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Authors: Patrick Wilcken
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Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory (44 page)
BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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The idea was to analyze clusters of myths, linking up, comparing and superimposing them. Tracing a pattern resembling a rose curve—a mathematical formula that produced flowerlike figures—Lévi-Strauss would start with a single myth and move outward, taking in neighboring myths on all sides, analyzing a blossom of mythic material. Through the quartet he would inch northward, cluster by cluster, in an unbroken chain stretching the length of the Americas. The journey was not just geographical, but structural. Like D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson’s mathematical transformations of the morphology of neighboring species,
14
each cluster represented a structural variation of the other, with some elements shifting, others inverting, still others dropping out altogether.
14
each cluster represented a structural variation of the other, with some elements shifting, others inverting, still others dropping out altogether.
Axes of “guiding patterns” ran like ley lines through mythic thought, connecting up sets of myths. Nodes sprouted further axes, running perpendicular and intersecting with yet more axes at higher levels, like a coral reef forming on the ocean bed. “It follows that as the nebula spreads, its nucleus condenses and becomes more organised,” wrote Lévi-Strauss, switching metaphors. “Loose threads join up with one another, gaps are closed, connections are established, and something resembling order is to be seen emerging from the chaos.” He saw myth, en bloc, as a kind of substance. He described the proliferation of themes in myths as “irradiation,” likening their splintering transformations to refracted light rays. Remoter myths were like a “primitive organism,” “enclosed within a membrane,” distending their protoplasm as they “put forth pseudopodia.”
15
15
This effusion of scientific vocabulary was enveloped in Lévi-Strauss’s favorite metaphor—music—which he used to structure the text. The introduction to
Le Cru et le cuit
was in fact the “Overture,” followed by chapter titles like “The Bird-Nester’s Aria,” “The ‘Good Manners’ Sonata,” “The Opossum’s Cantata” and “Well-Tempered Astronomy.” When asked by the literary critic George Steiner in a BBC interview in the mid-1960s why he had called a chapter after a sonata, Lévi-Strauss brushed off the question saying that it was “a joke—because I found it so boring.”
16
But in the “Overture” he gave a long, serious explanation. Both myth and music transcended articulate expression with their timeless combinations of logic and aesthetics; they worked in tandem, posing and solving analogous structural problems. Striving for the “feeling of simultaneity” that orchestral music inspired when diverse parts fused into a whole, Lévi-Strauss modeled his book along the lines of a multipart composition with alternations in rhythm and key, variations on themes and contrasts between movements. More specifically, it was in opera—with its arias and instrumental ensembles, its alternating melodies and recitatives, its leitmotifs—that he had found a ready-made device for presenting the complexity of mythic discourse.
Le Cru et le cuit
was in fact the “Overture,” followed by chapter titles like “The Bird-Nester’s Aria,” “The ‘Good Manners’ Sonata,” “The Opossum’s Cantata” and “Well-Tempered Astronomy.” When asked by the literary critic George Steiner in a BBC interview in the mid-1960s why he had called a chapter after a sonata, Lévi-Strauss brushed off the question saying that it was “a joke—because I found it so boring.”
16
But in the “Overture” he gave a long, serious explanation. Both myth and music transcended articulate expression with their timeless combinations of logic and aesthetics; they worked in tandem, posing and solving analogous structural problems. Striving for the “feeling of simultaneity” that orchestral music inspired when diverse parts fused into a whole, Lévi-Strauss modeled his book along the lines of a multipart composition with alternations in rhythm and key, variations on themes and contrasts between movements. More specifically, it was in opera—with its arias and instrumental ensembles, its alternating melodies and recitatives, its leitmotifs—that he had found a ready-made device for presenting the complexity of mythic discourse.
The ultimate model, though, was derived from his experiences as a child, when his father had taken him to the Opéra to hear Wagner’s mighty Ring Cycle—a tetralogy, like Lévi-Strauss’s own
Mythologiques
. At the time Lévi-Strauss had rejected Wagner’s lush melodrama in favor of the new wave of modernism, but by middle age he was returning to Wagner’s operas, and not just for aesthetic pleasure. He would listen to Wagner while he wrote, the music fusing with his own thinking about myth. Lévi-Strauss went as far as saying that Wagner was the “undeniable originator of structural analysis of myth.”
17
Later he would cite a verse from Wagner’s
Parsifal
, “
Du siehst, mein Sohn
/
zum Raum wird hier die Zeit
” (You see, my son / here time turns into space), as “probably the most profound definition ever given of myth.”
18
Mythologiques
. At the time Lévi-Strauss had rejected Wagner’s lush melodrama in favor of the new wave of modernism, but by middle age he was returning to Wagner’s operas, and not just for aesthetic pleasure. He would listen to Wagner while he wrote, the music fusing with his own thinking about myth. Lévi-Strauss went as far as saying that Wagner was the “undeniable originator of structural analysis of myth.”
