Le Tour de la France (5)—The Preparations of Etienne the Shoemaker

Translated by Robert André LaFleur
Le Tour de la France par deux enfants (A Journey Around France Undertaken by Two Children) is a little 119-chapter book about French geography and culture. Written in 1877 by Augustine Fouillée (under the pseudonym G. Bruno), it was geared toward primary school students in their fourth and fifth years (cours moyen).  It has been read by generations of French students, and has played a small but important role in the development of a French national imagination. It was the little book that launched the Tour de France.

Chapters

1            2            3            4            5            6            7            8            9            10            11

Click here for the introduction to Round and Square's series on this 1877 classic. 
 

V

The Preparations of Etienne the Shoemaker;
Goodbyes; Children of the Same Country

Children of the same country should love and support each 
other just as do children of the same mother

While André and Julien were eating, Etienne came into the room. 

          —Children, said the shoemaker said, rubbing his hands, I have not wasted my time. I have worked on your behalf this morning. To start, I have found two places in the carriage of a friend who will find some straw on which to sleep near the village of Saint-Quirin, near the frontier. You will then have about a quarter of an hour to the village. This will spare Julien's little legs, as well as your own, André. Then I wrote a post—right here—to refer you to an old acquaintance of mine near Saint-Quirin, who is a former forest ranger for the village. You will be received with open arms, my children, and there you may take a good night's rest. Finally, still better, Fritz will guide you the next day in the mountains, and take you to the border by way of roads where you will not be observed.  My friend Fritz is an experienced hunter who knows all of the mountain and forest trails. Rest assured, in forty-eight hours, you will be in France.

          —Oh! Monsieur Etienne, cried André, you are good to us—like a second father!

          —My children, responded Etienne, you are the sons of my best friend, and it is right that I come to your assistance. And moreover, should not all Frenchmen be prepared to support one another? In your turn, he added in a serious tone, when you encounter a child of France in danger you will help him just as we have helped you, and you will do for your country just as we have done here these two days.

THE SHOEMAKER OF THE VOSGES. He especially makes the clogs worn by people in forested and mountainous regions, mostly using the wood of beech and walnut trees to craft them. There are many shoemakers in the Vosges, where the mountains are deeply wooded.

Having said these words, Etienne went into the neighboring workroom, where he pursued his craft of shoemaking. Wishing to make up for lost time, he set to work with diligence. Little Julien had followed him, and took great pleasure in watching him dig lightly and and shape the beech tree wood from the mountain.

Toward the middle of the afternoon, the carriage of which Père Etienne had spoken stopped on the highway. The carriage driver, as had been agreed, whistled with all his might to call the young travelers.

At that signal, André and Julien quickly grabbed their travel packets. They hugged Mère Etienne, showing all of their emotions, and straight away the shoemaker brought them to the carriage.

After another embrace and further paternal recommendations from the good man, the children seated themselves inside the carriage. The driver cracked his whip, and the horses took off in a gentle trot.

Père Etienne remained alone by the highway, following the carriage with his eyes into the distance. He felt both sad and proud to see the children part.

          —Brave and cherished youth, he murmured, go, carry your hearts over to the homeland!

And, when the carriage had disappeared, he returned home slowly, pensive, thinking of the father of these two orphans—of his old friend since childhood who slept his last slumber under the earth of Lorraine, while his two sons henceforth went off alone, at great risk to their lives. A tear slid from the old man's eyes, but he quickly wiped it away. 

          —Courage, all the same, he said to himself. Hope alone makes the future fruitful.


NEXT
A Disappointment; Perseverance
All does not go exactly as planned for the little travelers, yet they are determined to persevere and complete the dangerous journey to the border.

Beginnings (17)—Argonauts of the Western Pacific

Click here for the introduction to Round and Square's Beginnings theme.

[a] Coastal  RF

This is the big one—the beginning that started social (and cultural) anthropology. I exaggerate, slightly, for effect, but Malinowski's work cast a very long shadow on the growing discipline. As you may have seen many weeks ago in an "endings" post on Malinowski, his introduction, middle (it is formidable), and conclusion defined ethnography for decades. I am quoting large swaths of the first three sections of the introduction, because its influence on anthropologists old and young cannot be underestimated. Year after year, my students read these introductory lines (and the nineteen pages that follow) with fascination. Although the rhetoric of science gives the passage a somewhat dated quality, the texture of these passages is so thick, so rich, that it is hard not to admire it. 

All I ask is for you to give it a read. Imagine that it is 1922, and all of anthropology hangs in the balance.

