Victor SEGALEN

Victor Segalen (1878-1919) is an unusual and remarkable literary figure, firstly for his artistic portrayal of the countries he visited and the peoples with whom he lived, yet even more as an interpreter of the process of cultural change due to the encounter of these societies with European colonial powers, and his indictment of Western cultural imperialism

In some ways he was before his time. Many of the themes he traverses, of cultural change and loss, incommensurateness of cultures, communication and language, have only recently received prominence in ethnography, social sciences and literary criticism.

V. Segalen was born in Brest. He studied at the Naval Medical School in Bordeaux. His first assignment was as ship's doctor on the Durance , based in Tahiti (1903-1904). Although enthralled by the freedom and joy of life in this Pacific paradise, he became aware of the degradation of Tahitian culture due to the European influence. On his return to France he wrote a novel, Les Immémoriaux , based on his first-hand experience and on extensive ethnographical documentation, evoking the "civilising" of Tahiti at the dawn of the 19th century as seen through the eyes of the Tahitian themselves.

Now seen as one of the earliest and most earnest ethnographic novels, this tale of a dying civilisation has become a classic in France. It is of great interest to all readers concerned with the fate of indigenous cultures as well as to specialists in the fields of anthropology, religions, the history of the Pacific and to amateurs of fine literature. An English translation has been published in 1995 under the title of A Lapse of Memory.

Between 1909 and 1917, Segalen made several prolonged trips to China on various official missions. He also undertook two important archaeological expeditions in central China with a friend, Gilbert de Voisins. During that time he wrote a number of texts now considered by many critics as masterpieces (among others a novel, René Leys , a collection of poems, Stèles ) and a large number of fragments and drafts for projects that were to remain unfinished.

Few of Segalen's writings were published within his lifetime, and those published were not widely read. It is only in these last three decades that Segalen's work has been attracting increasing critical attention. This eclipse is due in part to the premature death of the author, to the unfinished state of many of his manuscripts, but also, and paradoxically, to his uncompromising artistic integrity. Imbued from an early age with an intense literary ambition, he devoted all his energy to the pursuit of what was for him both an aesthetic and a moral ideal, the celebration of "diversity", which made him scorn literary fashions and mistrust modern civilisation. It is precisely for this reason, perhaps, that he has much to tell us -- about our own world and about our future. His fascinating exploration of the concept of otherness resonates deeply with present-day cultural problems.