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André Malraux
André Malraux
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Georges André Malraux (/mælˈr/ mal-ROH;[1] French: [ʒɔʁʒ ɑ̃dʁe malʁo]; 3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, member of the French Resistance, art theorist, and minister of cultural affairs. Malraux's novel La Condition Humaine (Man's Fate) (1933) is set during the 1927 Shanghai uprising and won the Prix Goncourt; L'Espoir (Man's Hope, 1937) arose from his experiences during the Spanish Civil War. After the Second World War he abandoned fiction and wrote several works on art history, collected as La Psychologie de l'Art (The Voices of Silence, 1953). He was appointed by President Charles de Gaulle as information minister (1945–46) and subsequently as France's first cultural affairs minister during de Gaulle's presidency (1959–1969).

Early years

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Malraux was born in Paris in 1901, the son of Fernand-Georges Malraux (1875–1930) and Berthe Félicie Lamy (1877–1932). His parents separated in 1905 and eventually divorced. There are suggestions that Malraux's paternal grandfather committed suicide in 1909.[2]

Malraux was raised by his mother, his maternal aunt Marie Lamy and his maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy (née Romagna), who had a grocery store in the small town of Bondy (Seine-Saint-Denis).[2][3] His father, a stockbroker, died by suicide in 1930 after the international crash of the stock market and onset of the Great Depression.[4]

From his childhood, associates noticed that André 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 syndrome, although that has not been confirmed.[5] The young Malraux left formal education early, but he followed his curiosity through the booksellers and museums in Paris, and explored the city's rich libraries as well.[citation needed]

The Banteay Srei temple was the subject of a celebrated case of art theft when André Malraux stole four images of devatas in 1923 (he was soon arrested and the figures returned).
André Malraux in 1933

Career

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Early years

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Malraux's first published work, an article entitled "The Origins of Cubist Poetry", appeared in Florent Fels' magazine Action in 1920. This was followed in 1921 by three semi-surrealist tales, one of which, "Paper Moons", was illustrated by Fernand Léger. Malraux also frequented the Parisian artistic and literary milieux of the period, meeting figures such as Demetrios Galanis, Max Jacob, François Mauriac, Guy de Pourtalès, André Salmon, Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, Florent Fels, Pascal Pia, Marcel Arland, Edmond Jaloux, and Pierre Mac Orlan.[6] In 1922, Malraux married Clara Goldschmidt. Malraux and his first wife separated in 1938 but did not divorce until 1947. His daughter from this marriage, Florence (b. 1933), married the filmmaker Alain Resnais.[7] By the age of twenty, Malraux was reading the work of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who was to remain a major influence on him for the rest of his life.[8] Malraux was especially impressed with Nietzsche's theory of a world in continuous turmoil and his statement "that the individual himself is still the most recent creation" who was completely responsible for all of his actions.[8] Most of all, Malraux embraced Nietzsche's theory of the Übermensch, the heroic, exalted man who would create great works of art and whose will would allow him to triumph over anything.[9]

Indochina

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T. E. Lawrence, aka "Lawrence of Arabia", has a reputation in France as the man who was supposedly responsible for France's troubles in Syria in the 1920s. An exception was Malraux who regarded Lawrence as a role model, the intellectual-cum-man-of-action and the romantic, enigmatic hero.[10] Malraux often admitted to having a "certain fascination" with Lawrence, and it has been suggested that Malraux's sudden decision to abandon the Surrealist literary scene in Paris for adventure in the Far East was prompted by a desire to emulate Lawrence who began his career as an archaeologist in the Ottoman Empire excavating the ruins of the ancient city of Carchemish in the vilayet of Aleppo in what is now modern Syria.[11] As Lawrence had first made his reputation in the Near East digging up the ruins of an ancient civilization, it was only natural that Malraux should go to the Far East to likewise make his reputation in Asia digging up ancient ruins.[12] Lawrence considered himself a writer first and foremost while also presenting himself as a man of action, the Nietzschean hero who triumphs over both the environment and men through the force of his will, a persona that Malraux consciously imitated.[13] Malraux often wrote about Lawrence, whom he described admiringly as a man with a need for "the absolute", for whom no compromises were possible and for whom going all the way was the only way.[14] Along the same lines, Malraux argued that Lawrence should not be remembered mainly as a guerrilla leader in the Arab Revolt and the British liaison officer with the Emir Faisal, but rather as a romantic, lyrical writer as writing was Lawrence's first passion, which also described Malraux very well.[15] Although Malraux courted fame through his novels, poems and essays on art in combination with his adventures and political activism, he was an intensely shy and private man who kept to himself, maintaining a distance between himself and others.[16] Malraux's reticence led his first wife Clara to later say she barely knew him during their marriage.[16]

