André Malraux
Encyclopedia
André Malraux DSO
(3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman
. Having traveled extensively in Indochina
and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate
) (1933), which won the Prix Goncourt
. He was appointed by General Charles de Gaulle
as Minister of Information (1945–1946), then as Minister of State (1958–1959), and the first Minister of Cultural Affairs, serving during De Gaulle's entire presidency (1959–1969).
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 Andre had marked nervousness and motor and vocal tics. The recent biographer Olivier Todd, who published a book on Malraux in 2005, suggests that he had Tourette's syndrome, although that has not been confirmed. Either way, most critics have not seen this as a significant factor in Malraux's life or literary works.
The young Malraux left formal education early, but he followed his curiosity through the booksellers and museums in Paris, and explored its rich libraries as well.
.
While still married to Clara, Malraux had a liaison with journalist and novelist Josette Clotis, starting in 1933. Malraux and Josette had two sons: Pierre-Gauthier (1940–1961) and Vincent (1943–1961). During 1944, while Malraux was fighting in Alsace
, Josette died, aged 34, when she slipped while boarding a train. His two sons died together in 1961 in an automobile accident.
In 1948, Malraux married a second time, to Marie-Madeleine Lioux, a concert pianist and the widow of his half-brother, Roland Malraux. They separated in 1966.
Born in the family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris, she was heir to a great French seed company fortune, that of Vilmorin. She was afflicted with a slight limp that became a personal trademark. Vilmorin was best known as a writer of delicate but mordant tales, often set in aristocratic or artistic milieu. Her most famous novel was Madame de..., published in 1951, which was adapted into the celebrated film The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), directed by Max Ophüls and starring Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio de Sica. Vilmorin's other works included Juliette, La lettre dans un taxi, Les belles amours, Saintes-Unefois, and Intimités. Her letters to Jean Cocteau were published after the death of both correspondents.
André Malraux, then French Cultural Affairs Minister , was the lover of Louise de Vilmorin- ( for the last years of her life, until she she died in 1969) She called herself "Marilyn Malraux".Louise de Vilmorin , was the owner of the Chateau de Vilmorin, located next to Verrieres-Le Buisson, where Andre Malraux was buried in 1976-
's Les Amis de crime, and Le Bordel de Venise.
with Clara. There he undertook an exploratory expedition into the Cambodian jungle. On his return he was arrested by French colonial authorities for removing bas-reliefs from Banteay Srei
,
a Khmer
temple. Malraux later used the episode in his second novel La Voie Royale.
His experiences and observations while in Indochina
led to Malraux's becoming highly critical of the French colonial authorities. In 1925, he helped to organize the Young Annam League and founded a newspaper L'Indochine.
On his return to France, he published The Temptation of the West (1926). It was in the form of an exchange of letters between a Westerner and an Asian, comparing aspects of the two cultures. This was followed by his first novel The Conquerors (1928), then by The Royal Way (1930) which was influenced by his Cambodian experience. In 1933 he published Man's Fate
(La Condition Humaine). The novel about the 1927 failed Communist rebellion in Shanghai
was written with obvious sympathy for the Communists; Malraux was awarded the 1933 Prix Goncourt
for this work.
in France. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War
he joined the Republican
forces in Spain, serving in and helping to organize the small Spanish Republican Air Force
. His Squadron España, became something of a legend after his claims of nearly annihilating part of the Nationalist army at Medellín
. (According to Curtis Cate, his biographer, he was slightly wounded twice during efforts to stop the Falangists' takeover of Madrid
, but the historian Hugh Thomas denies this.)
The French government sent aircraft to Republican forces in Spain, but they were already obsolete by the standards of 1936. They were mainly Potez 540
bombers and Dewoitine D.372
fighters. The slow Potez 540 rarely survived three months of air missions, moving some 80 knots against enemy fighters flying at more than 250 knots. Few of the fighters proved to be airworthy, and were delivered intentionally without guns or gun-sights. The French Ministry of Defense had feared that modern types of planes would easily be captured by the Germans fighting for Franco, and the lesser models were a way of maintaining official "neutrality". The planes were surpassed by more modern types introduced by the end of 1936 on both sides.