17
Later he would cite a verse from Wagner’s
Parsifal
, “
Du siehst, mein Sohn
/
zum Raum wird hier die Zeit
” (You see, my son / here time turns into space), as “probably the most profound definition ever given of myth.”
18
His use of the metaphor of music made for an experimental—one could even say modernist—text, whose sudden changes in style and genre, abrupt shifts between ethnography, analysis and transcripts of myths, did the reader no favors. In a long aside about
musique concrète
and serialism—the avant-garde movement that began in the 1920s with Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositional technique—Lévi-Strauss did, in fact, finally link his work to modernism, only to swiftly negate any affinity. There were similarities between serialism and structuralism; both shared “a resolutely intellectual approach, a bias in favor of systematic arrangements, and a mistrust of mechanistic or empirical solutions.” It was precisely for this reason that special care was needed to distinguish the two. As a kind of formal idealism, serialism was actually “at the opposite pole” from structuralism, which Lévi-Strauss still insisted was a purely materialist science.
19
musique concrète
and serialism—the avant-garde movement that began in the 1920s with Arnold Schoenberg’s twelve-tone compositional technique—Lévi-Strauss did, in fact, finally link his work to modernism, only to swiftly negate any affinity. There were similarities between serialism and structuralism; both shared “a resolutely intellectual approach, a bias in favor of systematic arrangements, and a mistrust of mechanistic or empirical solutions.” It was precisely for this reason that special care was needed to distinguish the two. As a kind of formal idealism, serialism was actually “at the opposite pole” from structuralism, which Lévi-Strauss still insisted was a purely materialist science.
19
Structuralism was, however, a strange kind of science, one that built its proofs out of poetic interpretations and refused definitive conclusions at every turn. At the end of the “Overture” Lévi-Strauss apologized for “these confused and indigestible pages,” which he likened to esoteric sleeve notes on a record. Should the reader become discouraged, he urged him to return to its source, the indigenous myths themselves, “the forest of images and signs . . . still fresh with a bewitching enchantment.”
20
20
LÉVI-STRAUSS SET OFF on this marathon where he had begun, among the Bororo of Mato Grosso, Brazil. He had originally planned to start off in New Mexico with a series of Pueblo myths that he had run seminars on in the early 1950s, but he had found them too closed in on themselves. In 1957-58, when he had returned to the Bororo myths they had stood out as a natural departure point for future research. There was, of course, an elegiac undertone to the choice, drawing him back to his youth, when he had visited the Bororo as a twenty-seven-year-old aspiring anthropologist and felt the “giddiness” of the ethnographer’s first moments in a recognizably anthropological setting: the clusters of virtually naked bodies smeared in paint, the thatched huts, the feather headdresses, the semiferal dogs and smoldering campfires. Then he had been more interested in the Bororo social organization, studying their circular hut plans, mapping a geometry of exchange and mutual obligation. Now he turned to the Bororo for M
1
, “the key myth,” and its variations (M
7
-M
12
), known as the bird-nester myths, the first and, as it subsequently turned out, pivotal links in a chain of analyses that would stretch across the western hemisphere, ending more than eight hundred myths later in the freezing Salish waterways of British Columbia.
1
, “the key myth,” and its variations (M
7
-M
12
), known as the bird-nester myths, the first and, as it subsequently turned out, pivotal links in a chain of analyses that would stretch across the western hemisphere, ending more than eight hundred myths later in the freezing Salish waterways of British Columbia.
His material came not from his own field notes, but from
I Bororos Orientali
, written by the Italian Salesian missionary Antonio Colbacchini in the 1920s. The book was of its time, with awkward photographs of indigenous people in the process of being Christianized—a Bororo woman in a full wedding dress, her bridegroom in a white suit, during a “Christian wedding”; three Bororo two-year-olds holding hands, dressed in ankle-length smocks over the caption “
Tre bambine salvate dall’infanticidio e allevate dalle Suore
” (Three children saved from infanticide and brought up by the nuns). Even so, the Salesian missionaries had been more sensitive than most to their exotic congregation, cultivating a profound interest in Bororo culture. Lévi-Strauss later jested that it could be said that the Salesians were converted by the Indians, and not the other way around.
21
Along with the missionary propaganda was a painstaking ethnography. Colbacchini included grammars, translations of color charts, notes on rituals and drawings of artifacts. Most important for Lévi-Strauss, he had transcribed more than one hundred pages of myths—some of them in the original language with a line-by-line parallel translation into Italian.
