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This brief and charming volume is eminently readable. Indeed, one feels as if one had entered into a conversation with the author, his hairdresser, Monsieur C***, his anonymous shampouineuse, the person-on-the-street, who "can quote La Fontaine [more often than]... Proust, or Saint-Simon, or D'Urfé or anybody else..." (11). One feels as if one can hear the concierge's children noisily exerting themselves in the courtyard, rue de Charonne, even as the author discusses "silence" in La Fontaine and Lévi-Strauss. The author first muses on the rare occasions on which Lévi-Strauss refers to La Fontaine. These are made to seem even more remarkable as references and quotations from La Fontaine surround De Ley from every context, from media to contemporary conversation. Despite this observation, De Ley decides that Lévi-Strauss, like most French, knew La Fontaine well. Furthermore, La Fontaine and Lévi-Strauss share a love of mythology, one myth being termed by Lévi-Strauss a "fable primitive" (14). The fable writer and the anthropologist draw parallels between the animal kingdom and the human world. La Fontaine's naïve observations of nature are similar to Lévi-Strauss's "skepticism about zoological information in mythic thought" (15). Both authors work on dual vertical/horizontal axes. This is demonstrated by comparing La Fontaine's fable, "L'aigle et l'escarbot," to those on the same topic by Aesop and Benserade. Both authors employ binary oppositions: inside/outside, cries/silence, nature and culture.
The language employed by De Ley is very lively. La Fontaine is seen as the "Woody Allen" of the seventeenth century (16). Moreover, De Ley wonders "if the founder of structural anthropology is not, in reality someone more like La Fontaine" [than Rousseau] (101). Revenge is "the even Steven philosophy" (69), and "just as some modern fractured fables may replace Little Red riding Hood's wolf, so La Fontaine replaces Guéroult's lions simple véhémence with an environment of specifically-institutionalized hypocrisy" (97). At the conclusion of the somewhat non-conclusive conclusion, De Ley suggests that "The Mythologies continue through many hundreds of pages. La Fontaine seems everywhere to prefer short works, suggesting that like this one, they should, 'loin d'épuiser une matiére ... [n'en] prendre que la fleur'" (105).
Perhaps this reviewer should opt as well for brevity and conclude that De Ley's understanding of Lévi-Strauss and La Fontaine is profound. His book only scratches the surface of this obvious erudition. His book opens many interesting avenues of analysis and comparison. Each chapter could likely become the topic of a longer work in itself. One could certainly debate the selection of points, of fables, of comparisons. One could critique the necessary superficiality of development. But, in a conversation, such as the one between Lui et Moi, in Diderot's Neveu de Rameau, the volatility and diversity constitute part of the charm and inherent genius. In this post conversation review, we submit that, while cries and silence alternatively represent strength and weakness, (as demonstrated in Chapter Five), silence, like the majestic lion of fable, myth and anthropological study, reigns supreme in its obedience to the law of brevity.
Roseann Runte
Victoria University