[b] Trobriand  PD

Bronislaw Malinowski

Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922)

INTRODUCTION

THE SUBJECT, METHOD AND SCOPE OF THIS INQUIRY

I

The coastal populations of the South Sea Islands, with very few exceptions are, or were before their extinction, expert navigators and traders. Several of them had evolved excellent types of large sea-going canoes, and used to embark in them on distant trade expeditions or raids of war and consequence...Definite forms of exchange along definite trade routes are to be found established between the various tribes...This trading system, the Kula, is the subject I am setting out to describe in this volume, and it will be seen that it is an economic phenomenon of considerable theoretical importance. It looms paramount in the tribal life of those natives who live within its circuit, and it importance is fully realised by the tribesmen themselves, whose ideas, ambitions, desires, and vanities are very much bound up with the Kula.

II

Before proceeding to the account of the Kula, it will be well to give a description of the methods used in the collecting of the ethnographic material. The results of scientific research in any branch of learning ought to be presented in a manner absolutely candid and above board. No one would dream of making experimental contributions to physical or chemical science, without giving a detailed account...In less exact sciences, as in biology or geology, this cannot be done as rigorously, but every student will do his best to bring home to the reader all the conditions in which the experiment or the observations were made. In Ethnography, where a candid account of such data is perhaps even more necessary, it has unfortunately in the past not always been supplied with sufficient generosity, and many writers do not ply the full searchlight of methodological sincerity, as they move among their facts but produce them before us out of complete obscurity....

In Ethnography, the writer is his own chronicler and the historian at the same time, while his sources are no doubt easily accessible, but also supremely elusive and complex; they are not embodied in fixed, material documents, but in the behaviour and in the memory of living men. In Ethnography, the distance is often enormous between the brute material of information—as it is presented to the student in his own observations, in native statement, in the kaleidoscope of tribal life—and the final authoritative presentation of the results. The Ethnographer has to traverse this distance in the laborious years between the moment he sets foot upon a native beach, and makes his first attempt to get into touch with the natives, and the time when he writes down the final version of his results. A brief outline of an Ethnographer's tribulations, as lived through by myself, may throw more light on the question, than any long abstract discussion could do.

III

Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear, alone on a tropical beach close to a native village, while the launch or dinghy which has brought you sails away out of sight. Since you take up your abode in the compound of some neighbouring white man, trader, or missionary, you have nothing to do, but to start at once on your ethnographic work. Imagine further that you are a beginner, without previous experience, with nothing to guide you and no one to help you. For the white man is temporarily absent, or else unable or unwilling to waste any time of his own on you. This exactly describes my first initiation into field work on the south coast of New Guinea. I will remember the long visits I paid to the village during the first weeks; the feeling of hopelessness and despair after many obstinate but futile attempts had entirely failed to bring me into real touch with the natives, or supply me with any material. I had periods of despondency, when I buried myself in the reading of novels, as a man might take to drink in a fit of tropical depression and boredom.

[c] From the beach   RF

Imagine yourself then making your first entry into the village, alone or in company with your white cicerone. Some natives flock round you, especially if they smell tobacco. Others, the more dignified and elderly, remain seated where they are. Your white companion has his routine way of treating the natives, and he neither understands, nor is very much concerned with, the manner in which you, as an ethnographer, will have to approach them. The first visit leaves you with a hopeful feeling that when you return alone, things will be easier. Such was my hope at least.

I came back duly, and soon gathered an audience around me. A few compliments in pidgin-English on both sides, some tobacco changing hands, induced an atmosphere of mutual amiability. I tried then to proceed to business. First, to begin with subjects which might arouse no suspicion, I started to "do" technology. A few natives were engaged in manufacturing some object or other. It was easy to look at it and obtain the names of the tools, and even some technical expressions about the proceedings, but there the matter ended. It must be borne in mind that pidgin-English is a very imperfect instrument for expressing one's ideas, and that before one gets a good training in framing questions and understanding answers one has the uncomfortable feeling that free communication in it with the natives will never be attained; and I was quite unable to enter into any more detailed or explicit conversation with them at first. I knew well that the best remedy for this was to collect concrete data, and accordingly I took a village census, wrote down genealogies, drew up plans and collected terms of kinship. But all this remained dead material, which led no further into the understanding of real native mentality or behaviour, since I could neither procure a good native interpretation of any of these items, nor get what could be called a hang of tribal life. As to obtaining their ideas about religion and magic, their beliefs in sorcery and spirits, nothing was forthcoming except a few superficial items of folk-lore, mangled by being forced into pidgin English.

