A Diary in the Strictest Sense of the Term

Bronislaw Malinowski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780415330565
• eBook ISBN: 9781136547881
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The volume presents the diary of one of the great anthropologists at a crucial time in his career. Malinowski's major works grew out of his findings on field trips to New Guinea and North Melanesia from 1914-1918. His journals cover a considerable part of that period of pioneer research.
The diary contains observations of native life and customs and vivid descriptions of landscapes. Many entries reveal his approach to his work and the sources of his thought. In his introduction, Raymond Firth discusses the significance of the notebooks which formed the basis for this volume.
First published in 1967.

A DIARY IN THE
STRICT SENSE OF
THE TERM by Bronislaw
Malinowski

PREFACE BY VALETTA MALINOWSKA

INTRODUCTION BY RAYMOND FIRTH

TRANSLATED BY NORBERT GUTERMAN

INDEX OF NATIVE TERMS BY MARIO BICK

ROUTLEDGE & KEGAN PAUL

LONDON

First published in Great Britain in 1967
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd.
Broadway House
68-74. Carter Lane
London, E.C. 4

Printed in the United States of America

© 1967 Valetta Malinowska

No part of this booh may be reproduced
in any form without permission from
the publisher, except for the quotation of
brief passages in criticism

Contents

PREFACE: Valetta Malinowska

INTRODUCTION: Raymond Firth

NOTE

A DIARY IN THE STRICT SENSE OF THE TERM

Part One: 1914-1915

Part Two: 1917-1918

AN INDEX OF NATIVE TERMS: Mario Bich

ILLUSTRATIONS

Facsimile

Eastern New Guinea and Adjacent Islands, end paper

Mailu Island and Adjacent Coast of Papua

The Kula District

Trobriand Islands

Preface

Bronislaw Malinowski was already in the United States when the Second World War broke out, and he accepted what was at first a temporary, and later a permanent post, as Professor of Anthropology at Yale University. Naturally he needed a considerable amount of the manuscripts, notes, and books which he had left at the London School of Economics on leaving for the United States for his sabbatical leave at the end of 1938; and after accepting the Yale appointment he made a careful selection of these, to be sent to him at New Haven, while the greater part of his books and papers were stored away in the London School of Economics for the duration of the war. In New Haven, part of this material was kept at his home, and the rest was kept in his office at the Yale Graduate School.

In May 1942, Malinowski died suddenly of an entirely unpredicted heart attack. One of the first people to come to New Haven on hearing the bad news was Dr. Feliks Gross, friend and former student of Malinowski’s, who offered to help in the special task of sorting and ordering Malinowski’s books and papers, beginning with the contents of the Graduate School office. While this work was going on, Dr. Gross suddenly telephoned me from that office, asking if I knew of the existence of a smallish thick black notebook which he had just found, containing a diary of Bronislaw Malinowski, written almost entirely in Polish in his handwriting. Dr. Gross brought the notebook straight over to me and translated a few entries chosen at random which referred to his field work in Southern New Guinea. Malinowski had never mentioned to me the existence of this diary; I kept it carefully and took it with me to Mexico when I moved there permanently in 1946.

Sometime after the end of the war, Malinowski’s books and papers were taken from their storage place in the London School of Economics, and about 1949 this considerable mass of manuscripts, notes, and books was sent to me in Mexico; among these I found two envelopes containing notebooks, one marked “Early Polish Diary” and the other “Diaries.” All of these small notebooks were written in Polish. I put these with the first notebook found at Yale, with the idea of having them translated and possibly published at some later date.

The diaries remained, therefore, locked away until the end of 1960, when I made a visit to New York. There I spoke of the diaries to one of Malinowski’s publishers; and we decided on their publication. Mr. Norbert Guterman was kind enough to undertake the translation from Polish, which he rendered in a very direct manner. In correcting the proofs I have tried to assure the closest possible adherence to Malinowski’s personal use of English words and phrasing, in which language in the latter part of his life he expressed himself with such freedom. A few extremely intimate observations have been omitted, the omissions being indicated by dots. The early Polish diary has not been included because it antedates Malinowski’s anthropological career.

