Victor Segalen

Victor Segalen (January 14, 1878 - May 21, 1919) was a French naval doctor, ethnographer, archeologist, writer, poet, explorer, art-theorist, linguist and literary critic.

He was born in Brest. He studied naval medicine 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, France ('under mysterious circumstances' and reputedly with an open copy of "Hamlet" by his side).

He gave his name to the Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2 University of literature and social sciences in Brest.

Works include

* "A dreuz an Arvor" (1899)
* "L'observation médicale chez les écrivains naturalistes" (Thesis, Bordeaux, 1901)
* "Les Immémoriaux" (under the pseudonym Max Anély) (1907)
* "Stèles" (prose poems, 1912)
* "Peintures" (1916)Posthumous publications:
* "Orphée-Roi" (1921)
* "René Leys" (1922)
* "Mission archéologique en Chine" (in collaboration with Gilbert de Voisins and Jean Lartigue) (1923-1924)
* "Équipée. De Pékin aux marches thibétaines" (1929)
* "Voyage au pays du réel" (1929)
* "Lettres de Chine" (1967)
* "La Grande Statuaire chinoise" (1972)
* "Journal des îles" (1978)
* " Le Fils du ciel : chronique des jours souverains" (1985)

Works about Segalen

* Henry Bouillier: "Victor Segalen" (Mercure de France, 1961)
* Gilles Manceron: "Segalen"
* Charles Forsdick: "Victor Segalen and the Aesthetics of Diversity" (Oxford University Press, 2000)

External links

* [http://www.steles.org/ Stèles 古今碑錄] (complete French text and online book of Chinese sources)
* [http://victor.segalen.free.fr/ Website about Victor Segalen] (in French)
* [http://www.scd.univ-paris3.fr/Bibliogr/V_segale.htm Bibliography on Victor Segalen] (in French)