U.S. President John F. Kennedy, Marie-Madeleine Lioux, André Malraux, U.S. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, and U.S. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson at an unveiling of the Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Mrs. Kennedy described Malraux as "the most fascinating man I've ever talked to".
André Malraux was a French novelist, art critic, and public official, a major figure in modern French political and cultural life.
Background
Malraux was born in Paris, France on November 3, 1901, of parents who were in business, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux and Berthe Lamy (Malraux).
Malraux was raised by his mother, maternal aunt Marie and maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy-Romagna, who had a grocery store in the small town of Bondy. His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930 after the international crash of the stock market and onset of the Great Depression. From his childhood, associates noticed that André had marked nervousness and motor and vocal tics.
Education
André attended the Lycée Condorcet and the School for Oriental Languages.
Anthropology, archaeology, and art history attracted him. In 1924 he went on an archaeological trip to Indochina with his wife Clara; he was involved in some political difficulties with the French authorities there and after 1925 moved to China.
André had wanted to live to the full before he wrote fiction, and he had made commitment to action a rule of his career long before the Existentialists were to adopt the same creed. His first book, La Tentation de l'occident (1926), is an ideological dialogue between a Chinese and a Westerner. Les Conquérants (1928; The Conquerors) is a novel based on the Chinese attempt at a revolution in Canton; it is disconnected, tense, and unforgettable in its most vivid scenes.
With La Voie royale (1930; The Royal Way), which is laid among the imposing old temples of Cambodia, Malraux attempted to write a psychological thriller. Malraux won international fame with his acknowledged masterpiece, La Condition humaine (1933; Man's Fate). The theme of the novel is the revolutionary attempt by Chinese Communists and a number of European adventurers among them to mold a new China; most of them are defeated by treason. But each of the six or seven leading characters is also striving against the forces of destruction, which Malraux calls destiny: they love, conspire, kill, and talk elliptically and vividly on the significance of life, on art, on woman, on death. These men dedicated to action are also passionately introspective. The opening scene of the novel, the discovery by the frustrated conspirators condemned to an atrocious death that they have transcended man's aloneness and discovered fraternity, is worthy of Dostoevsky.
Malraux published three more novels: Le Temps du méprismepris (1935; Days of Wrath), laid in a German prison; L'Espoir (1937; Man's Hope), the most ambitious book to have been inspired by the Spanish Civil War and Malraux's most tortured, most pathetic novel; and a more abstract and ideological work, Les Noyers de l'Altenburg (1942).
After 1933, instead of placidly enjoying his fame as a writer, Malraux fought for his political convictions and traveled widely to see and enjoy artistic works. He joined the Loyalist forces as an aviator during the Spanish war of 1936-1938, then was entrusted with the writing of their propaganda.
During World War II Malraux fought first with the tank corps of the French army, then with the underground, of which he became a hero, then in the regular army with the rank of colonel.
In 1945 a friendship, resting on a community of views and on a lofty idea of French "grandeur," to be reestablished through authority and discipline, was forged between Malraux and General Charles de Gaulle. In 1958, when De Gaulle came to power for the second time, Malraux became minister of cultural affairs.
After 1945, along with sundry writings on politics, the cinema, and literature, Malraux also published widely on the arts. His works on this subject have been condensed into Les Voix du silence (1951; The Voices of Silence) and La Métamorphose des dieux (1957).
A companion essay on literature, L'Homme précaire et la littérature ("Precarious Man and Literature"), was published posthumously in 1977.
In 1967 Malraux published his autobiography, Antimémoires. As compelling as any of his novels, it is replete with dramatic incidents, vivid evocations of atmosphere, and philosophic conversations with such world figures as Nehru and Mao Zedong, all of which are rendered in a fragmented, impressionistic style. Les Chênes qu'on abat (1972; Felled Oaks) records conversations with De Gaulle.
Achievements
André Malraux was generally regarded as one of the most distinguished novelists of the 20th century. Malraux holds the distinction of having been France's first minister of culture, serving from 1959-69. In addition, his wartime activities and adventures were legendary and well-documented. He received the ‘Distinguished Service Order’ from the British government, for his work with British liaison officers in Corrèze, Dordogne, and Lot.
He was attracted by revolutionary parties and was for some years a close ally of the Communists; however, he was never wholly accepted by them because of his individualism and his insistence, closely akin to Nietzsche's ideas, that art matters more than material comfort.
Views
Malraux hailed art as the universal language of our time and envisioned a new humanism, based on appreciation of the arts.
Quotations:
"Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides."
"Art is a revolt against fate. All art is a revolt against man's fate."
"To command is to serve, nothing more and nothing less."
Connections
In 1922, André married Clara Goldschmidt and they were blessed with a daughter, Florence, in 1933. But, they got separated in 1938 and eventually divorced in 1947.
André went to live with Josette Clotis, journalist and novelist, in 1933. They had two sons, Pierre-Gauthier and Vincent. Unfortunately, Josette died in 1944, when she slipped while boarding a train. Their sons died in 1961 in an automobile accident.
In 1948, André tied the knot with Marie-Madeleine Lioux, a concert pianist and his widowed sister-in-law. But they got separated in 1966.
After André's separation from Marie, he lived with Louise de Vilmorin, a French Novelist and poet. After she died in 1969, he spent the final years of his life with one of her relatives, Sophie de Vilmorin.