Information which I received from some white residents in the district, valuable as it was in itself, was more discouraging than anything else with regard to my own work. Here were men who had lived for years in the place with constant opportunities for observing the natives and communicating with them, and who yet hardly know one thing about them really well. How could I therefore in a few months or a year, hope to overtake and go beyond them? Moreover, the manner in which my white informants spoke about the natives and put their views was, naturally, that of untrained minds, unaccustomed to formulate their thoughts with any degree of consistency and precision. And they were for the most part, naturally enough, full of biassed and pre-judged opinions inevitable in the average practical man whether administrator, missionary, or trader, yet so strongly repulsive to a mind striving after the objective, scientific view of things. The habit of treating with a self-satisfied frivolity what is really serious to the ethnographer; the cheap rating of what to him is a scientific treasure, that is to say, the native's cultural and mental peculiarities and independence—these features so well known in the inferior amateur's writing, I found in the tone of the majority of white residents.*
 *I may note at once that there were a few delightful exceptions to that, to mention only my friends Billy Hancock in the Trobriands; M. Raffael Brudo, another pear trader; and the missionary, Mr. M. K. Gilmour.

Indeed, in my first piece of Ethnographic research on the South coast, it was not until I was alone in the district that I began to make some headway; and, at any rate, I found out where lay the secret of effective field-work. What is then this ethnographer's magic by which he is able to evoke the real spirit of the natives, the true picture of tribal life? As usual, success can only be obtained by a patient and systematic application of a number of rules of common sense and well-known scientific principles, and not by the discovery of any marvellous short-cut leading to the desired results without effort or trouble. The principles of method can be grouped under three main headings; first of all, naturally, the student must possess real scientific aims and know the values and criteria of modern ethnography. Secondly, he ought to put himself in good conditions of work, that is, in the main, to live without other white men, right among the natives. Finally, he has to apply a number of special methods of collecting, manipulating and fixing his evidence. A few words must be said about these three foundation stones of field-work, beginning with the second and most elementary.[1]

And on it goes for twenty-five pages that "created" ethnography as a discipline, and that is just the introduction to a 518-page ethnography—RL for RSQ

[1] Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (Long Grove IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1984), 1-6.


Bibliography
Malinowski, Bronislaw. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Long Grove IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1984.

Displays of Authenticity (2)—Passwords

Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series Displays of Authenticity.

[a] Etiquette  RF

So I was standing in line at the ATM machine the other day, and noticed that we were all (except for the person at the machine) looking away. Conspicuously. It was quite obvious that we were making sure that we weren't looking and equally making sure that everyone knew that we weren't looking. Then I remembered a few months ago when one of my students, while we were checking his transcript on-line to see if he was up-to-snuff with the department's requirements, looked away when I had to type in my password. Conspicuously.

[b] Unlocked  RF

What's going on here? You know you do it, but why, exactly? As I have stated many times already on the pages (or screens) of Round and Square, our task is to take the little details of life that have that little extra bit of social or cultural power and analyze them. Over and over until they are both more and less interesting than they were before.

Welcome back to Displays of Authenticity. So far, we have looked at Dairy Queen Blizzards and tip jars, but it has been a while since we have considered these little bits of social life in which people are attempting to show the authenticity (and sometimes sincerity) of their actions. If you have not done so already, by all means read the introduction to this series.

Now let's get back to passwords. You know that you look away when someone is typing or punching in a password or security code. All too often, we take the narrow, practical, and individualistic interpretive route and are content to think that we look away for practical or ethical reasons. Yes, of course. It isn't as though those things don't apply. I get it.

I just think that there is more going on here. At least a little more. For one, there is a complete difference between typing in a password at home at 9:36 p.m. in front of your computer screen, with no one but the cat to notice your actions, and typing the same password in the midst of what I shall call a social setting. If you are inclined to think of a "social setting" as one in which you have a drink in one hand and a cheese puff in another, I urge you to stretch your definition a little. If you are sitting in an office and working with someone who is about to type in a password, you are in a social setting. Among people, interacting—simple.

[a] Social  RF

And yet not quite so simple. What I find interesting about passwords in such situations is that they are personal, and often highly individualized (you know what I mean; think about your own passwords—I won't look). When that hyper-individuality is thrust into a social setting, awkward things happen. Really, think about it. That is the key "theoretical" dimension in this. A highly personal matter in the midst of social movement (yes, even one person sitting in a chair next to you qualifies).

There are many, many such matters "out there," and we hardly think about them at all—except on Round and Square. To conclude for today, let's take a brief look (in the spirit of this series) at the way one thinker addresses the question of individuality. Let me remind you that the readings that follow Round and Square meanderings are meant to juxtapose ideas, not merely echo what was said above. Here you will find a nice "mesh," though. George Herbert Mead was not thinking about passwords, to be sure, but he surely was interested in the relationship between, well, mind, self, and society.

George Herbert Mead
Mind, Self, & Society

I have been presenting the self and the mind in terms of a social process, as the importation of the conversation of gestures into the conduct of the individual organism, so that the individual organism takes these organized attitudes of the others called out by its own attitude, in the form of its gestures, and in reacting to that response calls out other organized attitudes in the others in the community to which the individual belongs. This process can be characterized in a certain sense in terms of the "I" and the "me," the "me" being that group of organized attitudes to which the individual responds as an "I."

