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Sport 26: Autumn 2001

XV Argonauts of the Western Pacific

page 18

XV Argonauts of the Western Pacific

1
Noa Noa

I was sad; shall I manage to recover
any trace of the past, so remote, so
mysterious?

The present has nothing to say to me:
to get back to the ancient hearth, to revive the fire
in the midst of all these ashes.

2
Ethnology is in a sadly
ludicrous, not to say tragic,
position. At the very moment
when it begins to put its workshop in order,
to forge its proper tools,
to start, ready for work,
on its appointed task,
the material of its study
melts away.

Just now, when
the aims and methods
of the scientific field
ethnology
have taken shape,
when men
fully trained for the work
have begun to travel
into savage countries
and study their inhabitants—these die away
under our very eyes.

page 19

3
Eve
after the fall, still able to walk naked without shame,
preserving her animal beauty
as at the first day.

Like Eve's her body is still that of an animal—
but her head has progressed, her mind developed subtlety; love
has imprinted an ironical smile upon her lips.