Down to Earth: André Malraux’s Political Itinerary
259
terms “a deficit in being” characterized by the pursuit of the eternal
and the concomitant realization that it exists beyond our human experience of time.
20
This sense of rhythm informs the depiction of the French
peasantry in Malraux’s final novel, Les Noyers de l’Altenburg. War,
Vincent Berger observes as his tank regiment tear through the French
countryside in May 1940, has destroyed “[le] vieil accord de l’homme
et de la terre […]”.
21 The world around Berger and his comrades in
arms is transformed into a horizon by the confrontation with death as
they advance on German positions: “L’univers devient une indifférente menace” (p. 267). Berger and his men survive battle but only
after a near-death experience in which their tank falls into a German
tank trap.
Taking shelter in a nearby village, Berger discovers a world
that has survived the trials and tribulations of history. The barns in
which he and his comrades sleep are “les granges des temps gothiques” (p. 288). While war has apparently destroyed the accord
between the peasantry and the natural world, the evidence of peasant
life reveals: “la vieille race des hommes que nous avons chassée et qui
n’a laissé ici que ses instruments, son linge et ses initiales sur des
serviettes, [mais qui] me semble venue, à travers les millénaires, des
ténèbres rencontrées cette nuit […]” (p. 288). A peasant woman who
has refused to leave the village appears to Berger: “Accotée au cosmos
comme une pierre…” (p. 289).
In this notion of the accord between the peasants and the
world, Malraux is not suggesting a subservience of the human to the
natural, nor is he suggesting the integration of the former into the latter. Rather, he is suggesting a rhythm that is predicated upon that of
the natural world and that is born of the conflict with the latter. This is
suggested in the walnut trees of the novel’s title. These trees, Berger’s
father realizes, possess a rootedness that allows them to traverse time,
drawing their force from the earth to which they so desperately cling:
La plénitude des arbres séculaires émanait de leur masse, mais l’effort par quoi
sortaient de leurs énormes troncs les branches tordues, l’épanouissement de feuilles
sombres de ce bois, si vieux et si lourd qu’il semblait s’enfoncer dans la terre et non
___________________________
20 Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. by Kathleen McLaughlin and David
Pellauer, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 26.
21 André Malraux, Les Noyers de l’Altenburg (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), p. 269.
259
terms “a deficit in being” characterized by the pursuit of the eternal
and the concomitant realization that it exists beyond our human experience of time.
20
This sense of rhythm informs the depiction of the French
peasantry in Malraux’s final novel, Les Noyers de l’Altenburg. War,
Vincent Berger observes as his tank regiment tear through the French
countryside in May 1940, has destroyed “[le] vieil accord de l’homme
et de la terre […]”.
21 The world around Berger and his comrades in
arms is transformed into a horizon by the confrontation with death as
they advance on German positions: “L’univers devient une indifférente menace” (p. 267). Berger and his men survive battle but only
after a near-death experience in which their tank falls into a German
tank trap.
Taking shelter in a nearby village, Berger discovers a world
that has survived the trials and tribulations of history. The barns in
which he and his comrades sleep are “les granges des temps gothiques” (p. 288). While war has apparently destroyed the accord
between the peasantry and the natural world, the evidence of peasant
life reveals: “la vieille race des hommes que nous avons chassée et qui
n’a laissé ici que ses instruments, son linge et ses initiales sur des
serviettes, [mais qui] me semble venue, à travers les millénaires, des
ténèbres rencontrées cette nuit […]” (p. 288). A peasant woman who
has refused to leave the village appears to Berger: “Accotée au cosmos
comme une pierre…” (p. 289).
In this notion of the accord between the peasants and the
world, Malraux is not suggesting a subservience of the human to the
natural, nor is he suggesting the integration of the former into the latter. Rather, he is suggesting a rhythm that is predicated upon that of
the natural world and that is born of the conflict with the latter. This is
suggested in the walnut trees of the novel’s title. These trees, Berger’s
father realizes, possess a rootedness that allows them to traverse time,
drawing their force from the earth to which they so desperately cling:
La plénitude des arbres séculaires émanait de leur masse, mais l’effort par quoi
sortaient de leurs énormes troncs les branches tordues, l’épanouissement de feuilles
sombres de ce bois, si vieux et si lourd qu’il semblait s’enfoncer dans la terre et non
___________________________
20 Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans. by Kathleen McLaughlin and David
Pellauer, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), p. 26.
21 André Malraux, Les Noyers de l’Altenburg (Paris: Gallimard, 1948), p. 269.