What I want particularly to emphasize is the temporal and logical pre-existence of the social process to the self-conscious individual that arises in it. The conversation of gestures is a part of the social process which is going on. It is not something that the individual alone makes possible. What the development of language, especially the significant symbol, has rendered possible is just the taking over of this external social situation into the conduct of the individual himself. There follows from this the enormous development which belongs to human society, the possibility of the prevision of what is going to take place in the response of other individuals, and a preliminary adjustment to this by the individual. These, in turn, produce a different social situation which is again reflected in what I have termed the "me," so that the individual himself takes a different attitude...

[d] Expiry  RF

I want to avoid the implication that that individual is taking something that is objective and making it subjective. There is an actual process of living together on the part of all members of the community which takes place by means of gestures. The gestures are certain stages in the co-operative activities which mediate the whole process. Now, all that has taken place in the appearance of the mind is that this process has to some degree taken over into the conduct of the particular individual. There is a certain symbol, such as the policeman uses when he directs traffic. There is something that is out there. It does not become subjective when the engineer, who is engaged by the city to examine its traffic regulations, takes the same attitude the policeman takes with reference to traffic, and takes the attitude also of the drivers of machines...Mind is nothing but the importation of this external process into the conduct of the individual so as to meet the problems that arise.[1]

[1] George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934), 187-188.

Bibliography
Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1934.

Seinfeld Ethnography (13)—Just Dessert

Click here for an introduction to the Round and Square series Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.
Click below for all "Seinfeld Ethnography" posts: 

George Eats Trash     No Soup for You     Elaine Exclaims    The Puffy Shirt    Poppie's Pizza     Mr. Bookman

Marine Biologist         The Doorman          Opposite George   Newman's Mail   The Bootleg         Marriage
Just Dessert               Sleep Desk             Late Coffee            High Stakes        Motor Oil              Downtown 
Code Cracking           Nonfat Yogurt          Bad Boy                 It's Not You         I Can't Be...          Exploding Wallet
Elaine Flies Coach    The Close Talker     The Alliance           Broccoli               Coated Culture    Dinner Party

Click here for the reference to the "Argonauts" title, below.

[a] Round  RF

Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific 
I've been through the dessert on a horse with no name.

This collage of Seinfeld clips shows something truly meaty (so to speak) regarding social life. It is a kind of social analysis worth thinking the ol' teeth into. Yes (to quibble just slightly) it starts out the way that all of our derivative, everyday discussions of these matters start (individual traits then spread to other individuals). Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss would scoff with a truly sociological disdain at the opening concept.

But, oh, how it takes off in a wave of "social learning" from there (Durkheim, Mauss, et moi will now relent, conceding the social force...and fact...of the idea). It all starts with a bit of a sweet tooth  and a little bit of taste (whatever that means). It takes off in a crescendo of Seinfeldian musing, as Elaine, Jerry, and George discuss this strange concept of eating a Snickers bar with utensils.  Just watch.

Table Manners 2:11

As always, the social-analytical possibilities are everywhere. Most Americans would agree that eating candy bars with knife and fork is hardly common. I have been around the world enough to know that touching food with fingers (something Americans seem to spend little time thinking about) is not common everywhere. I have watched club sandwiches consumed with fork and precarious spoon in Taiwan, and watched the horror on various faces on a recent domestic flight in China when a young Western woman calmly peeled off strips of her sandwich and ate them with her hands. On the other hand, we don't have to open up an encyclopedia of world cultures to know that many societies have a strong preference toward what we might call "tactile consumption."

[b] Utensils needed  RF

The first thing to think about is just that—eating with our hands. Americans are by no means on the "utensils" side of that argument (candy bars, pizza, sandwiches, and so forth are all easy example of—usually unambiguous—finger foods). So what compels Elaine to exclaim (in her heartily compelling way) "what is wrong with you people?" They aren't drinking the soup out of their bowls or belching publicly (conduct that is also not universally criticized, I might add). What is it about social mores, taste, and chocolate that makes some dessert "hand food" and other dessert "utensil food?" Can you imagine eating your banana cream pie with your hands? Of course not. How about your doughnut? Of course. Carrot cake? Hmmm.

Let's just think about taste, choice, fashion, and utensils. We are building toward deeper things—slowly, week-by-week—in Seinfeld Ethnography.

[c] Utensils down  R

Today's anthropological readings are a real mish-mash, and that is (as readers of this thread know very well by now) intentional. We start with Claude Lévi-Strauss and the first two paragraphs of his four volume (2,200-page) study of mythology. I will not even try to hide the fact that I am quoting the passage because the title is memorable...but also because it is the barest opening for a set of ideas we will pursue on Round and Square in the future. Mythology—and Lévi-Strauss's strangely magisterial study of it—will figure prominently in future posts.

