Down to Earth: André Malraux’s Political Itinerary
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flies: “la constance du moteur laissait croire encore à la domination de
l’homme” (p. 137). The heroes of Malraux’s anti-fascist novels therefore continue to see humanity’s hereditary enemy in the world around
them, rather than only in their political enemies of the 1930s, as Vin
Dao contends.
13
Furthermore, the fraternal struggle against the natural world,
through flight and all its dangers, endows Malraux’s characters with a
sense of human permanence often lacking in the Asiatic novels: in
their collective struggle, and more particularly in their return to earth,
Malraux’s characters realise that humanity’s struggle with the natural
world is an age-old phenomenon, one that confers a certain permanence on human activity. Thus the view of the earth from above supplies Kassner with a glimpse of humanity’s constant struggle with the
earth, a struggle whose permanence not only reinstates human dignity,
but which also confers permanence on humanity’s presence in the
world:
De seconde en seconde entre les nuages les plus bas apparaissait et disparaissait tout
l’opiniâtre monde des hommes; le combat contre la terre inépuisablement nourrie
des morts et qui de minute en minute se plombait davantage, parlait à Kassner d’un
accent aussi sourdement souverain que celui du cyclone rejeté en arrière; et la
volonté des siens [les communistes] acharnés là-bas, […] montait vers les derniers
reflets roux du ciel avec la même voix sacrée que l’immensité – que le rythme même
de la vie et de la mort. (Le Temps du mépris, pp. 143-44)
It is in L’Espoir, however, that Malraux refines this discovery
of human permanence in the return to earth experienced in the celebrated descent from the mountain. Here Spanish peasants come to the
rescue of one of the international aircrews shot down in the mountains
above Teruel. The ascent of the mountain to retrieve the dead and the
wounded is largely seen through the eyes of Magnin, the squadron
leader, who initially senses the eternal rooted inaccessibly in the
mountain landscape. While human activity seems to suggest a succession of events, reflected in the sight of Segunte and its fortresses
where Christian, Roman and Punic ramparts have all been constructed
on top of one another (p. 544), the sight of an apple tree which thrives
___________________________
13 Thus Vin Dao contends that, for Malraux’s revolutionaries: “L’ennemi de l’homme
ne s’appelle plus le destin, il est la société qui le condamne à vivre comme une bête”,
André Malraux ou la quête de la fraternité, p. 142.
255
flies: “la constance du moteur laissait croire encore à la domination de
l’homme” (p. 137). The heroes of Malraux’s anti-fascist novels therefore continue to see humanity’s hereditary enemy in the world around
them, rather than only in their political enemies of the 1930s, as Vin
Dao contends.
13
Furthermore, the fraternal struggle against the natural world,
through flight and all its dangers, endows Malraux’s characters with a
sense of human permanence often lacking in the Asiatic novels: in
their collective struggle, and more particularly in their return to earth,
Malraux’s characters realise that humanity’s struggle with the natural
world is an age-old phenomenon, one that confers a certain permanence on human activity. Thus the view of the earth from above supplies Kassner with a glimpse of humanity’s constant struggle with the
earth, a struggle whose permanence not only reinstates human dignity,
but which also confers permanence on humanity’s presence in the
world:
De seconde en seconde entre les nuages les plus bas apparaissait et disparaissait tout
l’opiniâtre monde des hommes; le combat contre la terre inépuisablement nourrie
des morts et qui de minute en minute se plombait davantage, parlait à Kassner d’un
accent aussi sourdement souverain que celui du cyclone rejeté en arrière; et la
volonté des siens [les communistes] acharnés là-bas, […] montait vers les derniers
reflets roux du ciel avec la même voix sacrée que l’immensité – que le rythme même
de la vie et de la mort. (Le Temps du mépris, pp. 143-44)
It is in L’Espoir, however, that Malraux refines this discovery
of human permanence in the return to earth experienced in the celebrated descent from the mountain. Here Spanish peasants come to the
rescue of one of the international aircrews shot down in the mountains
above Teruel. The ascent of the mountain to retrieve the dead and the
wounded is largely seen through the eyes of Magnin, the squadron
leader, who initially senses the eternal rooted inaccessibly in the
mountain landscape. While human activity seems to suggest a succession of events, reflected in the sight of Segunte and its fortresses
where Christian, Roman and Punic ramparts have all been constructed
on top of one another (p. 544), the sight of an apple tree which thrives
___________________________
13 Thus Vin Dao contends that, for Malraux’s revolutionaries: “L’ennemi de l’homme
ne s’appelle plus le destin, il est la société qui le condamne à vivre comme une bête”,
André Malraux ou la quête de la fraternité, p. 142.