In 1923, aged 22, Malraux and Clara left for the French Protectorate of Cambodia.[17] Angkor Wat is a huge 12th century temple situated in the old capital of the Khmer Empire. Angkor (Yasodharapura) was "the world's largest urban settlement" in the 11th and 12th centuries supported by an elaborate network of canals and roads across mainland Southeast Asia before decaying and falling into the jungle.[18] The discovery of the ruins of Angkor Wat by Westerners (the Khmers had never fully abandoned the temples of Angkor) in the jungle by the French explorer Henri Mouhot in 1861 had given Cambodia a romantic reputation in France, as the home of the vast, mysterious ruins of the Khmer empire. Upon reaching Cambodia, Malraux, Clara and friend Louis Chevasson undertook an expedition into unexplored areas of the former imperial settlements in search of hidden temples, hoping to find artifacts and items that could be sold to art collectors and museums. At about the same time archaeologists, with the approval of the French government, were removing large numbers of items from Angkor - many of which are now housed in the Guimet Museum in Paris. On his return, Malraux was arrested and charged by French colonial authorities for removing a bas-relief from the exquisite Banteay Srei temple. Although he was guilty, his arrest and imprisonment were deemed inappropriate – for the crime was of no consequence. Clara, his wife, started a campaign for his acquittal and a number of notable arts and literary figures signed a petition defending Malraux: among them were François Mauriac, André Breton and André Gide. Malraux had his sentence reduced to a year, and then suspended.[19]

Malraux's experiences in Indochina led him to become highly critical of the French colonial authorities there. In 1925, with Paul Monin,[20] a progressive lawyer, he helped to organize the Young Annam League and founded a newspaper L'Indochine to champion Vietnamese independence.[21] After falling foul of the French authorities, Malraux claimed to have crossed over to China where he was involved with the Kuomintang and their then allies, the Chinese Communists, in their struggle against the warlords in the Great Northern Expedition before they turned on each other in 1927, which marked the beginning of the Chinese Civil War that was to last on and off until 1949.[22] In fact, Malraux did not first visit China until 1931 and he did not see the bloody suppression of the Chinese Communists by the Kuomintang in 1927 first-hand as he often implied that he did, although he did do much reading on the subject.[23]

Asian novels

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On his return to France, Malraux published The Temptation of the West (1926). The work 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), and then by The Royal Way (1930) which reflected some of his Cambodian experiences.[24] The American literary critic Dennis Roak described Les Conquérants as influenced by The Seven Pillars of Wisdom as it was narrated in the present tense "...with its staccato snatches of dialogue and the images of sound and sight, light and darkness, which create a compellingly haunting atmosphere."[15] The Conquerors was set in the summer of 1925 against the backdrop of the general strike called by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Kuomintang in Hong Kong and Canton, the novel concerns political intrigue amongst the "anti-imperialist" camp.[25] The novel is narrated by an unnamed Frenchman who travels from Saigon to Hong Kong to Canton to meet an old friend named Garine who is a professional revolutionary working with Mikhail Borodin, who in real life was the Comintern's principal agent in China.[25] The novel alternates between depictions of Chinese nationalist militancy and British imperial anxieties.[26] The Kuomintang are depicted rather unflatteringly as conservative Chinese nationalists uninterested in social reform, another faction is led by Hong, a Chinese assassin committed to revolutionary violence for the sake of violence, and only the Communists are portrayed relatively favorably.[27] Much of the dramatic tension between the novel concerns a three-way struggle between the hero, Garine and Borodin who is only interested in using the revolution in China to achieve Soviet foreign policy goals.[27] The fact that the European characters are considerably better drawn than the Asian characters reflected Malraux's understanding of China at the time as more of an exotic place where Europeans played out their own dramas rather than a place to be understood in its own right. Initially, Malraux's writings on Asia reflected the influence of Orientalism presenting the Far East as strange, exotic, decadent, mysterious, sensuous and violent, but Malraux's picture of China grew somewhat more humanized and understanding as Malraux disregarded his Orientalist and Eurocentric viewpoint in favor of one that presented the Chinese as fellow human beings.[28]

The second of Malraux's Asian novels was the semi-autobiographical La Voie Royale which relates the adventures of a Frenchman Claude Vannec who together with his Danish friend Perken head down the royal road of the title into the jungle of Cambodia with the intention of stealing bas-relief sculptures from the ruins of Hindu temples.[29] After many perilous adventures, Vannec and Perken are captured by hostile tribesmen and find an old friend of Perken's, Grabot, who had already been captured for some time.[30] Grabot, a deserter from the French Foreign Legion had been reduced to nothing as his captors blinded him and left him tied to a stake starving, a stark picture of human degradation.[30] The three Europeans escape, but Perken is wounded and dies of an infection.[30] Through ostensibly an adventure novel, La Voie Royale is in fact a philosophical novel concerned with existential questions about the meaning of life.[30] The book was a failure at the time as the publishers marketed it as a stirring adventure story set in far-off, exotic, Cambodia which confused many readers who, instead, found a novel pondering deep philosophical questions.[31]