Our "middle" reading today is even stranger still. It is from Roy Rappaport's classic study of ecology and ritual among the Tsembaga of New Guinea. It does not aspire to be anything but dryness. The most fascinating thing, if you stick with it, is that it is really quite interesting (that's a lotta yams in the ol' diet). Enjoy it; read the chart—think about where a glazed doughnut or chocolate bar might fit into the Tsembaga diet. Anthropology is fun.

We conclude with Immanuel Kant. I have been thinking about Kant for years now, and am determined to get to the heart of what might be called a kind of Enlightenment Anthropology (Kant, Rousseau, and others are a part of this very strange mixture). It starts with the idea of "taste" in a narrow sense, but it doesn't take large leaps of imagination to see how "taste" might well figure into the use of, say, silverware for dessert consumption. Kant (not to mention George Costanza) is not too far from Pierre Bourdieu here.

Claude Lévi-Strauss
The Raw and the Cooked

[d] Utensils

The aim of this book is to show how empirical categories—such as the categories of the raw and the cooked, the fresh and the decayed, the moistened and the burned, etc., which can only be accurately defined by ethnographic observation and, in each instance, by adopting the standpoint of a particular culture—can nonetheless be used as conceptual tools with which to elaborate abstract ideas and combine them in the form of propositions.

The initial hypothesis demands therefore that from the outset we place ourselves at the most concrete level—that is, in the heart of a community or of a group of communities sufficiently alike in regard to their habitat, history, and culture. However, while this undoubtedly an essential methodological precaution, it cannot mask or restrict my intention. Using a small number of myths taken from native communities which will serve as a laboratory, I intend to carry out an experiment which, should it prove successful, will be of universal significance, since I expect it to prove that there is a kind of logic of tangible qualities, and to demonstrate the operation of that logic and its laws.[1]

Roy Rappaport
Pigs for the Ancestors

Composition of the Diet

The composition of the Tsembaga diet by percentage of constituent foods by weight is presented foods by weight is presented in Table 8, along with comparative information from other New Guinea groups.

                    Busama          Kaiapit          Patep          Kavataria          Chimbu          Tsembaga
Taro                 65.0                7.3              45.9              8.6                     —                   25.8
Yam                  1.4                 9.5                  .2            55.2                    5.0                    9.3
Manioc              —                  2.0                  .2              1.4                     —                    1.2
Sweet
Potato               —                 25.7             37.6            14.0                    77.0                 21.0
Sago                 6.8                  .28               —                —                      —                     —
Banana             1.1                31.6                .4              5.5                      —                     7.8
Fruits and
Stems               6.1                  —                2.6              2.3                     13.0                  17.3
Leaves            14.0                  9.2              8.0               —                        2.5                   9.9
Marita
pandanus           —                  —                  ?                —                         ?                     4.2
Grain                 .36                 —                 3.0               —                       1.5                    —
Misc. veg.          —                   3.4              1.8              1.4                        —                    2.5
Animal               2.9                  1.7               .2               9.7                       1.0                   1.0

[e] Diet

The data from Busama, Kaiapit, Patep, and Kavataria were collected during the New Guinea Food Survey of 1947. The broad nature of this survey did not permit long observation of consumption in any location, and it is probable that some items included in the diets of these communities were not recorded. It may be, therefore, that the impression of greater variety in the Tsembaga diet is to some extent misleading. It is worth noting, however, that the Tsembaga seem to rely less upon any single starchy staple than do other groups. Furthermore, a much larger proportion of the diet apparently consists of foods other than starchy staples. Slightly more than one-third of the Tsembaga diet by weight, 34.9%, is composed of leaves, stems, and fruits other than banana. Sugar cane (which will be included in later calculations of Tsembaga intake) has been excluded for comparison since it is not included in the reports from some of the communities in which it may be present. If it were included here, the proportion of items other than starchy staples in the Tsembaga diet would approach 50%. In the five other communities in which the Tsembaga are compared, the percentage of non-starchy items in the diet varies from 15.3% to 25.7%. In further contrast to the others, the Tsembaga diet includes an appreciable amount of marita pandanus, the edible portion of which contains 14.0% fat, according to Hipsley and Kirk (1965:38). The nutritional consequences of the greater variety found in the Tsembaga diet will be discussed later.[2]

Immanuel Kant
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View

[f] Taste

67. TASTE, in the proper sense of the word, is as has already been stated above, the property of an organ (the tongue, the palate, and the gullet) to be specifically affected by certain dissolved matter in food and drink. According to its use it is to be understood either as a differentiating taste alone or, at the same time, as a pleasant taste (for example, whether something is sweet or bitter, or whether what is tasted [sweet or bitter] is pleasant). Distinguishing taste can provide universal agreement as to how certain things are to be labeled, but pleasant taste can never yield a universally valid judgment: namely that sometime (for example, something bitter) which is pleasant to me will also be pleasant to everybody. The reason for this is clear because neither pleasure not displeasure belong to the cognitive faculty concerning objects; they are rather determinations of the subject which, therefore, cannot be attributed to external objects...