The Republic government circulated photos of Malraux's standing next to some Potez 540 bombers suggesting that France was on their side, at a time when France and the United Kingdom had declared official neutrality. Malraux himself was not a pilot, and never claimed to be one, although he was given the title of the Squadron Leader of 'Espana'. His commitment to the Republicans was personal, like that of many other foreign volunteers. There was never any suggestion that he was there at the behest of the French Government. Aware of the Republicans' inferior armaments, of which outdated aircraft were just one example, he toured the United States to raise funds for the cause. In 1938 he published L'Espoir
(Man's Hope), a novel influenced by his Spanish war experiences.
Malraux has occasionally been criticized by opponents for his involvement or motivations in the Spanish Civil War. Comintern sources, for example, described him as an 'adventurer'.
and Antony Beevor
writes: "Malraux stands out, not just because he was a mythomaniac in his claims of martial heroism – in Spain and later in the French Resistance – but because he cynically exploited the opportunity for intellectual heroism in the legend of the Spanish Republic."
Other biographical sources, including fellow combatants, contradict these opinions and praise Malraux's leadership and sense of camaraderie. Here as elsewhere, Malraux's participation in major historical events inevitably brought him determined adversaries as well as strong supporters, and the resulting polarization of opinion has colored, and rendered questionable, much that has been written about his life. Comintern records, for instance, are a questionable source since Malraux had been critical of some Stalinist policies. Beevor's reference to "claims of martial heroism" is also dubious since although Malraux's books sometimes describe military action, he never presents his own role as especially heroic.
, but he escaped and later joined the French Resistance
. In 1944 he was captured by the Gestapo
.
He later commanded the tank unit Brigade Alsace-Lorraine in defence of Strasbourg
and in the attack on Stuttgart
.
After the war, Malraux was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance
and the Croix de guerre
. The British awarded him the Distinguished Service Order
, for his work with British liaison officers in Corrèze
, Dordogne and Lot. After Dordogne was liberated, Malraux led a battalion of former resistance fighters to Alsace-Lorraine
, where they fought alongside the First Army.
During the war he worked on his last work in novel form, The Struggle with the Angel, the title drawn from the story of the Biblical Jacob
. The manuscript was destroyed by the Gestapo after his capture in 1944. A surviving first section, titled The Walnut Trees of Altenburg, was published after the war.
After the war, General Charles de Gaulle
appointed Malraux as his Minister for Information (1945–1946). Malraux began work on the first of his books on art, The Psychology of Art, published in three volumes (1947–1949). The work was subsequently revised and republished in one volume as The Voices of Silence (Les Voix du Silence).
Malraux was appointed Minister of State
in De Gaulle's 1958–1959 government, and France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs
. He served De Gaulle during his entire presidency (1959–1969). Among many other initiatives, he launched a then-innovative (and subsequently widely-imitated) program to clean the blackened facades of notable French buildings, revealing the natural stone underneath. He also created maisons de la culture in a number of provincial cities and worked to preserve France's national heritage.
In 1960 Malraux worked as editor on the series Arts of Mankind
, an ambitious survey of world art that generated more than thirty large, illustrated volumes. During the 1960s, Malraux published the first volume of a trilogy on art entitled The Metamorphosis of the Gods; the second two volumes (not yet translated into English) were published shortly before he died.
He also began publishing a series of semi-autobiographical works, the first of which was Antimémoires (1967). One of these, Lazarus, is a reflection on death after he suffered a serious illness. La Tete d'obsidienne (1974) (translated as Picasso's Mask) concerns Picasso, and visual art more generally.
Malraux died in Créteil
, near Paris, on 23 November 1976. He was buried in the Verrières-le-Buisson
(Essonne) cemetery. In honor of his contributions to French culture, his ashes were moved to the Panthéon
in Paris during 1996, on the twentieth anniversary of his passing.