22
I Bororos Orientali
, written by the Italian Salesian missionary Antonio Colbacchini in the 1920s. The book was of its time, with awkward photographs of indigenous people in the process of being Christianized—a Bororo woman in a full wedding dress, her bridegroom in a white suit, during a “Christian wedding”; three Bororo two-year-olds holding hands, dressed in ankle-length smocks over the caption “
Tre bambine salvate dall’infanticidio e allevate dalle Suore
” (Three children saved from infanticide and brought up by the nuns). Even so, the Salesian missionaries had been more sensitive than most to their exotic congregation, cultivating a profound interest in Bororo culture. Lévi-Strauss later jested that it could be said that the Salesians were converted by the Indians, and not the other way around.
21
Along with the missionary propaganda was a painstaking ethnography. Colbacchini included grammars, translations of color charts, notes on rituals and drawings of artifacts. Most important for Lévi-Strauss, he had transcribed more than one hundred pages of myths—some of them in the original language with a line-by-line parallel translation into Italian.
22
M
1
, “O xibae e iari” (The Macaws and Their Nest), was typical of the type of material Lévi-Strauss would be working with—a surreal series of non sequiturs, apparently superfluous incidents and sudden lurches into the fanciful. The hero steals some jingling bells made from the hooves of a wild pig and is helped by a large grasshopper; vultures chew off his buttocks, which are restored by a dough made from pounded tubers; and he later turns into a deer. The imagery is vivid—after the hero’s father is eaten by carnivorous fish, all that remains are his bones on the bed of the lake, and lungs “in the form of aquatic plants” floating on the surface. At one point the hero awakes “as if from a dream,” and indeed there is something dreamlike in the myth’s woozy, surreal qualities. Seeping through Lévi-Strauss’s analyses are echoes of a previous generation’s obsessions: Freud’s
The Interpretation of Dreams
, surrealism, free association and automatism. Significantly, M
1
even has Oedipal overtones—in the opening paragraph the “hero” rapes his mother while she collects palm fronds to make penis sheaths; toward the end he kills his father, impaling him on his deer horns.
1
, “O xibae e iari” (The Macaws and Their Nest), was typical of the type of material Lévi-Strauss would be working with—a surreal series of non sequiturs, apparently superfluous incidents and sudden lurches into the fanciful. The hero steals some jingling bells made from the hooves of a wild pig and is helped by a large grasshopper; vultures chew off his buttocks, which are restored by a dough made from pounded tubers; and he later turns into a deer. The imagery is vivid—after the hero’s father is eaten by carnivorous fish, all that remains are his bones on the bed of the lake, and lungs “in the form of aquatic plants” floating on the surface. At one point the hero awakes “as if from a dream,” and indeed there is something dreamlike in the myth’s woozy, surreal qualities. Seeping through Lévi-Strauss’s analyses are echoes of a previous generation’s obsessions: Freud’s
The Interpretation of Dreams
, surrealism, free association and automatism. Significantly, M
1
even has Oedipal overtones—in the opening paragraph the “hero” rapes his mother while she collects palm fronds to make penis sheaths; toward the end he kills his father, impaling him on his deer horns.
The plot is complex, but the elements that would prove fundamental to the whole
Mythologiques
enterprise were as follows: after violating his mother, the boy is lured by his irate father up a cliff on the pretext of capturing macaws; there he is stranded and suffers great privations before he is rescued by vultures to return to his village and exact his revenge on his father. In the final scene, in one version of the myth, his vengeance extends to the whole village. He unleashes “wind, cold and rain” while spiriting his faithful grandmother away to a “beautiful and distant land.”
23
Mythologiques
enterprise were as follows: after violating his mother, the boy is lured by his irate father up a cliff on the pretext of capturing macaws; there he is stranded and suffers great privations before he is rescued by vultures to return to his village and exact his revenge on his father. In the final scene, in one version of the myth, his vengeance extends to the whole village. He unleashes “wind, cold and rain” while spiriting his faithful grandmother away to a “beautiful and distant land.”
23
In this Freudian world, scatological references abounded. The loss of the hero’s rectum in the opening myth was a hint of what was to come, from the widespread occurrence of the “anus stopper” to the role of vomiting, farting, defecating, menstruation and ejaculation in mythic narrative. Like Freud, Lévi-Strauss reveled in this kind of material; its multiple entrances and exits seemed built for structural analysis. The grandmother character in M
5
(The Original of Diseases) tries to kill her grandson by farting in his face while he sleeps, only to be skewered with a sharp-pointed arrow “plunged so deeply into her anus that the intestines spurted out.” For Lévi-Strauss, this was an example of “triply inverted incestuous promiscuity”—grandmother instead of mother, back passage instead of front, aggressive woman rather than man.