In his Asian novels Malraux used Asia as a stick to beat Europe with as he argued that after World War I the ideal of progress of a Europe getting better and better for the general advancement of humanity was dead.[32] As such, Malraux now argued that European civilization was faced with a Nietzschean void, a twilight world, without God or progress, in which the old values had proven worthless and a sense of spirituality that had once existed was gone.[32] An agnostic, but an intensely spiritual man, Malraux maintained that what was needed was an "aesthetic spirituality" in which love of 'Art' and 'Civilization' would allow one to appreciate le sacré in life, a sensibility that was both tragic and awe-inspiring as one surveyed all of the cultural treasures of the world, a mystical sense of humanity's place in a universe that was as astonishingly beautiful as it was mysterious.[32] Malraux argued that as death is inevitable and in a world devoid of meaning, which thus was "absurd", only art could offer meaning in an "absurd" world.[33] Malraux argued that art transcended time as art allowed one to connect with the past, and the very act of appreciating art was itself an act of art as the love of art was part of a continuation of endless artistic metamorphosis that constantly created something new.[33] Malraux argued that as different types of art went in and out of style, the revival of a style was a metamorphosis as art could never be appreciated in exactly the same way as it was in the past.[33] As art was timeless, it conquered time and death as artworks lived on after the death of the artist.[33] The American literary critic Jean-Pierre Hérubel wrote that Malraux never entirely worked out a coherent philosophy as his mystical Weltanschauung (world view) was based more upon emotion than logic.[32] In Malraux's viewpoint, of all the professions, the artist was the most important as artists were the explorers and voyagers of the human spirit, as artistic creation was the highest form of human achievement for only art could illustrate humanity's relationship with the universe. As Malraux wrote, "there is something far greater than history and it is the persistence of genius".[32] Hérubel argued that it is fruitless to attempt to criticize Malraux for his lack of methodological consistency as Malraux cultivated a poetical sensibility, a certain lyrical style, that appealed more to the heart than to the brain.[34] Malraux was a proud Frenchman, but he also saw himself as a citizen of the world, a man who loved the cultural achievements of all of the civilizations across the globe.[34] At the same time, Malraux criticized those intellectuals who wanted to retreat into the ivory tower, instead arguing that it was the duty of intellectuals to participate and fight (both metaphorically and literally) in the great political causes of the day, that the only truly great causes were the ones that one was willing to die for.[16]

In 1933 Malraux published Man's Fate (La Condition Humaine), a novel about the 1927 failed Communist rebellion in Shanghai. Despite Malraux's attempts to present his Chinese characters as more three dimensional and developed than he did in Les Conquérants, his biographer Oliver Todd wrote he could not "quite break clear of a conventional idea of China with coolies, bamboo shoots, opium smokers, destitutes, and prostitutes", which were the standard French stereotypes of China at the time.[35] The work was awarded the 1933 Prix Goncourt.[36] After the breakdown of his marriage with Clara, Malraux lived 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. The car they were driving had been given them by Vincent's girlfriend, the wealthy Clara Saint.[37]

Searching for lost cities

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On 22 February 1934, Malraux together with Édouard Corniglion-Molinier embarked on a much publicized expedition to find the lost capital of the Queen of Sheba mentioned in the Old Testament.[38] Saudi Arabia and Yemen were both remote, dangerous places that few Westerners visited at the time, and what made the expedition especially dangerous was while Malraux was searching for the lost cities of Sheba, King Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia invaded Yemen, and the ensuing Saudi–Yemeni war greatly complicated Malraux's search.[39] After several weeks of flying over the deserts in Saudi Arabia and Yemen, Malraux returned to France to announce that the ruins he found up in the mountains of Yemen were the capital of the Queen of Sheba.[38] Though Malraux's claim is not generally accepted by archeologists, the expedition bolstered Malraux's fame and provided the material for several of his later essays.[38]

Spanish Civil War

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During the 1930s, Malraux was active in the anti-fascist Popular Front 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.[40] Curtis Cate, one of his biographers, writes that Malraux was slightly wounded twice during efforts to stop the Battle of Madrid in 1936 as the Spanish Nationalists attempted to take Madrid, but the historian Hugh Thomas argues otherwise.

