Down to Earth: André Malraux’s Political Itinerary
261
moi que l’approche de la mort, c’était la caresse désespérée qui ferme les yeux des
morts.
24
Malraux’s comfort in the face of death therefore lies in his ability to
lose himself however briefly in the rhythm of human community.
In Antimémoires the reproduction of Second World War episodes from Les Noyers de l’Altenburg alongside memoirs of Malraux’s ministerial travels to India, the French West Indies, and China
reveals an interest in the national community as a human continuum
into which the death of individual members is rhythmically integrated
through national memory and ritual. Thus the funeral pyres that burn
on the banks of the Ganges, surrounded by a ring of mourners, remind
Malraux of “les files qui montèrent lentement vers les
bombardements, par la Voie sacrée de Verdun, par la route de
Stalingrad” (p. 265), but also, in a reference to Les Noyers de
l’Altenburg, of “l’anneau de noix mortes, là-bas, en Alsace, autour
d’un tronc noueux – comme cet anneau de vivants autour d’un corps
qui semblent brûler à regret” (p. 272). Like the tree feeding off its own
fruit, the nation draws its strength from its own dead. Once again, nature reflects human permanence. The nation, like the fraternal antifascist community of Malraux’s works of the late 1930s, therefore
comes to constitute a form of community that traverses time.
As Geoffrey Harris observes with regard to Antimémoires, there
is, in the dialogue of past and present, of fact and fiction, “a neoProustian resurrection of the past through art as Malraux occults spatial and temporal barriers”.
25 Antimémoires reflects Malraux’s continued pursuit of human persistence through the study of the human
community in its many national forms, drawing on a selection of writings that span his literary, military, and political career, integrating
these many national forms into a global human community, often facilitated by flight as Malraux the aviator becomes Malraux the minister travelling the world in the name of the Republic. The French
nation thus becomes in Malraux’s thinking “un personnage
surnaturel”, the Republic: “l’intercesseur entre la vie humaine et le
monde inconnu, entre la misère présente et le bonheur futur, et
d’abord entre la solitude et la fraternité” (p. 169). In such a nation, de
Gaulle fulfils the promethean role of Malraux’s aviators, interceding
___________________________
24 André Malraux, Antimémoires, pp. 230-31.
25 Harris, André Malraux: A Reassessment, p. 213.
261
moi que l’approche de la mort, c’était la caresse désespérée qui ferme les yeux des
morts.
24
Malraux’s comfort in the face of death therefore lies in his ability to
lose himself however briefly in the rhythm of human community.
In Antimémoires the reproduction of Second World War episodes from Les Noyers de l’Altenburg alongside memoirs of Malraux’s ministerial travels to India, the French West Indies, and China
reveals an interest in the national community as a human continuum
into which the death of individual members is rhythmically integrated
through national memory and ritual. Thus the funeral pyres that burn
on the banks of the Ganges, surrounded by a ring of mourners, remind
Malraux of “les files qui montèrent lentement vers les
bombardements, par la Voie sacrée de Verdun, par la route de
Stalingrad” (p. 265), but also, in a reference to Les Noyers de
l’Altenburg, of “l’anneau de noix mortes, là-bas, en Alsace, autour
d’un tronc noueux – comme cet anneau de vivants autour d’un corps
qui semblent brûler à regret” (p. 272). Like the tree feeding off its own
fruit, the nation draws its strength from its own dead. Once again, nature reflects human permanence. The nation, like the fraternal antifascist community of Malraux’s works of the late 1930s, therefore
comes to constitute a form of community that traverses time.
As Geoffrey Harris observes with regard to Antimémoires, there
is, in the dialogue of past and present, of fact and fiction, “a neoProustian resurrection of the past through art as Malraux occults spatial and temporal barriers”.
25 Antimémoires reflects Malraux’s continued pursuit of human persistence through the study of the human
community in its many national forms, drawing on a selection of writings that span his literary, military, and political career, integrating
these many national forms into a global human community, often facilitated by flight as Malraux the aviator becomes Malraux the minister travelling the world in the name of the Republic. The French
nation thus becomes in Malraux’s thinking “un personnage
surnaturel”, the Republic: “l’intercesseur entre la vie humaine et le
monde inconnu, entre la misère présente et le bonheur futur, et
d’abord entre la solitude et la fraternité” (p. 169). In such a nation, de
Gaulle fulfils the promethean role of Malraux’s aviators, interceding
___________________________
24 André Malraux, Antimémoires, pp. 230-31.
25 Harris, André Malraux: A Reassessment, p. 213.