410
PARTISAN REVIEW
doesn't understand - he is King Mark [Isolde's cuckolded '
husband].
MD:
He is overwhelmed by the events.
MT:
Exactly .
MD:
How do you see the literary hero of the twentieth century?
MT:
He doesn't really interest me enormously . I'm interested in the
mythological hero . There is a big difference. The mythological
hero exceeds the work and is more famous than his author. Don
Juan, for example, is more famous than Tirso da Molina; Robin–
son Crusoe is more famous than Daniel Defoe, whereas the
literary hero remains a prisoner of the work . That is the case of
Balzac's Vautrin [in
Le Pere Goriot]
or Proust's Charlus [in
Remem–
brance
of
Things Past].
The hero must not dominate the literary
work, but he must have an organic place; in the last analysis, I
conceive of the novel as a hero . My novel develops, it resembles a
tree, and I am nothing but the gardener; I water it; I take care of
it ; I hope that it will grow - and it grows a little bit outside of me .
For example, the three Magi who had been sleeping for years in
my drawer suddenly sprang to life. I can explain it a little, but in
the end, it is still bizarre. I'm explaining it after the fact - you
know?
MD:
Was your conception of myth influenced by the structuralism
of Levi-Strauss?
MT:
Yes , I was a student of Levi-Strauss's .
MD:
At the College de France?
MT:
No, at the Museum of Man . I was at the Museum of Man
during the years 1950-1952 and I had Levi-Strauss as a professor.
MD:
Did you study the works of the great ethnologists, for example,
Boas, Malinowski , and Durkheim?
MT:
As for Malinowski , yes . When I was at the Museum of Man ,
Levi-Strauss told me, "Listen, since you read German, there is a
gentleman whose name is Guisinde, a German who has devoted
his whole life to a tribe of Fuegians, the Selknams . You are going
to study that and then give an oral report about it." Consequently,
I became the "Selknam man ." Malinowski is a marvel. The Tro–
briand Islands - an archipelago - are fabulous. The Trobrianders
are extraordinary. They do not make the connection between in–
tercourse and the birth of a child - that's wonderful. Nine months
separate the two events - there is no relationship between them. It
is the rain that makes the woman fertile . The gentleman who
sleeps with her is not the father , but the uncle - he's a lover and a