Malraux's novels, especially La Condition Humaine, are very impressive; his Antimemoirs (the series as a whole is entitled Miroir des limbes (Mirror of Limbo) are equally fascinating. His works on the theory of art, such as The Voices of Silence, contain a revolutionary approach to art that challenges the Enlightenment aesthetics tradition and views art as much more than a source of "aesthetic pleasure". As the French writer André Brincourt comments, Malraux's books on art have been "skimmed a lot but very little read." As a result, critical commentary has often oversimplified and distorted their arguments.
‘The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.’ Malraux, L'Intemporel (3rd volume of The Metamorphosis of the Gods.)
'In a world in which everything is subject to the passing of time, art alone is both subject to time and yet victorious over it'. Malraux in a television program about art, 1975.
"Art is an object lesson for the gods." The Voices of Silence
"The art museum is one of the places that give us the highest idea of man." The Voices of Silence
"Humanism does not consist in saying: ‘No animal could have done what I have done,’ but in declaring: ‘We have refused what the beast within us willed to do, and we seek to reclaim man wherever we find that which crushes him.’" The Voices of Silence
"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between this profusion of matter and the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness." Les Noyers de l'Altenburg
For a more complete biography, see the site of the Amitiés internationales André Malraux.
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
(3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French adventurer, award-winning author, and statesman
Statesman
A statesman is usually a politician or other notable public figure who has had a long and respected career in politics or government at the national and international level. As a term of respect, it is usually left to supporters or commentators to use the term...
. Having traveled extensively in Indochina
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...
and China, Malraux was noted especially for his novel entitled La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate
Man's Fate
Man's Fate is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution...
) (1933), which won the Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
. He was appointed by General Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
as Minister of Information (1945–1946), then as Minister of State (1958–1959), and the first Minister of Cultural Affairs, serving during De Gaulle's entire presidency (1959–1969).
Early life and education
Malraux was born in Paris in 1901, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux and Berthe Lamy (Malraux). His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. There are suggestions that Malraux's paternal grandfather committed suicide in 1909.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
Bondy
Bondy is a commune in the northeastern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located from the center of Paris.-Name:The name Bondy was recorded for the first time around AD 600 as Bonitiacum, meaning "estate of Bonitius", a Gallo-Roman landowner.-History:...
. His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930 after the international crash of the stock market
Stock market crash
A stock market crash is a sudden dramatic decline of stock prices across a significant cross-section of a stock market, resulting in a significant loss of paper wealth. Crashes are driven by panic as much as by underlying economic factors...
and onset of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. From his childhood, associates noticed that Andre had marked nervousness and motor and vocal tics. The recent biographer Olivier Todd, who published a book on Malraux in 2005, suggests that he had Tourette's syndrome, although that has not been confirmed. Either way, most critics have not seen this as a significant factor in Malraux's life or literary works.
The young Malraux left formal education early, but he followed his curiosity through the booksellers and museums in Paris, and explored its rich libraries as well.
Marriage and family
In 1922, Malraux married Clara Goldschmidt. Malraux and his first wife separated in 1938 but didn't divorce before 1947. His daughter from this marriage, Florence (b.1933), married the filmmaker Alain ResnaisAlain Resnais
Alain Resnais is a French film director whose career has extended over more than six decades. After training as a film editor in the mid-1940s, he went on to direct a number of short films which included Nuit et Brouillard , an influential documentary about the Nazi concentration camps.He began...
.
While still married to Clara, Malraux had a liaison with journalist and novelist Josette Clotis, starting in 1933. Malraux and Josette had two sons: Pierre-Gauthier (1940–1961) and Vincent (1943–1961). During 1944, while Malraux was fighting in Alsace
Alsace
Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...
, Josette died, aged 34, when she slipped while boarding a train. His two sons died together in 1961 in an automobile accident.
In 1948, Malraux married a second time, to Marie-Madeleine Lioux, a concert pianist and the widow of his half-brother, Roland Malraux. They separated in 1966.