Taste is, therefore, a faculty of the social judgement of external objects within the imagination. Here the mind feels its freedom in the play of images (therefore of sensibility), since sociability with other people presupposes freedom; and this feeling is pleasure. But the universal validity of this pleasure for everyone, whereby discrimination (of the beautiful) with taste is distinguished from discrimination through mere sense perception (of what is subjectively pleasing), that is, of what is agreeable, contains the concept of a law within itself, because only in accordance with this law can the validity of satisfaction be universal for the person who makes the judgement...[3]

[1] Claude Lévi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), 1.
[2] Roy Rappaport, Pigs for the Ancestors (Long Grove IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1984), 72-73.
[3] Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978), 141-143.


Bibliography
Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View [translated by Victor Lyle Dowdell]. Carbondale IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. The Raw and the Cooked [Translated by John and Doreen Weightman]. New York: Harper and Row, 1969.

Rappaport, Roy A. Pigs for the Ancestors: Ritual in the Ecology of a New Guinea People. Long Grove IL: Waveland Press, Inc., 1984. 

NEXT
Wednesday, June 29th
Sleep Desk

George wants some shut-eye at work. We'll examine social regulations such as "working during the day" and other such concepts next week on Argonauts of the Seinfeldian Specific.

Middles (2)—The Tempest

Click here for an introduction to Round and Square's theme of "Middles."

[a] Tempest  RF

Middles are "impossible," so let's just dive right into the tempest. There is nothing earth-shaking for today's entry—just one of the best plays ever written, by a British social anthropologist named WIlliam Shakespeare (1564-1616). You might have heard of him.

I assign The Tempest each time I teach introductory anthropology, and that is one of the reasons I am highlighting it today. Although this is not particularly new in anthropological discussions, it deserves a hearty restatement every few weeks: anthropology is richly connected (and this is quite often a sorry aspect of its history) with the colonial experience, in all of its messy and troubling corners. Colonial fascination even worked its way into dramas written by people who rarely went abroad, as we shall see. 

The Tempest, for those who are new to it, is a fascinating exploration of "otherness" in many of its manifestations. For those of you who are not new to it, this stuff never gets old. It has often been noted that the play provides an exhilarating (and often troubling) "reading" of political life and utopian/dystopian aspirations held by the island dwellers. Indeed. It has less often been commented that The Tempest shows the little seedlings of several social groups as they sprout up all around the island. It will also not be lost on even the casual reader that the scent of colonialism and exotic otherness is already in the air. Both Stephano and Trinculo (below) mull over the possibilities of bringing the wonder that is Caliban back to "civilization." Shakespeare has a particularly biting wit on this theme, as you shall see.

This segment from the "middle" of The Tempest is one of my favorites, and shows precisely the formation of a tiny little society on a remote corner of an even more remote island. We have a peculiar (pre-Enlightenment) picture of natural man in the (dis)figure of Caliban. When they encounter him, he is cursing Prospero, the undisputed ruler of the island, who makes Caliban haul wood and do menial chores. We may well explore more of The Tempest in future posts, including the "back story" about Caliban and Prospero. If you have read (or are tempted to read) the whole play—and I hope that you do—notice the way that many of the scenes are made up of social triads. There are often (not always, but often) three people sharing, debating, and engaging a rich social dynamic. That is certainly the case as we view the "birth" of a peculiar little society after a fierce set of thunderstorms.

[b] Drifters  RF

There are so many evocative lines here that it would take many further posts to analyze them all. Take the time to read the whole scene. If you have done so before, it will be like having coffee with an old friend. If you have not, this is the time to examine one of the great works in the history of anthropology. 

It's worth watching, but I still think that a good read is best—your choice.

The Tempest II, ii

The Tempest II, ii [1]

Another part of the island.

Enter CALIBAN with a burden of wood. A noise of thunder heard.

CALIBAN
All the infections that the sun sucks up
From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall and make him
By inchmeal a disease! His spirits hear me,                                  3
And yet I needs must curse. But they'll nor pinch,                         4
Fright me with urchin-shows, pitch me i' th' mire,                          5
Nor lead me, like a firebrand, in the dark                                       6
Out of my way, unless he bid 'em; but
For every trifle are they set upon me;
Sometime like apes that mow and chatter at me                           9
And after bite me; then like hedgehogs which
Lie tumbling in my barefoot way and mount
Their pricks at my footfall; sometime am I
All wound with adders, who with cloven tongues
Do hiss me into madness.                                             Enter TRINCULO                     

Lo, now, lo!
Here comes a spirit of his, and to torment me
For bringing wood in slowly. I'll fall flat.
Perchance he will not mind me. 