I have always felt a desire—even a need—to know something of the life and personality of any painter, writer, musician, or scientist whose work has profoundly interested or moved me. I feel that the psychological and emotional light shed by diaries, letters, and autobiographies not only give one a fresh insight into the personality of the man who wrote certain books, developed a certain theory, or composed certain symphonies; but that through this knowledge of that man as he lived and felt, one is often brought into a closer contact and a greater comprehension of his work. When there exists, therefore, the diary or autobiography of an outstanding personality, I feel that these “data” regarding his daily and inner life and his thoughts should be published, with the deliberate aim of revealing that personality, and linking up this knowledge with the work left behind.

I know that some people will think that a diary is of a basically private nature and that it should not be published; and those who hold this point of view will probably be severely critical of my decision to publish my husband’s diaries. But after seriously weighing the matter, I reached the conclusion that it is of greater importance to give to the present and future students and readers of Malinowski’s anthropological writings this direct insight into his inner personality, and his way of living and thinking during the period of his most important work in the field, rather than to leave these brief diaries shut away in an archive. I am, therefore, solely responsible for the decision to publish this book.

VALETTA MALINOWSKA

Mexico

May 1966

Introduction^*

^* I am grateful to Audrey Richards and Phyllis Kaberry, friends of Malinowski, and to Józefa Stuart, his eldest daughter, for advice on this Introduction. They have, of course, no responsibility for the opinions expressed here.

This diary by Bronislaw Malinowski covers only a very brief period of his life, from early September 1914 to the beginning of August 1915, and from the end of October 1917 to mid-July 1918—about nineteen months in all. It was written in Polish, as a private document, and was never intended for publication. What then is its significance? Malinowski was a great social scientist, one of the founders of modern social anthropology, and a thinker who tried to relate his generalizations about human nature and human society to the issues of the world around him. The diary refers to that very critical period of his career when, having equipped himself theoretically for empirical studies, he began to carry out field research in New Guinea. The first section covers his apprenticeship period among the Mailu; the second, after an unfortunate gap of two years, covers most of his last year in the Trobriands. Nowadays it is recognized that while the personality of a scientist may not necessarily have a direct bearing upon his selection and treatment of problems, it must influence his work in other more subtle ways. Although chronologically very brief, and although giving no great amount of detail on professional matters, the diary does indicate vividly how Malinowski thought about issues and about people—or at least how he expressed himself when he was writing only for himself as audience.

Malinowski came to be in New Guinea through his association with British anthropology. What led him to this move so far from Poland, his native country, is not now fully known. But despite his often unkind comments upon England and English gentlemen, he seemed always to have a basic respect for the English intellectual tradition and the English way of life, and it seems likely that even at that early period of his career he was attracted to both. (Note his revealing description of Machiavelli in this diary as “very like me in many respects. An Englishman, with an entirely European mentality and European problems.”) He himself has told us how, when at the (Jagiellonian) University of Cracow, he had been ordered to abandon for a time his physical and chemical research because of ill-health, but was allowed to follow up a “favorite sideline of study” and so began to read Frazer’s The Golden Bough in the original English version—then three volumes only.^* Malinowski had obtained his Ph.D degree in 1908 in physics and mathematics, and after two years of advanced study at Leipzig he came to London and began his systematic studies of anthropology with C. G. Seligman and Edward Westermarck, at the London School of Economics and Political Science. He also made contact with A. C. Haddon and W. H. R. Rivers of Cambridge—all of whom are mentioned in the diary. His first major publication, a documentary study of The Family Among the Australian Aborigines, was published in London in 1913. Another book, in Polish, on Primitive Religion and Forms of Social Structure, completed early in 1914, was published in Poland in 1915. Influenced especially by Seligman and Haddon, Malinowski had prepared for field research in the Western Pacific, after an unsuccessful attempt by Seligman to get funds for him to work in the Sudan. Money for field research in anthropology was then much more difficult to obtain than it is nowadays. Malinowski was helped through scholarship funds and a grant from Robert Mond, the industrialist, obtained primarily through Seligman’s energies. An attachment as Secretary to R. R. Marett, who was Recorder of Section H—the Anthropology Section—of the British Association, which was meeting in Melbourne in 1914, gave him a free passage to Australia. Malinowski’s situation, with exiguous field resources, was complicated by the outbreak of war, since he was technically an Austrian national. But through the help of his friends, the Australian authorities proved themselves very understanding by allowing him to proceed to carry out his field research in New Guinea. Their liberality was also shown in supplementing his finances by a grant from the Home and Territories Department of the Commonwealth. After traveling to Port Moresby, Malinowski spent the greater part of six months in the Mailu area in the south of New Guinea. A brief visit to the Trobriand Islands off the northeast coast stimulated his interest more and he returned there on two subsequent expeditions of a year each, 1915-16 and 1917-18.

