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In the early 70s, I read with immense enthusiasm his The
Conquerors, Man’s Fate, Days of Hope, The
Walnut Trees of Altenburg and all provided me close
encounters with the history of our times. And like the Greek
tragedy, I concluded that Malraux was not concerned with the
state machinery and its politics, but mainly with the rise and
fall of Man.
As a philosopher,
he was one with Sartre or Camus, who consider the nobility of
Man as far supreme to any other quality. When we consider
Andr`E9 Malraux in the light of this tale in the first person,
we are enticed, more often than not, to recall his fervent
contribution to all the great causes of our century, his active
role as the Minister of Culture alongside General de Gaulle,
between 1958 and 1969, and also the last journey, towards the
end of his life, when he travelled to Bangladesh confounded by
war as the envoy and forerunner of a "kindred spirit"
that did not yet bear the pseudo nomenclature of
"humanitarian aid."
For over 50 years
Malraux was closely caught up in French intellectual life, as
philosopher, statesman, novelist, and soldier. He fought for
freedom throughout his life: against French colonialism in
Indochina, fascism in Spain and Nazism in Germany. He explored
Khmer Indochina in the early twenties and met many Communist
revolutionaries in China, in 1925. In the 30s, he censured Nazi
despotism in Days of Contempt and violently criticised
Spain’s fascism in Days of Hope (1937). His political
convictions and sincere activism lead him to fight alongside
Spanish Republicans during the Civil War.
The Antimemoirs
is not only a warm memoir, but a meticulous commentary on
his travels around the world, meeting world leaders, as well as
an investigation of art that brings out its worth in
contemporary times. The existentialist view that the individual
can give significance to his life through dedication to a cause
finds expression here. As a writer he denounced the misery of
Man and exalted his greatness. But he was also an aesthete and
art critic, and introduced the French public to the wealth of
civilisations and cultures outside Europe.
When Picasso died
on April 8, 1973, in Mougins, South of France, Malraux, his
close friend, was invited by Picasso’s widow, Jacqueline Roque,
to have a last look at his collection and write on her husband’s
art. It is here that, surrounded by Picasso’s powerful last
paintings "painted face to face with death" and his
art collection destined for the Louvre, Malraux reminisced his
friend’s defiant life and the transmutation of his art. It was
a defence of modernism where Malraux examines African art that
influenced Picasso so deeply. Rather than trying to establish
its exact meaning, he looks at it through the master’s
discovery and appropriation of it.
In viewing him as
an art critic, we sometimes overlook him as a novelist and
storyteller. His work reflects the romanticism of lonely
struggles "blending with the exaltation, seemingly
paradoxical at first, of group solidarity, all couched in a
breathless, staccato style interspersed with quick-fire
dialogue." His quest for the aesthetic, his painstaking
dedication at repeatedly returning to the bas-reliefs on the
Khmer temples at Angkor, Cambodia, are a tribute to his stature
as an art critic and historian.
The Museum Without
Walls (1952-54) is an
example of a deep-seated desire to bring about a subtle
juxtaposition of the primitive and the modern, of the noble and
the primitive. His attraction for the Asiatic broadened the Museum
Without Walls: the Japanese art from the Dark Ages, Sumerian
art, pre-Columbian and Buddhist sculpture and the art of India,
Mexico and Iran transcends time and space, and is a struggle and
defence against war and death: "the real Museum is the
presence, in life, of what ought to belong to death." His
major work on art criticism The Voice of Silence elaborates
his theory that art is "humanity’s only permanent
expression of the will to triumph over fate."
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