24
5
(The Original of Diseases) tries to kill her grandson by farting in his face while he sleeps, only to be skewered with a sharp-pointed arrow “plunged so deeply into her anus that the intestines spurted out.” For Lévi-Strauss, this was an example of “triply inverted incestuous promiscuity”—grandmother instead of mother, back passage instead of front, aggressive woman rather than man.
24
Lévi-Strauss rounded off the long and involved first chapter—a compendium of half a dozen myths, loosely connected ethnographic digressions, diagrams and pseudo-mathematical proofs—with what at first appeared to be a clear goal: “I propose to show that M
1
(the key myth) belongs to a set of myths that explain the origin of the
cooking of food
.” But he then added, in parentheses, “although this theme is to all intents and purposes absent from it.” Or rather, he went on to explain, the theme was “concealed” in the form of an inversion of myths from neighboring Ge communities. The reference myth was, in fact, about the origin of rainwater, a reversal of the Ge cycle’s origin of fire (hence cooking) myths. Perhaps it was appropriate, given the escalating complexity of his work, that the whole project was to be built around an absence, a negative example, which would form the crux of a riddle unfurling not just across the Americas, but through what Lévi-Strauss called “the curvature of mythological space.”
25
1
(the key myth) belongs to a set of myths that explain the origin of the
cooking of food
.” But he then added, in parentheses, “although this theme is to all intents and purposes absent from it.” Or rather, he went on to explain, the theme was “concealed” in the form of an inversion of myths from neighboring Ge communities. The reference myth was, in fact, about the origin of rainwater, a reversal of the Ge cycle’s origin of fire (hence cooking) myths. Perhaps it was appropriate, given the escalating complexity of his work, that the whole project was to be built around an absence, a negative example, which would form the crux of a riddle unfurling not just across the Americas, but through what Lévi-Strauss called “the curvature of mythological space.”
25
The rest of the book took on the first batch of 187 myths, submitting them to a pitiless analysis. The origin of cooking straddled the most elemental opposition of them all: nature/culture, as seen in the transformation of the raw (nature), through fire, into the cooked (culture), a central motif in indigenous mythology. Although he identified many other structural arrangements—oppositions related to each of the five senses, for instance, or to the heavenly bodies, or to north-south and east-west axes—it was this “gustatory code” which predominated, as it stood symbolically at the very birth of human society. In origin myths the raw/cooked polarity expressed not just man’s passage from nature to culture, but also man’s loss of immortality. Cooking processed the living into the dead; it involved the burning of wood—dead or rotten trees—on campfires, echoing death by natural causes; or the burning of a live tree, (tabooed in many hunter-gatherer groups as an act of aggression against the vegetable kingdom) often equated to death through violence.
Lévi-Strauss interpreted the terms loosely, as ideas that recurred metaphorically in many cultures in rituals at key times in the life cycle. In Cambodia, a “cooked” woman—one who had just given birth—slept on a raised bed mounted over a slow-burning fire; in contrast, girls were considered “raw” at the time of their first period, and were confined to the cool of the shade. Pueblo women, on the other hand, gave birth over hot sand—a symbolic “cooking” of the newborn baby.
26
The raw and the cooked spawned a whole complex of related oppositions in the “gustatory code,” from the fresh and the decayed to the edible and the inedible, to different modes of cooking such as smoking, roasting and boiling, ideas that Lévi-Strauss would examine in later volumes of the
Mythologiques
quartet.
26
The raw and the cooked spawned a whole complex of related oppositions in the “gustatory code,” from the fresh and the decayed to the edible and the inedible, to different modes of cooking such as smoking, roasting and boiling, ideas that Lévi-Strauss would examine in later volumes of the
Mythologiques
quartet.
Once in place, these grids shaped Lévi-Strauss’s interpretations of myths. Under his analytical gaze, the raw and the cooked, the moistened and the burned, fire and water spun out of the mythic matter, as if it were acted upon by some centrifugal force. Where oppositions did not obviously exist, they were creatively manufactured: rock and wood became “anti-foods”; ornaments, like bracelets and necklaces, were for Lévi-Strauss the “anti-matter of cooking,” as they were made from the inedible parts of animals—shells, teeth and feathers.
Where, though, was this elaborate exercise actually leading? With all his formulae, graphs and arrows, Lévi-Strauss worked as if he were building up a case for a final proof. But any expectation of a definitive solution was undercut in the book’s conclusion:
Each matrix of meanings refers to another matrix, each myth to other myths, and if it is now asked to what final meaning these mutually significative meanings are referring—since in the last resort and in their totality they must refer to something—the only reply to emerge from this study is that myths signify the mind that evolves them by making use of the world of which it is itself a part.
27
BOOK: Claude Levi-Strauss: The Poet in the Laboratory
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