French doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, explorer, art-theorist and critic
Victor Segalen (14 January 1878 – 21 May 1919) was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic.
He was born in Brest. He studied medicine and graduated at the Navy School of medicine ('Santé Navale') in Bordeaux. He traveled and lived in Polynesia (1903–1905) and China (1909–1914 and 1917). He died by accident in a forest in Huelgoat, Northern Brittany, France ("under mysterious circumstances") and reputedly with an open copy of Hamlet by his side.
Legacy
In 1934, the French state inscribed his name on the walls of the Panthéon because of his sacrifice for his country during World War I.[1]
Victor Segalen married on June 2, 1905 in Brest Yvonne Hébert (1884-1963), with whom he had three children: Yvon (1906), Annie (1912) and Ronan (1913).
Some western scholars of Chinese art, starting with Victor Segalen, use the word "chimera" generically to refer to winged leonine or mixed species quadrupeds, such as bixie, tianlu, and even qilin.
Works
L'observation médicale chez les écrivains naturalistes, thesis, Bordeaux, 1902 (document électronique).
Les Synesthésies et l'école symboliste, 1902.
Vers les sinistrés, 1903.
Gauguin dans son dernier décor, 1904.
Le Double Rimbaud, 1906.
Dans un monde sonore, 1907.
Voix mortes : musique maori, 1907.
Les Immémoriaux (under the pseudonym Max Anély), 1907.
Stèles, 1912 ; new edition, presented by Simon Leys, Éditions de la Différence, coll. " Orphée ", Paris, 1989. Read online.
Charles Forsdick: Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Wang Tao and Denis Thouard, "Making New Classics: The Archaeology of Luo Zhenyu and Victor Segalen", in S. Humphreys and R. Wagner (eds), Modernity's Classics. Transcultural Research – Heidelberg Studies on Asia and Europe in a Global Context (Springer: Berlin, Heidelberg, 2013)
References
^See Fiche officielle on the site memoiredeshommes.sga.defense.gouv.fr.
^La page-titre de l'édition originale de "Peintures".
External links
Media related to Victor Segalen at Wikimedia Commons
French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Auteur:Victor Segalen
French Wikiquote has quotations related to: Victor Segalen