Rothenberg presents an excerpt from Tristes Tropiques (1955) literally “Sad Tropics”, published in French and translated by John Russell, pp. 126-27.

Durkheim

Rimbaud "Sonnet des voyelles" “but the relation which unites one phenomenon to another and comprises a limited gamut of possibilities. These correspondences offer the scholar an entirely new distinction between smells in terms of light and dark” (Lévi-Strauss 58).

Essential Question: Do you view life through a qualitative or quantitative lens?

A line from the passage that resonates with me is the following: “It's a long time since we ceased to worship the sun, and with our Euclidean turn of mind we jib at the notion of space as qualitative” (Lévi-Strauss 58).

In primitive times people considered natural phenomena – such as sunrise, sunset, and lightening, but in this case, the sun – as central to their spiritual and social lives; as a result, they had a deeper, more symbolic connection to the natural world than we do today. Nature was appreciated for its holistic and spiritual significance, connecting to the human experience in a personal and meaningful way. Hence, people viewed nature through a qualitative lense: it was experienced through the senses and appreciated through human interaction. Humans did not question the constructs of nature beyond that of the human experience. However, with an “Euclidean turn of mind,” a shift in thinking occurred, changing how humans perceive their environment. The allusion to “Euclidean mind” refers to a form of geometry based on quantifiable, logical principles, which led to a more detached, analytical way of relating to the world. The development of Western scientific thought tends to dissect the world into discrete, measurable elements rather than understanding it as a complex, interrelated whole.

As a result of the shift in thinking, humans now question their world, searching for answers about how elements function in nature. Lévi-Strauss suggests that modern Western thought struggles to understand and appreciate the natural world as something qualitative – something subjective, emotional, and symbolic. Instead, humans tend to view the natural environment as simply a physical, geometric entity to be measured and understood in quantitative terms. Lévi-Strauss laments the loss of a deeper connection to the world's complexities and suggests that we have grown uncomfortable with ways of thinking that are not strictly logical or measurable. Humans do not have control over certain things, such as astronomy and meteorology. The weather impacts the world independently of human influence, affecting all regions globally.

Lévi-Strauss, Claude. “from Tristes Tropiques.”Symposium of the Whole: A Range of Discourse Toward and Ethnopoetics. edited by Jerome Rothenberg and Diane Rothenberg, University of California Press, 1983, pp. 57-59.

Wilson, Edmund. “Axel and Rimbaud”. Axel's Castle, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004 pp. 205-236.