Léry-Strauss: Jean de Léry's History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil and Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques

"Léry-Strauss: Jean de Léry's History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil and Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques." Jean de Léry's History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil (1578), a work that Claude Lévi-Strauss described as "the ethnologist's breviary," surfaces as a palimpsest in the modern ethnologist's own book Tristes Tropiques. From his reading of a Huguenot who sought exile in Brazil from the European wars of religion, Lévi- Strauss retains more than a model destiny, as he adopts the nostalgic tone of his predecessor concerning both the origin and end of human history. The melancholy of Tristes Tropiques is already that of the History of a Voyage. It is true that the question of writing itself divides these two authors. Where Léry sees a benediction, Lévi-Strauss sees means of alienation and exploitation. Nevertheless, their respective experiences share, before and after the colonialist era and over a span of four centuries, a retrospective look at a world lost forever.