Born in the family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris, she was heir to a great French seed company fortune, that of Vilmorin. She was afflicted with a slight limp that became a personal trademark. Vilmorin was best known as a writer of delicate but mordant tales, often set in aristocratic or artistic milieu. Her most famous novel was Madame de..., published in 1951, which was adapted into the celebrated film The Earrings of Madame de... (1953), directed by Max Ophüls and starring Charles Boyer, Danielle Darrieux and Vittorio de Sica. Vilmorin's other works included Juliette, La lettre dans un taxi, Les belles amours, Saintes-Unefois, and Intimités. Her letters to Jean Cocteau were published after the death of both correspondents.
André Malraux, then French Cultural Affairs Minister , was the lover of Louise de Vilmorin- ( for the last years of her life, until she she died in 1969) She called herself "Marilyn Malraux".Louise de Vilmorin , was the owner of the Chateau de Vilmorin, located next to Verrieres-Le Buisson, where Andre Malraux was buried in 1976-
Early Years
As a young man, Malraux began writing for the magazine Action. He worked as an editor for the publisher Simon Kra, who produced "limited edition" books, which were popularly considered an investment against inflation. Some of these books included Marquis de SadeMarquis de Sade
Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade was a French aristocrat, revolutionary politician, philosopher, and writer famous for his libertine sexuality and lifestyle...
's Les Amis de crime, and Le Bordel de Venise.
Indochina
At the age of 21, Malraux left for CambodiaCambodia
Cambodia , officially known as the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country located in the southern portion of the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia...
with Clara. There he undertook an exploratory expedition into the Cambodian jungle. On his return he was arrested by French colonial authorities for removing bas-reliefs from Banteay Srei
Banteay Srei
Banteay Srei or Banteay Srey is a 10th century Cambodian temple dedicated to the Hindu god Shiva. Located in the area of Angkor in Cambodia. It lies near the hill of Phnom Dei, north-east of the main group of temples that once belonged to the medieval capitals of Yasodharapura and Angkor Thom...
,
a Khmer
Khmer people
Khmer people are the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia, accounting for approximately 90% of the 14.8 million people in the country. They speak the Khmer language, which is part of the larger Mon–Khmer language family found throughout Southeast Asia...
temple. Malraux later used the episode in his second novel La Voie Royale.
His experiences and observations while in Indochina
French Indochina
French Indochina was part of the French colonial empire in southeast Asia. A federation of the three Vietnamese regions, Tonkin , Annam , and Cochinchina , as well as Cambodia, was formed in 1887....
led to Malraux's becoming highly critical of the French colonial authorities. In 1925, he helped to organize the Young Annam League and founded a newspaper L'Indochine.
On his return to France, he published The Temptation of the West (1926). It was in the form of an exchange of letters between a Westerner and an Asian, comparing aspects of the two cultures. This was followed by his first novel The Conquerors (1928), then by The Royal Way (1930) which was influenced by his Cambodian experience. In 1933 he published Man's Fate
Man's Fate
Man's Fate is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution...
(La Condition Humaine). The novel about the 1927 failed Communist rebellion in Shanghai
Shanghai massacre of 1927
The April 12 Incident of 1927 refers to the violent suppression of Chinese Communist Party organizations in Shanghai by the military forces of Chiang Kai-shek and conservative factions in the Kuomintang...
was written with obvious sympathy for the Communists; Malraux was awarded the 1933 Prix Goncourt
Prix Goncourt
The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
for this work.
Spanish Civil War
During the 1930s, Malraux was active in the anti-fascist Popular FrontPopular Front (France)
The Popular Front was an alliance of left-wing movements, including the French Communist Party , the French Section of the Workers' International and the Radical and Socialist Party, during the interwar period...
in France. At the beginning of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
he joined the Republican
Second Spanish Republic
The Second Spanish Republic was the government of Spain between April 14 1931, and its destruction by a military rebellion, led by General Francisco Franco....
forces in Spain, serving in and helping to organize the small Spanish Republican Air Force
Spanish Republican Air Force
The Spanish Republican Air Force, , was the air arm of the Second Spanish Republic, the legally established government of Spain between 1931 and 1939...