^* For this and other details see B. Malinowski, Myth in Primitive Psychology, London, 1926, pp. 5-6; also Raymond Firth in Man and Culture, London, 1957, pp. 2-7; Konstantin Symmons-Symonolewicz, “Bronislaw Malinowski: Formative Influences and Theoretical Evolution,” The Polish Review, Vol. IV, 1959, pp. 1-28, New York. A few further facts appear in “A Brief History (1913-1963)” of the Department of Anthropology of the London School of Economics, published in the departmental programme of courses, session 1963-64 and succeeding years.

One of Malinowski’s outstanding contributions to the development of social anthropology was the introduction of much more intensive and much more sophisticated methods of field research than had previously been current in his subject.^* The many references to his ethnographic work in his diary show his industry. The day after his arrival in New Guinea he had contacted an informant (Ahuia Ova), and the next day he began collecting field data on social structure. Only a fortnight later he noted two basic defects in his approach—he did not observe the people enough, and he did not speak their language. Both of these he tried hard to correct, and his endeavor was the clue to all his later work. The ethnography of the diary consists of references to subjects of talk or observation—taboo, burial rites, stone axes, black magic, dancing, procession with pigs—rather than development of ideas about field questions or theoretical problems. But an occasional note shows these behind the scene. “I asked about the division of land. It would have been useful to find out about the old system of division and to study today’s as a form of adaptation.” This is an early indication of an interest in social change which later developed into a major theme in his work. What the first diary does show is Malinowski’s keen desire to get his early material written up as soon as possible for publication, and in fact his report on The Natives of Mailu was ready before the middle of 1915.^† One is led to infer that it was in the course of writing up this material (“in fact as I worked out my notes”) that Malinowski came to perceive the significance of many points of field method which he later developed and incorporated into his treatment. The Trobriand account is more vivid—the choosing of the site for the tent, the meeting with old acquaintances, including the chief To’uluwa, and the man “who used to bring me eggs, dressed in a lady’s nightgown”; the making of village plan and census; the amassing of information about baloma and milamila, about gimwali and sagali. The references to the kula are fascinating to anyone who has followed his analysis of that complex system of exchange of shell tokens of social status, with its economic, political, and ritual overtones.

^* See Phyllis Kaberry, in Man and Culture, 1957, pp. 71-91.

^† See bibliographical reference in introduction to Index of Native Terms infra. Malinowski’s preface was dated June 9th, 1915, from Samarai, when he had already begun his second expedition to New Guinea. (He received the D.Sc. degree from the University of London in 1916 for this publication together with The Family Among the Australian Aborigines.)

What an anthropologist may miss particularly in the diary is any detailed account of how Malinowski arrived at the choice of his field problems, why he selected one topic rather than another for investigation at a particular point of time, and whether fresh evidence led him to reshape a hypothesis. Some evidence there is—as when he notes that reading Rivers drew his attention to “problems of the Rivers type,” presumably those of kinship. But on the whole such methodological issues are not pursued in this daily record of his thoughts. Of more interest are Malinowski’s occasional flashes of theoretical observation, such as his remarks on language as a system of social ideas, both instrument and objective creation or on history as “observation of facts in keeping with a certain theory.” These give sign of his concern with issues which were then relatively novel but later became part of the general talk of the academic market place. But if the diary does not dwell either on field methodology or on problems of anthropological theory, it does convey most keenly the reactions of a field anthropologist in an alien society. There he must live as recorder and analyst, but as such he cannot completely share the customs and values of the people, admire or dislike them as he may. The feeling of confinement, the obsessional longing to be back even if for the briefest while in one’s own cultural surroundings, the dejection and doubt...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term