Les immémoriaux (Libretto t. 610)

by Victor Segalen

Les Immémoriaux, ce sont les Tahitiens qui ont trahi, en les oubliant, leurs dieux et leurs coutumes. L’arrivée des Européens à la fin du XVIIIe siècle a violemment mis un terme à une culture restée jusque-là intacte.

Mais Paofaï, le dernier païen, ne s’avoue pas vaincu et part à la recherche d’une écriture capable de sauvegarder les « gestes qui ne doivent pas mourir ».

Ce premier livre de Victor Segalen est soigneusement documenté sur la culture polynésienne. Empreint de poésie et de sensualité, il fait écho aux rapports complexes qu’entretiennent nos sociétés contemporaines à l’idée de civilisation.

Genres: France, Roman

256 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Victor Segalen was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic.

He was born in Brest. He studied naval medicine in Bordeaux. He traveled and lived in Polynesia (1903–1905) and China (1909–1914 and 1917). He died by accident in a forest in Huelgoat, France ('under mysterious circumstances' and reputedly with an open copy of Hamlet by his side).

In 1934, the French state inscribed his name on the walls of the Panthéon because of his sacrifice for his country during World War I.

He gave his name to the Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2 University of medicine, literature and social sciences in Bordeaux under the Academy of Bordeaux where he studied, and to the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences of Brest where he was born.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[Thomas]

notable as a kind of anthropological novel that draws on a tremendous amount of primary source material to represent the tahitian viewpoint and culture, and it is genuinely sympathetic to the tahitian perspective while mostly avoiding falling into noble savage type stuff. as a novel i'm not sure it is all that satisfying though, and it lacks the enigmatic quality you will find in René Leys

[Philippe Guglielmetti]

Intéressant, mais hélas pas facile de faire la part entre la réalité historique et la fiction.