The French government sent aircraft to Republican forces in Spain, but they were 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, flying at 160 knots against enemy fighters flying at more than 250 knots. Few of the fighters proved to be airworthy, and they were delivered intentionally without guns or gunsights. The Ministry of Defense of France had feared that modern types of planes would easily be captured by the German Condor Legion fighting with General Francisco Franco, and the lesser models were a way of maintaining official "neutrality".[41] The planes were surpassed by more modern types introduced by the end of 1936 on both sides.

The Republic circulated photos of Malraux standing next to some Potez 540 bombers suggesting that France was on their side, at a time when France and the United Kingdom had officially declared neutrality. But Malraux's commitment to the Republicans was personal, like that of many other foreign volunteers, and there was never any suggestion that he was there at the behest of the French Government. Malraux himself was not a pilot, and never claimed to be one, but his leadership qualities seem to have been recognized because he was made Squadron Leader of the 'España' squadron. Acutely 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 1937 he published L'Espoir (Man's Hope), a novel influenced by his Spanish war experiences.[42] In July 1937 he attended the Second International Writers' Congress, the purpose of which was to discuss the attitude of intellectuals to the war, held in Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid and attended by many writers including Ernest Hemingway, Stephen Spender and Pablo Neruda.[43]

Malraux's participation in major historical events such as the Spanish Civil War 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. Fellow combatants praised Malraux's leadership and sense of camaraderie[44] While André Marty of the Comintern called him as an "adventurer" for his high profile and demands on the Spanish Republican government.[45] The British historian Antony Beevor also claims that "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."[45]

In any case, Malraux's participation in events such as the Spanish Civil War has tended to distract attention from his important literary achievement. Malraux saw himself first and foremost as a writer and thinker (and not a "man of action" as biographers so often portray him) but his extremely eventful life – a far cry from the stereotype of the French intellectual confined to his study or a Left Bank café – has tended to obscure this fact. As a result, his literary works, including his important works on the theory of art, have received less attention than one might expect, especially in Anglophone countries.[46]

World War II

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At the beginning of the Second World War, Malraux joined the French Army. He was captured in 1940 during the Battle of France but escaped and later joined the French Resistance.[47] In 1944, he was captured by the Gestapo.[48] Detained in the Saint-Michel prison, he narrowly escaped deportation thanks to the liberation of Toulouse by Allied forces on August 19, 1944.[49] He later commanded the Brigade Alsace-Lorraine in defence of Strasbourg and in the attack on Stuttgart.[50]

Otto Abetz was the German Ambassador, and produced a series of "black lists" of authors forbidden to be read, circulated or sold in Nazi occupied France. These included anything written by a Jew, a communist, an Anglo-Saxon or anyone else who was anti-Germanic or anti-fascist. Louis Aragon and André Malraux were both on these "Otto Lists" of forbidden authors.[51]

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.[52]

During the war, he worked on his last novel, 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

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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".[53]

Shortly after the war, General Charles de Gaulle appointed Malraux as his Minister for Information (1945–1946). Soon after, he completed his first book 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), the first part of which has been published separately as The Museum without Walls. Other important works on the theory of art were to follow. These included the three-volume Metamorphosis of the Gods and Precarious Man and Literature, the latter published posthumously in 1977. 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. Subsequently, Malraux lived with Louise de Vilmorin in the Vilmorin family château at Verrières-le-Buisson, Essonne, a suburb southwest of Paris. 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. After Louise's death, Malraux spent his final years with her relative, Sophie de Vilmorin.

In 1957, Malraux published the first volume of his trilogy on art entitled The Metamorphosis of the Gods. The second two volumes (not yet translated into English) were published shortly before he died in 1976. They are entitled L'Irréel and L'Intemporel and discuss artistic developments from the Renaissance to modern times. Malraux also initiated the series Arts of Mankind, an ambitious survey of world art that generated more than thirty large, illustrated volumes.

When de Gaulle returned to the French presidency in 1958, Malraux became France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs, a post he held from 1958 to 1969. On 7 February 1962, Malraux was the target of an assassination attempt by the Organisation armée secrète (OAS), which set off a bomb to his apartment building that failed to kill its intended target, but did leave a four-year-old girl who was living in the adjoining apartment blinded by the shrapnel.[54] Ironically, Malraux was a lukewarm supporter of de Gaulle's decision to grant independence to Algeria, but the OAS was not aware of this, and had decided to assassinate Malraux as a high-profile minister.

On 23 May 1961, André Malraux's two sons, Gauthier and Vincent, were killed in a car accident.