. His Squadron España, became something of a legend after his claims of nearly annihilating part of the Nationalist army at Medellín
Battle of the Sierra Guadalupe
The Battle of the Sierra Guadalupe , also known as the Tagus Campaign, was a continuation of the Nationalist Army's race north toward Madrid in the early stages of the Spanish Civil War...
. (According to Curtis Cate, his biographer, he was slightly wounded twice during efforts to stop the Falangists' takeover of Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
, but the historian Hugh Thomas denies this.)
The French government sent aircraft to Republican forces in Spain, but they were already obsolete by the standards of 1936. They were mainly Potez 540
Potez 540
-External links:*...
bombers and Dewoitine D.372
Dewoitine D.372
Dewoitine D.372 was a French fighter aircraft of the 1930s.-History:Design of this machine was by SAF-Avions Dewoitine but owing to over work at that companies plant at the time, manufacture of the D.372 was transferred to Lioré et Olivier. They were high-wing monoplanes of all-metal construction...
fighters. The slow Potez 540 rarely survived three months of air missions, moving some 80 knots against enemy fighters flying at more than 250 knots. Few of the fighters proved to be airworthy, and were delivered intentionally without guns or gun-sights. The French Ministry of Defense had feared that modern types of planes would easily be captured by the Germans fighting for Franco, and the lesser models were a way of maintaining official "neutrality". The planes were surpassed by more modern types introduced by the end of 1936 on both sides.
The Republic government circulated photos of Malraux's standing next to some Potez 540 bombers suggesting that France was on their side, at a time when France and the United Kingdom had declared official neutrality. Malraux himself was not a pilot, and never claimed to be one, although he was given the title of the Squadron Leader of 'Espana'. His commitment to the Republicans was personal, like that of many other foreign volunteers. There was never any suggestion that he was there at the behest of the French Government. Aware of the Republicans' inferior armaments, of which outdated aircraft were just one example, he toured the United States to raise funds for the cause. In 1938 he published L'Espoir
L'espoir
L'espoir is a 1945 Spanish black and white war film, directed by Boris Peskine and André Malraux, who wrote the novel L'Espoir for the film. The director won the 1945 Prix Louis Delluc award.-Cast:...
(Man's Hope), a novel influenced by his Spanish war experiences.
Malraux has occasionally been criticized by opponents for his involvement or motivations in the Spanish Civil War. Comintern sources, for example, described him as an 'adventurer'.
and Antony Beevor
Antony Beevor
Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...
writes: "Malraux stands out, not just because he was a mythomaniac in his claims of martial heroism – in Spain and later in the French Resistance – but because he cynically exploited the opportunity for intellectual heroism in the legend of the Spanish Republic."
Other biographical sources, including fellow combatants, contradict these opinions and praise Malraux's leadership and sense of camaraderie. Here as elsewhere, Malraux's participation in major historical events inevitably brought him determined adversaries as well as strong supporters, and the resulting polarization of opinion has colored, and rendered questionable, much that has been written about his life. Comintern records, for instance, are a questionable source since Malraux had been critical of some Stalinist policies. Beevor's reference to "claims of martial heroism" is also dubious since although Malraux's books sometimes describe military action, he never presents his own role as especially heroic.
World War II
At the beginning of the Second World War, Malraux joined the French Army. He was captured in 1940 during the Battle of FranceBattle of France
In the Second World War, the Battle of France was the German invasion of France and the Low Countries, beginning on 10 May 1940, which ended the Phoney War. The battle consisted of two main operations. In the first, Fall Gelb , German armoured units pushed through the Ardennes, to cut off and...
, but he escaped and later joined the French Resistance
French Resistance
The French Resistance is the name used to denote the collection of French resistance movements that fought against the Nazi German occupation of France and against the collaborationist Vichy régime during World War II...
. In 1944 he was captured by the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
.