TRINCULO Here's neither bush nor shrub, to bear off any          18

weather at all, and another storm brewing: I hear it sing 

i' th' wind. Yond same black cloud, yond huge one, 

looks like a foul bombard that would shed his liquor.                    21

If it should thunder as it did before, I know not where 

to hide my head. Yond same cloud cannot choose but 

fall by pailfuls. What have we here? a man or a fish? 

dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient 

and fishlike smell; a kind of not of the newest poor-John.             26

A strange fish! Were I in England now, as once I was, 

and had but this fish painted, not a holiday fool there but             28

would give a piece of silver. There would this monster 

make a man: any strange beast there makes a man. When         30

they will not give a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they                  31

will lazy out ten to see a dead Indian. Legged like a man!

and his fins like arms! Warm o' my troth! I do now let 

loose my opinion, hold it no longer: this is no fish, but 

an islander, that hath lately suffered by a thunderbolt.

[Thunder.] Alas, the storm is come again! my best way          

is to creep under his gaberdine: there is no other shelter            37

hereabout. Misery acquaints a man with strange bed-

fellows. I will here shroud till the dregs of the storm be 

past.

[Creeps under Caliban's garment.]

Enter STEPHANO, singing [with a bottle in his hand].

STEPHANO             I shall no more to sea, to sea,
                                      Here shall I die ashore—
This is a very scurvy tune to sing at a man's funeral. 

Well, here's my comfort.

         Drinks

Sings

The master, the swabber, the boatswain and I,
     The gunner and his mate,
Loved Mall, Meg and Marian and Margery,
     But none of us cared for Kate,
     For she had a tongue with a tang,
     Would cry to a sailor, 'Go hang!'                                             50
 She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch;
Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch.
     Then to sea, boys, and let her go hang!
 

This is a scurvy tune too: but here's my comfort.

Drinks

CALIBAN Do not torment me. O!

STEPHANO What's the matter? Have we devils here? Do 

you put tricks upon's with savages and men of Inde, ha? 

I have not scaped drowning to be afeard now of your
four legs; for it hath been said, 'As proper a man as ever 

went on four legs cannot make him give ground'; and                 60

it shall be said so again while Stephano breathes at 

nostrils.

CALIBAN The spirit torments me. O!

STEPHANO This is some monster of the isle, with four 

legs, who hath got, as I take it, an ague. Where the devil
should he learn our language? I will give him some
relief, if it be but for that. If I can recover him, and keep 

him tame and get to Naples with him, he's a present 

for any emperor that ever trod on neat's leather.                          69

CALIBAN Do not torment me, prithee; I'll bring my 

wood home faster.

STEPHANO He's in his fit now and does not talk after the
wisest. He shall taste of my bottle: if he have never 

drunk wine afore will go near to remove his fit. If I 

can recover him and keep him tame, I will not take too               75

much for him; he shall pay for him that hath him, and 

that soundly.

CALIBAN Thou dost me yet but little hurt.

Thou wilt anon; I know it by thy trembling.                                   79

Now Prosper works upon thee. 
STEPHANO Come on your ways: open your mouth: here 

is that which will give language to you, cat. Open your                82  
mouth. This will shake your shaking, I can tell you, and 

that soundly [Gives Caliban drink.] You cannot tell 

who's your friend. Open your chaps again.                                   85

TRINCULO I should know that voice: it should be—but 

he is drowned; and these are devils. O, defend me!

STEPHANO Four legs and two voices: a most delicate 

monster! His forward voice now is to speak well of his
friend; his backward voice is to utter foul speeches and 

to detract. If all the wine in my bottle will recover him, 

I will help his ague. Come. [Gives drink.] Amen! I will 

pour some in thy other mouth.

TRINCULO Stephano!

STEPHANO Doth thy other mouth call me? Mercy, 

mercy! This is a devil, and no monster. I will leave 

him; I have no long spoon.                                                            97

TRINCULO Stephano! If thou beest Stephano, touch me and
speak to me: for I am Trinculo—be not afeard—thy
good friend Trinculo.

STEPHANO

If thou beest Trinculo, come forth. I'll pull thee
by the lesser legs. If any be Trinculo's legs, these 

are they. [Draws him out from under Caliban's garment.] 

Thou art very Trinculo indeed! How cam'st thou to be 

the siege of this mooncalf? Can he vent Trinculos?                    105

TRINCULO I took him to be killed with a thunder-stroke. 

But art thou not drowned, Stephano? I hope now thou 

art not drowned. Is the storm overblown? I hid me
under the dead mooncalf's gaberdine for fear of the
storm. And art thou living, Stephano? O Stephano,
two Neapolitans 'scaped!

STEPHANO Prithee, do not turn me about; my stomach is 

not constant.

CALIBAN [Aside] 

These be fine things, an if they be not sprites.                             114
That's a brave god and bears celestial liquor.
I will kneel to him.

