the quays where Júlio Mesquita, the owner of the newspaper
Estado de São Paulo
and one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the university, was waiting to receive them. Mesquita drove them on to São Paulo, a hundred-kilometer trip along the now disused Caminho do Mar. After crossing a humid plain of lush banana plantations, the road rose steeply through wisps of vapor into the cooler airs of the Serra do Mar tropical forests. Lévi-Strauss was captivated, marveling through the car window at the galleries of novel vegetation “arranged like tiers of specimens in a museum.”
10
From the summit there were spectacular views back toward the sea; “water and land mingled like in the world’s creation,” wrote Lévi-Strauss, “veiled in a pink mist that barely cloaked the banana plantations.”
11
From here the road rolled down the gently sloping plateau on the other side, past exhausted coffee plantations and the odd hut of a Japanese settler, down into the outskirts of São Paulo.
Mesquita delivered them to the suitably named Hotel Terminus, where the group would stay while they settled in. They had arrived with the carnival in full swing, and on their first night they ventured out into the soupy air to explore the surrounding streets. In a nearby neighborhood, music boomed out of the open window of a house. They approached and were told by a tall Afro-Brazilian man at the door that they could come if they wanted to dance, but not just to watch. Lévi-Strauss remembered dancing awkwardly, stumbling over Afro-Brazilian women who accepted his invitations “with complete indifference.”
12
12
WHEN LÉVI-STRAUSS ARRIVED in São Paulo, Brazil was modernizing, emerging from the shadows of its colonial past. But the process had been sporadic and uneven. Robbed of the lure of the Pacific, westward migration had ended inconclusively, petering out in the marshlands and forests of the South American hinterland. The bulk of the population still lived within striking distance of the sea—in cities and towns along the coast and around the coffee plantations, cane fields and cattle ranches that rolled back into the countryside.
BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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