He later commanded the tank unit Brigade Alsace-Lorraine in defence of Strasbourg
Strasbourg
Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...
and in the attack on Stuttgart
Stuttgart
Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany. The sixth-largest city in Germany, Stuttgart has a population of 600,038 while the metropolitan area has a population of 5.3 million ....
.
After the war, Malraux was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance
Médaille de la Résistance
The French Médaille de la Résistance was awarded by General Charles de Gaulle "to recognise the remarkable acts of faith and of courage that, in France, in the empire and abroad, have contributed to the resistance of the French people against the enemy and against its accomplices since June 18,...
and the Croix de guerre
Croix de guerre
The Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
. The British awarded him the Distinguished Service Order
Distinguished Service Order
The Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
, for his work with British liaison officers in Corrèze
Corrèze
Corrèze is a department in south central France, named after the Corrèze River.The inhabitants of the department are called Corréziens or Corréziennes according to gender.-History:...
, Dordogne and Lot. After Dordogne was liberated, Malraux led a battalion of former resistance fighters to Alsace-Lorraine
Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine was a territory created by the German Empire in 1871 after it annexed most of Alsace and the Moselle region of Lorraine following its victory in the Franco-Prussian War. The Alsatian part lay in the Rhine Valley on the west bank of the Rhine River and east...
, where they fought alongside the First Army.
During the war he worked on his last work in novel form, The Struggle with the Angel, the title drawn from the story of the Biblical Jacob
Jacob
Jacob "heel" or "leg-puller"), also later known as Israel , as described in the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, the New Testament and the Qur'an was the third patriarch of the Hebrew people with whom God made a covenant, and ancestor of the tribes of Israel, which were named after his descendants.In the...
. The manuscript was destroyed by the Gestapo after his capture in 1944. A surviving first section, titled The Walnut Trees of Altenburg, was published after the war.
After the war
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
appointed Malraux as his Minister for Information (1945–1946). Malraux began work on the first of his books on art, The Psychology of Art, published in three volumes (1947–1949). The work was subsequently revised and republished in one volume as The Voices of Silence (Les Voix du Silence).
Malraux was appointed Minister of State
Minister of State
Minister of State is a title borne by politicians or officials in certain countries governed under a parliamentary system. In some countries a "minister of state" is a junior minister, who is assigned to assist a specific cabinet minister...
in De Gaulle's 1958–1959 government, and France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs
Minister of Culture (France)
The Minister of Culture is, in the Government of France, the cabinet member in charge of national museums and monuments; promoting and protecting the arts in France and abroad; and managing the national archives and regional "maisons de culture"...
. He served De Gaulle during his entire presidency (1959–1969). Among many other initiatives, he launched a then-innovative (and subsequently widely-imitated) program to clean the blackened facades of notable French buildings, revealing the natural stone underneath. He also created maisons de la culture in a number of provincial cities and worked to preserve France's national heritage.
In 1960 Malraux worked as editor on the series Arts of Mankind
Arts of Mankind
The Arts of Mankind , an ambitious series of art history survey books founded in 1960 for the French publisher Gallimard by André Malraux, who edited many of the volumes...
, an ambitious survey of world art that generated more than thirty large, illustrated volumes. During the 1960s, Malraux published the first volume of a trilogy on art entitled The Metamorphosis of the Gods; the second two volumes (not yet translated into English) were published shortly before he died.
He also began publishing a series of semi-autobiographical works, the first of which was Antimémoires (1967). One of these, Lazarus, is a reflection on death after he suffered a serious illness. La Tete d'obsidienne (1974) (translated as Picasso's Mask) concerns Picasso, and visual art more generally.
Malraux died in Créteil
Créteil
-Health:As of 1 January 2006, 27 pharmacies, about 60 dentists, about 60 general practitioners, 10 pediatricians, and a half-dozen ophthalmologists and dermatologists constitute the general medical staff of the city.Health facilities include:...