STEPHANO How didst thou 'scape? How camest thou 

hither? Swear by this bottle how thou camest hither. I
escaped upon a butt of sack which the sailors heaved 

o'erboard, by this bottle, which I made of the bark of a 

tree with mine own hands since I was cast ashore.

CALIBAN I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true subject,

for the liquor is not earthly.

STEPHANO Here! Swear then how thou escapedst.

TRINCULO Swum ashore, man, like a duck. I can swim 

like a duck, I'll be sworn.

STEPHANO Here, kiss the book. [Gives him drink.] Though       127

thou canst swim like a duck, thou art made like a goose.            128

TRINCULO O Stephano, hast any more of this?

STEPHANO The whole butt, man: my cellar is in a rock 

by th' sea-side where my wine is hid. How now, moon-

calf? How does thine ague?

CALIBAN Hast thou not dropped from heaven?

STEPHANO Out o' th' moon, I do assure thee. I was the 

Man i' th' Moon when time was.                                                   135         

CALIBAN 

I have seen thee in her and I do adore thee.
My mistress showed me thee and thy dog, and thy bush.

STEPHANO Come, swear to that; kiss the book. I will 

furnish it anon with new contents. Swear.

TRINCULO By this good light, this is a very shallow monster! 

I afeard of him! A very weak monster! The Man i'
th' moon? A most poor credulous monster!— Well
drawn, monster, in good sooth!

CALIBAN I'll show thee every fertile inch o' th' island;
And I will kiss thy foot. I prithee, be my god.

TRINCULO By this light, a most perfidious and drunken
monster! when 's god's asleep, he'll rob his bottle.

CALIBAN I'll kiss thy foot. I'll swear myself thy subject.

STEPHANO Come on then. Down, and swear!

TRINCULO I shall laugh myself to death at this puppy-               150

headed monster. A most scurvy monster! I could find 

in my heart to beat him—

STEPHANO Come, kiss.

TRINCULO But that the poor monster  's in drink. An 

abominable monster!

CALIBAN 
I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries;
I'll fish for thee and get thee wood enough.
A plague upon the tyrant that I serve!
I'll bear him no more sticks, but follow thee,
Thou wondrous man.

TRINCULO A most ridiculous monster, to make a wonder 

of a poor drunkard!

CALIBAN

I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow;                             163

And I with my long nails will dig thee pignuts,                              164
Show thee a jay's nest and instruct thee how
To snare the nimble marmoset; I'll bring thee
To clustering filberts and sometimes I'll get thee
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me?                  168

STEPHANO I prithee now, lead the way without any more
talking. Trinculo, the King and all our company else 

being drowned, we will inherit here. Here, bear my                     171

bottle. Fellow Trinculo, we'll fill him by and by again.                   172

Caliban sings drunkenly 
CALIBAN Farewell master; farewell, farewell!

TRINCULO A howling monster! a drunken monster!

CALIBAN

          No more dams I'll make for fish
             Nor fetch in firing
             At requiring;
          Nor scrape trencher, nor wash dish                                    178
          'Ban, 'Ban, Ca—Caliban
          Has a new master: get a new man.
Freedom, high-day! high-day, freedom! freedom,
high-day, freedom!

STEPHANO O brave monster! Lead the way.

Exeunt

                             [Line notes from The Pelican Shakespeare]

II, ii A place on the island near Prospero's cell.  3 By inchmeal inch by inch   4 nor neither

5 urchin-shows apparitions in the form of hedgehogs  6 like a firebrand in the

form of a will-o'-the-wisp  9 mow makes faces   18 bear off ward off    

21 bombard leather bottle;  his its  26 poor-John dried hake

28 painted i.e. on a signboard outside a booth at a fair   30 make a man (also

with the sense of 'make a man's fortune')  31 doit small coin  37 gaberdine cloak

69 neat's leather cowhide  75-76 not take too much i.e. take all I can get   

79 anon soon  82 cat (alluding the the proverb 'Liquor can make a cat talk')  85 chaps jaws

97 spoon (alluding to the proverb 'He who sups with the devil must have a long spoon')

105 siege excrement; mooncalf monstrosity  114 an if if

127 book i.e. bottle  128 like a goose i.e. with a long neck   

135 when time was once upon a time  163 crabs crab apples  164 pignuts peanuts   

168 scamels (unexplained, but clearly either a shellfish or rock-nesting bird; perhaps 

a misprint for 'seamels,' sea mews)  171 inherit take possession

172 by and by soon  178 trenchering trenchers, wooden plates

[1] Adapted from Northrop Frye, ed, The Pelican Shakespeare (New York: Penguin Books, 1959), 65-71.

Bibliography

Northrop Frye, ed. The Pelican Shakespeare. New York: Penguin Books, 1959.