Among many initiatives, Malraux launched an innovative (and subsequently widely imitated) program to clean the blackened façades of notable French buildings, revealing the natural stone underneath.[55] He also created a number of maisons de la culture in provincial cities and worked to preserve France's national heritage by promoting industrial archaeology.[56] An intellectual who took the arts very seriously, Malraux saw his mission as Culture Minister to preserve France's heritage and to improve the cultural levels of the masses.[57] Malraux's efforts to promote French culture mostly concerned renewing old or building new libraries, art galleries, museums, theatres, opera houses, and maisons de la culture (centres built in provincial cities that were a mixture of a library, art gallery and theatre).[56] In 1964 he created the Inventaire général du patrimoine culturel to record all goods based on archival sources created by human kind throughout France.[58] Film, television and music took less of Malraux's time, and the changing demographics caused by immigration from the Third World stymied his efforts to promote French high culture, as many immigrants from Muslim and African nations did not find French high culture that compelling.[56] A passionate bibliophile, Malraux built up a huge collection of books both as a cultural minister for the nation and as a man for himself.[59]

Malraux was an outspoken supporter of the Bangladesh liberation movement during the 1971 Liberation War of Bangladesh and despite his age seriously considered joining the struggle. When Indira Gandhi came to Paris in November 1971, there was extensive discussion between them about the situation in Bangladesh. During this post-war period, Malraux published a series of semi-autobiographical works, the first entitled Antimémoires (1967). A later volume in the series, Lazarus, is a reflection on death occasioned by his experiences during a serious illness. La Tête d'obsidienne (1974) (translated as Picasso's Mask) concerns Picasso, and visual art more generally. In his last book, published posthumously in 1977, L'Homme précaire et la littérature, Malraux propounded the theory that there was a bibliothèque imaginaire where writers created works that influenced subsequent writers much as painters learned their craft by studying the old masters; once they have understood the work of the old masters, writers would sally forth with the knowledge gained to create new works that added to the growing and never-ending bibliothèque imaginaire.[56] (See also musée imaginaire). An elitist who appreciated what he saw as the high culture of all the nations of the world, Malraux was especially interested in art history and archaeology, and saw his duty as a writer to share what he knew with ordinary people.[56] An aesthete, Malraux believed that art was spiritually enriching and necessary for humanity.[60]

Malraux was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 94 times.[61] He was an annual contender for the prize in the 1950s and 1960s, but was never awarded. In 1969 he was the main candidate considered for the prize along with Samuel Beckett. His candidacy was supported by some members of the Nobel committee, but was rejected for political reasons by another member, and the Swedish Academy ultimately decided that Beckett should be awarded.[62]

Death

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Malraux died in Créteil, near Paris, on 23 November 1976 from a lung embolism. He was a heavy smoker and had cancer.[63] He was cremated and his ashes buried in the Verrières-le-Buisson (Essonne) cemetery. In recognition of his contributions to French culture, his ashes were moved to the Panthéon in Paris during 1996, on the twentieth anniversary of his death.

Legacy and honours

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André Malraux in 1974

There is a large body of critical commentary on Malraux's literary œuvre, including his extensive writings on art. However, some of his works, including the last two volumes of The Metamorphosis of the Gods (L'Irréel and L'Intemporel), are not yet available in English translation. Malraux's works on the theory of art contain a revolutionary approach to art that challenges the Enlightenment tradition that treats art simply as a source of "aesthetic pleasure". However, as French writer André Brincourt has commented, Malraux's books on art have been "skimmed a lot but very little read"[65] (this is especially true in Anglophone countries) and the radical implications of his thinking are often missed. A particularly important aspect of Malraux's thinking about art is his explanation of the capacity of art to transcend time. In contrast to the traditional notion that art endures because it is timeless ("eternal"), Malraux argues that art lives on through metamorphosis – a process of resuscitation (where the work had fallen into obscurity) and transformation in meaning.[66] This idea has also been extended into scholarship about the function of image datasets in art history.[67]

  • 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 Oklahoma.[68]
  • Another international Malraux association, the Amitiés internationales André Malraux, is based in Paris.
  • A French-language website, Site littéraire André Malraux, offers research, information, and critical commentary about Malraux's works.[69]
  • A quote from Malraux's Antimémoires is included in the original 1997 English translation of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. The quote, "What is a man? A miserable little pile of secrets" is part of a dialogue early in the game between Richter and Dracula.[70][71]
  • One of the primary "feeder" schools of the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in London is named in honour of André Malraux.