, near Paris, on 23 November 1976. He was buried in the Verrières-le-Buisson
Verrières-le-Buisson
Verrières-le-Buisson is a commune in the southern suburbs of Paris, France. It is from the center of Paris, in the Essonne department just outside the inner ring of the Île-de-France.The commune borders the Bièvre River....
(Essonne) cemetery. In honor of his contributions to French culture, his ashes were moved to the Panthéon
Panthéon, Paris
The Panthéon is a building in the Latin Quarter in Paris. It was originally built as a church dedicated to St. Genevieve and to house the reliquary châsse containing her relics but, after many changes, now functions as a secular mausoleum containing the remains of distinguished French citizens...
in Paris during 1996, on the twentieth anniversary of his passing.
Legacy and honors
- 1933, Prix GoncourtPrix GoncourtThe Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year"...
- Médaille de la RésistanceMédaille de la RésistanceThe French Médaille de la Résistance was awarded by General Charles de Gaulle "to recognise the remarkable acts of faith and of courage that, in France, in the empire and abroad, have contributed to the resistance of the French people against the enemy and against its accomplices since June 18,...
- Croix de guerreCroix de guerreThe Croix de guerre is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was awarded during World War I, again in World War II, and in other conflicts...
- Distinguished Service OrderDistinguished Service OrderThe Distinguished Service Order is a military decoration of the United Kingdom, and formerly of other parts of the British Commonwealth and Empire, awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat.Instituted on 6 September...
(United Kingdom)
Malraux's novels, especially La Condition Humaine, are very impressive; his Antimemoirs (the series as a whole is entitled Miroir des limbes (Mirror of Limbo) are equally fascinating. His works on the theory of art, such as The Voices of Silence, contain a revolutionary approach to art that challenges the Enlightenment aesthetics tradition and views art as much more than a source of "aesthetic pleasure". As the French writer André Brincourt comments, Malraux's books on art have been "skimmed a lot but very little read." As a result, critical commentary has often oversimplified and distorted their arguments.
- 1968, an international Malraux Society was founded in the United States. It produces the journal Revue André Malraux Review, Michel Lantelme, editor, at University of OklahomaUniversity of OklahomaThe University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...
. - The Amitiés internationales André Malraux is based in Paris and promotes his works.
- A French-language website, Site littéraire André Malraux, provides research and information dedicated to André Malraux and topics such as literature, art, religion, history and culture.
Quotations
"Man is dead, after God". Malraux, The Temptation of the West. (1926)‘The artist is not the transcriber of the world, he is its rival.’ Malraux, L'Intemporel (3rd volume of The Metamorphosis of the Gods.)
'In a world in which everything is subject to the passing of time, art alone is both subject to time and yet victorious over it'. Malraux in a television program about art, 1975.
"Art is an object lesson for the gods." The Voices of Silence
"The art museum is one of the places that give us the highest idea of man." The Voices of Silence
"Humanism does not consist in saying: ‘No animal could have done what I have done,’ but in declaring: ‘We have refused what the beast within us willed to do, and we seek to reclaim man wherever we find that which crushes him.’" The Voices of Silence
"The greatest mystery is not that we have been flung at random between this profusion of matter and the stars, but that within this prison we can draw from ourselves images powerful enough to deny our nothingness." Les Noyers de l'Altenburg
Partial bibliography of Malraux's works
- Lunes en Papier, 1923 (Paper Moons, 2005)
- La Tentation de l'Occident, 1926 (The Temptation of the West, 1926)
- Royaume-Farfelu, 1928 (The Kingdom of Farfelu, 2005) (reprint University of Chicago Press, 1992, ISBN 9780226502908)
- La Voie royale, 1930 (The Royal WayThe Royal WayThe Royal Way / The Way of the Kings is an existentialist novel by André Malraux. It is about two nonconformist adventurers who travel on the "Royal Way" to Angkor in the Cambodian jungle. Their intention is to steal precious bas-relief sculptures from the temples...
or The Way of the Kings, 1930) - La Condition humaine, 1933 (Man's FateMan's FateMan's Fate is a 1933 novel written by André Malraux about the failed communist insurrection in Shanghai in 1927, and the existential quandaries facing a diverse group of people associated with the revolution...
