Claude LÉVI-STRAUSS – Ancient sites and Korean shamanism

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908.2009)

Autographed letter signed to his friend, ethnologist Isac Chiva.

One 1/4 page large quarto on letterhead paper of the Academy of Korean Studies.

[South Korea]. Saturday 17 [1981, written in another hand]

"The day after tomorrow, a shamanism session in the countryside, I don't know exactly where."

The anthropologist cynically describes the Korean way of life and organization before delving into the discovery of ancient sites and Asian shamanism.

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"My dear friend, This first week of my stay is ending in a sort of intellectual concentration camp, 30 km from Seoul, in the middle of a very beautiful landscape reminiscent of the Cévennes mountains, but where the lifestyle combines ostentatious pomp with Spartan customs : we are staying in a luxuriously furnished Korean-style room, but we only have hot water every other day (energy conservation), which doesn't prevent the meals from being served being rather coarse, but so incredibly copious that half the food in the cafeteria is thrown away every day. All of this gives a somewhat incoherent impression, and that we are a hundred leagues away from Japanese refinement .

The seminars end today. There were about forty Koreans there, plus David Eyle from El Paso, David Wu from Honolulu, Harry Lewis from Edmonton, and Bob Scholte from Amsterdam, who vehemently attacked me in yesterday's session, Jaulin-style, in front of Koreans all the more disconcerted because the organizers are clearly semi-officials and not keen on introducing subversion. People here are acutely aware that the border with the communist world is 50 km away . We have vacation days today and tomorrow to visit Seoul, which we've barely glimpsed so far. The day after tomorrow, a shamanism session in the countryside somewhere , and on Tuesday we're leaving in a caravan to spend a week visiting the ancient sites and old villages of the southeast region. This promises more surprises, as the Koreans are clearly not organizers.

Please pass on this news to the lab, where everything is going well, I hope. Tell Françoise H. that I am with her in heart and thought, and share our warmest regards with your wife. Claude Lévi-Strauss

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Isac Chiva (1925-2012), an ethnologist of Romanian origin, arrived in France in 1948 where he studied, worked at the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, and became head of practical work at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (director from 1994), and deputy director of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology alongside Lévi-Strauss. Indeed, in 1960, Lévi-Strauss, elected to the Collège de France, asked him to assist him in directing the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (LAS).