Mirar, escuchar, leer

by Claude Lévi-Strauss

Este libro reúne un conjunto de ensayos sobre arte y gusto. Como un paseante a la vez caprichoso y sabio, Levi-Strauss explora, entre otros temas, la pintura filosófica de Poussin, los cambios en la audición musical desde el siglo XVIII, las ideas de Diderot y Rousseau sobre el arte o la relación entre palabras y música y

Genres: Philosophy, Art, Anthropology, Essays, Nonfiction

146 pages, Paperback

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.

[Roberto Yoed · Rating 1 out of 5]

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

[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.

[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）。