, 1934) - Le Temps du mépris, 1935 (Days of Wrath, 1935)
- L'Espoir, 1937 (Man's HopeMan's HopeMan's Hope is a 1937 novel by André Malraux about the Spanish Civil War. It was translated to English and published during 1938 as "Man's Hope". The story was later adapted as a movie, L'espoir , produced by Edouard Corniglion-Molinier....
, 1938) (reprint University of Chicago Press, 1992, ISBN 9780226502892) - La Psychologie de l'ArtLa Psychologie de l'ArtLa Psychologie de l'Art is a book written by the French adventurer and film theorist André Malraux. It contains thoughts on montage theory along with his Russian colleagues Eisenstein and Pudovkin....
, 1947–1949 (The Psychology of Art) - Le Musée imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale (1952–54) (The Imaginary Museum of World Sculpture (in three volumes))
- Les Voix du silence, 1951 (The Voices of Silence, 1953)
- La Métamorphose des dieux (English translation: The Metamorphosis of the Gods, by Stuart Gilbert):
- Vol 1. Le Surnaturel, 1957
- Vol 2. L'Irréel, 1974
- Vol 3. L'Intemporel, 1976
- Antimémoires, 1967 (Anti-Memoirs, 1968 – autobiography)
- Les Chênes qu'on abat, 1971 (Felled Oaks or The Fallen Oaks)
- Lazare, 1974 (Lazarus, 1977)
- Saturne: Le destin, l'art et Goya, (Paris: Gallimard, 1978) (Translation of an earlier edition published in 1957: Malraux, André. Saturn: An Essay on Goya. Translated by C.W. Chilton. London: Phaidon Press, 1957.)
For a more complete biography, see the site of the Amitiés internationales André Malraux.
Selected bibliography of works about Malraux
- Art and the Human Adventure: André Malraux's Theory of Art (Amsterdam, Rodopi: 2009) Derek Allan
- André Malraux (1960) by Geoffrey H. Hartman
- André Malraux: The Indochina adventure (1960) by Walter Langlois (New York Praeger).
- Malraux (1971) by Pierre Galante (SBNSBNSBN can mean:* Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology.* Student Broadcast Network.* SBN - The IATA airport code for the South Bend Regional Airport.* Southern Broadcasting Network, in the Philippines....
40212441-3) - André Malraux: A Biography (1997) by Curtis Cate Fromm Publishing (ISBN 208066795)
- Malraux ou la Lutte avec l'ange. Art, histoire et religion (2001) by Raphaël AubertRaphaël AubertRaphaël Aubert is a Swiss writer and essayist.-Early life and education:Raphaël Aubert was brought up in a family of artists. He studied in the Faculty of Arts and Theology at University of Lausanne and in Paris....
(ISBN 2-8309-1026-5) - Malraux : A Life (2005) by Olivier Todd (ISBN 0375407022) Review by Christopher Hitchens
- Dits et écrits d'André Malraux : Bibliographie commentée (2003) by Jacques Chanussot and Claude Travi (ISBN 2-905965-88-6)
- André Malraux (2003) by Roberta Newnham (ISBN 9781841508542)
- Andre Malraux: Tragic Humanist (1963) by Charles D. Blend, Ohio State University Press (Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 62-19865)
External links
- Amitiés Internationales André Malraux The official site of the French André Malraux Society: Malraux and culture.
- André Malraux The site of research and information dedicated to André Malraux: literature, art, religion, history and culture.
- "André (Georges) Malraux (1901–1976)", Authors' Calendar, Petri Liukkonen (author) & Ari Pesonen. 2008
- Université McGill: le roman selon les romanciers (French) Inventory and analysis of André Malraux non-novelistic writings
- Malraux's early, surrealist writings
- 'Malraux, Literature and Art' – Essays by Derek Allan
- A multimedia adaptation of Voices of silence