An unwritten Tristes Tropiques: Claude Lévi-Strauss and Joseph Conrad

• Authors: Marek Pacukiewicz
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

In an interview with Didier Eribon, Claude Lévi-Strauss admitted that he wished he had written Joseph Conrad’s books. It seems that once he even started writing a “Conradian” novel entitled Tristes Tropiques, but the only known fragment of this novel would seem to be the description of a sunset, which has become part of another book of the same title containing reminiscences from his journeys. In what way, then, did Conrad infl uence this unusual book by Lévi-Strauss? There are certainly similarities between the works of both writers. Apart from a similarity of literary form and cultural substance, we can fi nd a unique “optical experience” (Dariusz Czaja) in their descriptions of sunsets, which I interpret as a substructure of their studies of the world, culture and human knowledge.

Keywords

PL

cultural anthropology, Conrad studies, Tristes Tropiques

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Yearbook of Conrad Studies
• Year: 2011
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2011

online

2015-02-04

Contributors

author

Marek Pacukiewicz