Claude LÉVI-STRAUSS prepares his reception speech at the Academy.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908.2009)

Autographed letter signed to his friend, ethnologist Isac Chiva.

Two large quarto pages on letterhead of the Laboratory of Social Anthropology.

Lignerolles. July 19, 1973.

"I'm just reading Montherlant and, as he likes to say, 'that's no small thing.'"

Claude Lévi-Strauss is preparing his acceptance speech at the French Academy.

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"My dear friend, Thank you for your letter. I am happy to know you are settled in for a few weeks in such a beautiful country. I have only visited the Jura once, but I have retained a strong impression of it. Here, after a few days of intense heat, we had thunderstorms, and since then the weather has remained cool and unsettled. For the past week, the painters have taken possession of the downstairs rooms. They are making slow progress, as there are only two of them, and sometimes just one.  It bothers me greatly to be without an office , but for the moment, I am doing nothing but reading Montherlant, and, as he likes to say, 'that's no small thing .' The end is not yet in sight, and even less so what I will be able to say about it.

From the lab, relatively little mail and no news except, this morning, a letter from Janine accompanying travel orders for Ms. Guensquin to sign ^. I'm enclosing a letter from the DGRST [General Delegation for Scientific and Technical Research] , unable to recall whether or not we responded to their questionnaire. If not, what can we do? I also received a charming letter from the Director of Archives, profusely thanking me for my conciliatory response and apologizing for having blamed us for the disarray in the archives of various municipalities. So I wasn't wrong to write to him as I did.

Maranda visited us for two days, but the painters were already there and he must have had a poor impression of the house… Have a good end to your holidays and very best regards. Claude Lévi-Strauss

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Isac Chiva (1925-2012), an ethnologist of Romanian origin, arrived in France in 1948 where he pursued his studies. He worked at the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, 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, having been elected to the Collège de France, asked him to assist him in directing the Laboratory of Social Anthropology (LAS).

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Claude Lévi-Strauss was elected to the Académie française on May 24, 1973, to the 29th ^seat formerly held by Henry de Montherlant. He delivered his inaugural address on Thursday, June 27, 1974.

“Every morning for twenty years, from 8 a.m. to noon, you could find Claude Lévi-Strauss at the Laboratory of Social Anthropology which he founded with Isac Chiva in 1960, following his election to the Collège de France. Initially located on Avenue d'Iéna and then on Place Marcelin-Berthelot, in the Chalgrin building, the LAS – the acronym quickly became established – the first social science laboratory of the Collège de France, housed the journal L'Homme (1961) and became, in the 1960s and 1970s, the paradigmatic place of French anthropology.

As the laboratory grew in prosperity, one encountered ethnologists, linguists and historians, research fellows, librarians and documentalists, visiting foreign professors, secretaries, temporary staff, young and old, men and many women, and in the midst of this bustling little world of social science in the process of professionalization, the tall figure of a man in his fifties, who was not only the intellectual leader of structuralism but the refounder of French ethnology. » Emmanuelle Loyer – Lévi-Strauss , Flammarion, 2015.