Martin Hurcombe
250
total integration “dans ces bois fumants de commencement du
monde”.
4 Such an environment not only denies the validity of the individual, but also seeks to draw and to dissolve the latter into itself:
Quel acte humain, ici, avait un sens? Quelle volonté conservait sa force? Tout se
ramifiait, s’amollissait, s’efforçait de s’accorder à ce monde ignoble et attirant à la
fois comme le regard des idiots, et qui attaquait les nerfs avec la même puissance
abjecte que ces araignées suspendues entre les branches. (p. 67)
The same torpor and stasis mark the climate of Les Conquérants and La Condition humaine. While the descriptions of the
natural world in La Voie royale often emphasize the impenetrability of
the jungle, the way in which its muddy soil clings to the adventurer,
hindering his progress by weighing him down and drawing him in, Les
Conquérants and La Condition humaine suggest the same stasis and
resistance to action through periodic evocations of the climate in
which the individual acts.
5 Thus, the news of the general strike in Canton reaches the narrator’s steamer under the immobility of a leaden
sky: “Jusqu’à l’horizon, l’océan Indien immobile, glacé, laqué – sans
sillages. Le ciel plein de nuages fait peser sur nous une atmosphère de
cabine de bains, nous entoure d’un air saturé.”
6 In La Condition humaine nature’s permanence is contrasted directly with the finitude of
humanity as the condemned revolutionaries await their death, contemplating the shadows that shorten around them. Here the shortening of
shadows is no symbol of what awaits the novel’s heroes; there is no
pathetic fallacy at work. Rather, it is suggestive of a constant, cosmic
movement from which humanity is excluded:
Les ombres se raccourcissaient peu à peu: les regarder permettait de ne pas songer
aux hommes qui allaient mourir là. Elles se contractaient comme tous les jours avec
leur mouvement éternel, d’une sauvage majesté aujourd’hui parce qu’ils ne le
verraient plus jamais.
7
Political action is thus juxtaposed to the permanence and indifference
of the natural world; the relationship that exists between the characters
___________________________
4 André Malraux, La Voie royale (Paris: Livre de poche, 1987), pp. 66-67. First published in 1930.
5 This motif also appears in La Voire royale. See pp. 48-49, for example.
6 André Malraux, Les Conquérants (Paris: Livre de poche, 1995), p. 49.
7 André Malraux, La Condition humaine (Paris: Folio, 1989), p. 270.
250
total integration “dans ces bois fumants de commencement du
monde”.
4 Such an environment not only denies the validity of the individual, but also seeks to draw and to dissolve the latter into itself:
Quel acte humain, ici, avait un sens? Quelle volonté conservait sa force? Tout se
ramifiait, s’amollissait, s’efforçait de s’accorder à ce monde ignoble et attirant à la
fois comme le regard des idiots, et qui attaquait les nerfs avec la même puissance
abjecte que ces araignées suspendues entre les branches. (p. 67)
The same torpor and stasis mark the climate of Les Conquérants and La Condition humaine. While the descriptions of the
natural world in La Voie royale often emphasize the impenetrability of
the jungle, the way in which its muddy soil clings to the adventurer,
hindering his progress by weighing him down and drawing him in, Les
Conquérants and La Condition humaine suggest the same stasis and
resistance to action through periodic evocations of the climate in
which the individual acts.
5 Thus, the news of the general strike in Canton reaches the narrator’s steamer under the immobility of a leaden
sky: “Jusqu’à l’horizon, l’océan Indien immobile, glacé, laqué – sans
sillages. Le ciel plein de nuages fait peser sur nous une atmosphère de
cabine de bains, nous entoure d’un air saturé.”
6 In La Condition humaine nature’s permanence is contrasted directly with the finitude of
humanity as the condemned revolutionaries await their death, contemplating the shadows that shorten around them. Here the shortening of
shadows is no symbol of what awaits the novel’s heroes; there is no
pathetic fallacy at work. Rather, it is suggestive of a constant, cosmic
movement from which humanity is excluded:
Les ombres se raccourcissaient peu à peu: les regarder permettait de ne pas songer
aux hommes qui allaient mourir là. Elles se contractaient comme tous les jours avec
leur mouvement éternel, d’une sauvage majesté aujourd’hui parce qu’ils ne le
verraient plus jamais.
7
Political action is thus juxtaposed to the permanence and indifference
of the natural world; the relationship that exists between the characters
___________________________
4 André Malraux, La Voie royale (Paris: Livre de poche, 1987), pp. 66-67. First published in 1930.
5 This motif also appears in La Voire royale. See pp. 48-49, for example.
6 André Malraux, Les Conquérants (Paris: Livre de poche, 1995), p. 49.
7 André Malraux, La Condition humaine (Paris: Folio, 1989), p. 270.