Bibliography

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Exhibitions

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  • André Malraux, Fondation Maeght, Vence, 1973
  • André Malraux et la modernité - le dernier des romantiques, Centennial Exhibition of his Birth, Musée de la Vie romantique, Paris, 2001, by Solange Thierry, with contributions by Marc Lambron, Solange Thierry, Daniel Marchesseau, Pierre Cabanne, Antoine Terrasse, Christiane Moatti, Gilles Béguin and Germain Viatte (ISBN 978-2-87900-558-4)

References

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Further reading

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Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia
from Grokipedia
Georges-André Malraux (3 November 1901 – 23 November 1976) was a French novelist, art historian, adventurer, and politician best known for his literary depictions of revolutionary fervor and existential dilemmas in works such as La Condition humaine (1933), which earned the Prix Goncourt, and for serving as France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs from 1959 to 1969 under Charles de Gaulle, where he spearheaded policies to democratize access to high culture through institutions like the maisons de la culture. Early in life, Malraux rejected formal education after failing his and immersed himself in autodidactic pursuits, leading to expeditions in Indochina from 1923 to 1925, where he opposed French colonial rule by supporting the Young Annam League and publishing the newspaper L'Indochine, though his attempt to excavate Khmer relics without permission resulted in a brief . These experiences fueled early novels like Les Conquérants (1928) and La Voie royale (1930), which explored themes of power and Eastern upheaval. During the , he commanded the Republican air unit Escadrille España, contributing tactical innovations to Loyalist forces despite initial communist alignments that later evolved into disillusionment. In , Malraux joined the , enduring capture and torture before aligning with de Gaulle postwar; his later art writings, including Les Voix du silence (1951), emphasized art's metaphysical role beyond material origins, reflecting a shift toward broader humanist concerns amid personal and ideological turbulence.

Early Life

Childhood and Family Background

Georges-André Malraux was born on November 3, 1901, in the district of to Fernand-Georges Malraux, a , and Berthe Félicie . The family initially enjoyed a comfortable bourgeois existence, with Malraux's father described as an amateur inventor influenced by Nietzsche and engaged in financial pursuits that provided relative affluence. Malraux's parents separated when he was four years old, in 1905, and formally divorced thereafter, leaving him as an without siblings. Following the split, he was raised primarily by his mother, maternal aunt Marie Lamy, and maternal grandmother Adrienne Lamy (née Romagna), who managed a modest in , a working-class suburb northeast of . This environment marked a shift from urban prosperity to suburban simplicity, where Malraux lived above the family shop and developed an early passion for reading amid a stable but unremarkable domestic routine. For Easter and summer holidays, Malraux's father took him to visit paternal grandfather Alphonse in , exposing him to a contrasting adventurous streak on his father's side that later echoed in his own pursuits. His early years were characterized by nervousness and introspection, fostering a self-reliant disposition shaped by familial fragmentation rather than overt privilege.

Education and Initial Influences

Malraux was born on 3 November 1901 in to a prosperous family; his father, Fernand Malraux, worked as an before pursuing unstable ventures, while his mother, Berthe , came from a line of engineers. His parents separated around 1905 following his father's financial scandals, after which Malraux lived primarily with his maternal grandmother and uncle in the bourgeois suburb of , an environment that fostered early independence but limited structured guidance. This domestic instability contributed to his later self-reliant intellectual pursuits, as he navigated family disruptions without consistent paternal influence. Formal education began in local primary schools in Bondy, followed by enrollment at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris around age 15, a prestigious institution known for producing intellectuals. However, Malraux abandoned schooling at approximately 17 or 18 without obtaining the baccalauréat, reportedly due to rejection from advanced programs or personal disinterest in rigid academia; accounts vary, with some indicating brief attendance at the Lycée and others suggesting outright denial of entry. He rejected further institutional learning, including rumored studies at the École des Langues Orientales, deeming self-directed exploration more vital; by 1919, he supported himself acquiring rare books for publisher René-Louis Doyon, immersing in Paris's literary undercurrents. Initial influences stemmed from voracious, unstructured reading of 19th-century romantics like and , encountered during childhood, which ignited his fascination with adventure and heroism. Exposure to Paris's bookstores, museums, and avant-garde circles honed his autodidactic approach, drawing him toward modern philosophy—particularly Friedrich Nietzsche's ideas on human striving and cultural metamorphosis—and early 20th-century artistic ferment, including and precursors. These elements, absorbed without formal pedagogy, shaped his rejection of bourgeois conformity and propelled an eclectic worldview blending , , and existential inquiry, evident in his debut prose poem Lunes en papier (1921). This self-forged intellectual foundation prioritized experiential knowledge over credentials, influencing his lifelong pattern of global quests over academic restraint.

