Look, Listen, Read

by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Over the course of a monumental career, Claude Lévi-Strauss has interwoven artistic materials and themes into his seminal analyses of the “savage mind.” Now the world’s most famous anthropologist turns his attention entirely to the domain of aesthetics. In a series of brilliant but meticulous studies, he ranges widely across the domains of painting, music, literature and the plastic arts, his fertile mind opening more general, philosophical perspectives.Look, Listen, Read begins with an analysis of Nicolas Poussin’s method of visual composition, and after drawing a surprising parallel with Marcel Proust, moves into a fascinating discussion, joined by Ingres and Delacroix among others, on the art of painting. Next the author turns to music, taking his inspiration from an inquiry into certain chord modulations in Rameau’s opera Castor et Pollux, which at the time of its composition were considered a musical breakthrough. The book then considers the nature of the “beautiful.” The reference point here remains the French Enlightenment, and in particular Diderot’s reflections on painting. Focusing on the aesthetic controversies of this same period, but with regard to music, a fascinating series of chapters revives the work of the largely forgotten eighteenth-century musicologist Michel-Paul-Guy de Chabanon and his surprisingly contemporary discussion of music’s partial resemblance to language. This leads to a consideration of the relations of words to music in opera, where Lévi-Strauss reveals something of his own tastes in music while engaging in a critical review of a work by his recently deceased friend and colleague, Michel Leires. The relation between sounds and colors is considered next, largely through a breathtaking examination of a famous but difficult poem by Arthur Rimbaud. There follows an exchange of notes with André Breton, written some fifty years ago, on the nature of the work of art. In the book’s concluding chapters the author dons the more familiar mantle of the anthropologist, and by looking at the myths of the American Indians, offering an analysis of their understanding of the place of art and of the artist in their own societies.Look, Listen, Read is a truly original work, far removed from the intellectual fads that mark contemporary discussions on aesthetics, as Lévi-Strauss advances into new territory even as he remains faithful to his structuralist inspiration. The book weaves a dense tissue of connections, correspondences, and principles, while at the same time remaining sensitive to the specificities of each of the beaux-arts. In a valedictory statement capping a lifetime’s work, Lévi-Strauss has made a major new contribution to our understanding of the place of art in human life, the nature of its appeal, the source of its creativity, and its universality.

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Anthropology, Essays, Nonfiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist, well-known for his development of structural anthropology. He was born in Belgium to French parents who were living in Brussels at the time, but he grew up in Paris. His father was an artist, and a member of an intellectual French Jewish family. Lévi-Strauss studied at the University of Paris. From 1935-9 he was Professor at the University of Sao Paulo making several expeditions to central Brazil. Between 1942-1945 he was Professor at the New School for Social Research. In 1950 he became Director of Studies at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes. In 1959 Lévi-Strauss assumed the Chair of Social Anthroplogy at the College de France. His books include The Raw and the Cooked, The Savage Mind, Structural Anthropology and Totemism (Encyclopedia of World Biography).

Some of the reasons for his popularity are in his rejection of history and humanism, in his refusal to see Western civilization as privileged and unique, in his emphasis on form over content and in his insistence that the savage mind is equal to the civilized mind.

Lévi-Strauss did many things in his life including studying Law and Philosophy. He also did considerable reading among literary masterpieces, and was deeply immersed in classical and contemporary music.

Lévi-Strauss was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation's Viking Fund Medal for 1966 and the Erasmus Prize in 1975. He was also awarded four honorary degrees from Oxford, Yale, Havard and Columbia. Strauss held several memberships in institutions including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society (Encyclopedia of World Biography).

Reviews

[Sümeyye Yıldız]

Mit ve Anlam kitabıyla merak ettiğim Claude Levi Strauss'un resim, müzik, yazı üzerinden notlarının olduğu metinler. Mit ile kurduğu ortak anlatılar içerdiği detaylarla büyülü. Müzik üzerine yazılarının anlaşılması için alana dair birikimlerin olması gerekiyor ayrıca yazılar sanat anlatılarına baştan degil ortasından girilmiş yoğun ve bazı detayların bilinmesini istiyor.

[Katelis Viglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

For fun, and for learning, structuralistic approaches by the famous old french anthropologist and philosopher. Somewhere in a newspaper I read that he was going, in his nighties, to Japan for another lecture. Increadible writer, traveler, professor, the founder of structuralism, a fashion of sixties as he said. Nevertheless it isn't an easy reading.
He follows the common structuralistic practice of explaining a painting, - as for example Michel Foucault et Jacques Lacan already have done - but he doesn't stay there. Among others, he analyses the evolution of music listening from Jean Philippe Rameau till our days. Diderot, Rousseau, Rimbaut, Breton, whom he met and who was his friend, they aren't absent, neither the Indians of North America with their myths. It isn't a corpus of his main studies, but he himself is there, the unaged Claude Levy-Strauss, "le maitre".
Well, not very long time since I wrote this review, I learned that Claude Levy-Srtauss died at the age of 100 years old. He passed away before the celebration of his 101st birthday. Immortal the memory of this great man, who made history, by his discoveries in anthropology, philosophy, sociology, pschychology, humanities in general. His intellectual work is one of the great achievements accomplished by the scientific spirit in 20th century.

[Sam Gilbert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I believe this is Lévi-Strauss’s last work. A bit diffuse, flawed by the author’s compulsion to call out philistines among his contemporaries (Why can’t Michel Leiris write about the music of the operas he goes on about?), this is a fun read centered (mostly) on Poussin, Rameau, Diderot, though L-S devotes as much energy and space to M.P.G. de Chabanon as he does to more famous figures. Big questions are often fractal, asking whether a work operates analogously at different scales, but the consideration of harmony (visual, musical) opens a range of questions.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 1 out of 5]

As irrelevant as listening to old people telling you about things that do not matter.

[moi, k.y.a. · Rating 4 out of 5]

kitap şahaneydi bence, ama bakmak ve dinlemek kısımlarında kendimi zayıf hissettiğim için ilerleyen yıllarda tekrar okunması gerekenler listemde.

[treetree · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is just difficult to read. I think these pieces are even harder to fully comprehend compared to CLS's books on anthropology. Not sure if it has something to do with the translation or the topics... It trains the reading mind but it is rather hard to enjoy it.

中文翻譯有點硬，整體感覺很dense，不太好讀。頭尾一篇寫Poussin的畫，一篇寫部落編織品最好，中間其它聊音樂和其他抽象概念的幾乎都是囫圇吞棗過去⋯⋯大概因為前者是畫起碼有可視的例子，後者比較老本行人類學向也較有趣味（最後對藝術的昇華深得我心挽回不少分數）。