Early Career and Global Adventures

Entry into Publishing and Surrealism

Malraux's literary debut occurred in 1920, when he published an article titled "The Origins of Cubist Poetry" in the avant-garde magazine Action, edited by Florent Fels. This piece reflected his early engagement with modern art movements, drawing on his self-directed studies of and emerging poetic forms. In the same year, he secured employment with a Paris publisher, which facilitated his immersion in the city's intellectual circles. His first book, Lunes en papier (Paper Moons), appeared in 1921 as a slim volume of prose poems and hallucinatory vignettes, dedicated to the poet , whom Malraux had met in 1919. Illustrated with seven woodcuts by cubist artist —marking Léger's initial foray into book illustrations—the work featured dreamlike, fragmented narratives that evoked surrealist techniques, such as and irrational juxtapositions, predating the official by in 1924. Though not a formal surrealist, Malraux's text aligned with the movement's emphasis on the subconscious and revolt against rationalism, influenced by his readings in and encounters with Jacob's hermetic style. Throughout the early 1920s, Malraux contributed literary criticism and short pieces to magazines like Action and Signaux, while collaborating on art and literary reviews. He frequented Parisian museums and salons, forging ties with figures, including surrealists like , though he maintained an independent stance, prioritizing metaphysical themes over pure automatism. This period culminated in Royaume farfelu (The Kingdom of Farfelu), a 1928 of voluptuous, absurd escapades that further experimented with surrealist motifs but signaled his growing disinterest in , as he shifted toward narratives of and destiny. These early efforts established Malraux as a provocative voice in interwar French letters, blending aesthetic innovation with existential inquiry, before his adventures abroad redirected his focus.

Indochina Involvement and Arrest

In October 1923, André Malraux and his wife Clara arrived in Saigon, , seeking artistic inspiration from Khmer antiquities and adventure amid the colonial landscape. They traveled to , exploring sites like , before venturing to the remote temple complex in December 1923, where Malraux removed several bas-reliefs, claiming initial intent for scholarly documentation but intending to sell them for personal gain. Parallel to these expeditions, Malraux immersed himself in anti-colonial , co-editing the newspaper L'Indochine with lawyer Paul Monin starting in early 1924. The publication criticized French administrative corruption, advocated for Indochinese reforms, and supported nascent independence movements, drawing ire from colonial authorities who viewed it as seditious. Malraux's editorials aligned with broader leftist critiques of , though his motivations blended ideological fervor with opportunistic adventurism, as evidenced by his prior failed schemes in . Malraux's arrest occurred on December 21, 1923, near , on charges of theft and destruction of state-protected antiquities from , a site under French archaeological oversight. Tried in in July 1924 alongside accomplices, including Louis Chevasson, he received a sentence of three years' imprisonment and five years' banishment from Indochina; contemporaries in , including surrealists and intellectuals, protested the verdict as excessively punitive, framing it partly as retaliation for his journalistic agitation. On appeal in Saigon later in 1924, Malraux's sentence was suspended due to procedural irregularities and international pressure, allowing his release without serving significant time; he departed Indochina for in November 1924, having transformed the episode into a of defiance against colonial oppression that influenced his later revolutionary writings. While some accounts posit the charge as a masking political , primary records confirm the artifacts' unauthorized removal as the core violation, underscoring Malraux's pattern of blurring personal gain with ideological posturing.

Archaeological Quests in Asia and Elsewhere

In November 1923, André Malraux arrived in Hanoi, French Indochina, accompanied by his wife Clara and childhood friend Louis Chevasson, with the aim of exploring Khmer ruins and removing artifacts for sale to Western collectors. The group traveled by ox cart to Banteay Srei, a 10th-century Hindu temple complex located 25 kilometers northeast of Angkor, where on December 22 they used saws and stonecutters to detach seven sandstone bas-reliefs depicting apsaras from the temple walls. This unauthorized extraction was motivated by financial gain, as Malraux sought to profit from selling the pieces in America. While transporting the bas-reliefs down the River toward on December 25, 1923, the trio was arrested by French colonial authorities. Malraux's trial took place in October 1924 before the Phnom Penh Court of Appeal, where he was convicted of damaging a historic and sentenced to three years in ; however, following appeals and influential interventions, he served only several months under . He remained in Indochina until late 1925, during which period the incident inspired elements of his La Voie royale, published in 1928, which fictionalizes an expedition into Cambodia's jungles in search of lost artifacts. Beyond Indochina, Malraux undertook a brief in 1934 over southern Arabia, flying with aviator Édouard Corniglion-Molinier to investigate potential sites of the Queen of Sheba's capital near Mareb in . The expedition, which ventured to the edge of the Rubʿ al-Khali desert, yielded reports of ancient ruins but no confirmed archaeological excavations or recoveries. No further organized quests are documented, though Malraux's interest in ancient civilizations persisted in his later writings on art and metaphysics.

Literary Works

Early Novels and Asian Themes

Malraux's initial foray into fiction was shaped by his 1923–1925 sojourn in Indochina, where encounters with colonial unrest and ancient artifacts ignited explorations of East-West cultural tensions and revolutionary dynamics in his novels. His debut, La Tentation de l'Occident (1926), unfolds through letters between a Chinese intellectual touring and a French counterpart journeying eastward, contrasting Western action-oriented individualism with Eastern contemplative being, while critiquing materialism's spiritual void. In Les Conquérants (1928), Malraux fictionalizes the 1925 Canton general strike and the Kuomintang-Communist alliance against British influence, centering on European operatives like a fictionalized Borodine aiding Chinese nationalists amid ideological clashes and personal ambitions. The narrative, informed by Malraux's contemporaneous reporting from , portrays revolution not as abstract but as visceral human struggle, with characters embodying existential defiance against colonial oppression. La Voie royale (1930) draws directly from Malraux's 1924–1925 Cambodian expeditions seeking Khmer bas-reliefs for export, depicting two nonconformist Europeans—one aesthetically driven, the other pragmatically ruthless—traversing jungle trails to plunder Angkor-era sculptures amid encounters with indigenous trackers and moral decay. The novel probes themes of civilizational quest versus primal regression, reflecting Malraux's firsthand navigation of Indochinese frontiers and artifact controversies. Collectively termed Malraux's "Asian trilogy," these works fuse autobiographical adventure with metaphysical inquiry, establishing his reputation for rendering 's upheavals through a lens of universal human metamorphosis rather than ethnographic detail.

Major Revolutionary Novels

Malraux's revolutionary novels center on the existential dilemmas of individuals amid large-scale political insurgencies, emphasizing themes of fraternity, betrayal, and the limits of human agency in historical upheavals rather than doctrinal ideology. These works, influenced by his own encounters in and later in , portray revolutionaries not as abstract heroes but as figures grappling with isolation and the opacity of collective action. Les Conquérants (1928) marks his entry into this vein, followed by La Condition humaine (1933), which earned the , and L'Espoir (1937), drawn from his direct involvement in the Spanish conflict. Les Conquérants, published in 1928, unfolds during the 1925 against British influence in southern , filtered through the perspectives of European and Russian operatives aiding the nationalists. The narrative follows a young French journalist, a Soviet advisor, and a Chinese navigating alliances fraught with and violence, including a fictionalized strike and assassination plot. Malraux uses the setting to explore the conqueror's illusion of mastery over chaos, where ideological fervor yields to personal vendettas and the revolutionaries' internal fractures undermine their cause. La Condition humaine, released in 1933, intensifies these motifs against the backdrop of the failed 1927 Shanghai communist insurrection, when Chiang Kai-shek's nationalists turned on their Soviet-backed allies, resulting in mass executions estimated at over 5,000. Centered on characters like the resolute militant Kyo, his wife May, and the opium-addicted opportunist Clappique, the novel depicts acts of assassination, betrayal, and stoic defiance amid urban warfare on March 21-22, 1927. Malraux delves into the "human condition" as a tragic confrontation with absurdity, where revolutionaries affirm dignity through choice—such as Kyo's decision to detonate a bomb rather than surrender—yet remain subsumed by inexorable historical forces. L'Espoir, appearing in 1937, shifts to the Spanish Civil War's early phase in 1936, incorporating Malraux's firsthand role organizing Republican air units, including the España squadron with over 100 . The fragmented chronicles disparate fighters—pilots, militiamen, and intellectuals—united in defending and against Franco's July 1936 coup, which ignited a conflict claiming 500,000 lives by 1939. Through episodes like aerial dogfights and partisan debates, Malraux conveys hope (espoir) as a gamble against , tempered by factional infighting among anarchists, communists, and socialists that historically weakened the Republican effort. The underscores camaraderie forged in peril, yet critiques the revolution's vulnerability to authoritarian drift on both sides.

Later Writings on Art and Civilization

Following , André Malraux shifted his focus from fiction to philosophical reflections on , viewing it as a fundamental human response to mortality and a means of transcending historical contingencies. His seminal work Les Voix du silence, published in 1951 as part of the broader La Psychologie de l'art series, synthesizes across cultures, proposing an "imaginary museum" where reproductions democratize access to masterpieces, altering perceptions beyond traditional stylistic boundaries. In this text, Malraux posits that 's essence lies not in formal evolution but in its metamorphosis— from sacred expressions to modern forms— embodying humanity's quest for the absolute amid existential voids, drawing on examples from prehistoric cave paintings to contemporary works. Malraux extended these ideas in La Métamorphose des dieux, a examining the transformation of religious into secular across civilizations, including Western, Eastern, African, and pre-Columbian traditions. The first volume, Le Surnaturel (1957), traces how divine representations in evolve from supernatural evocations to human-centered expressions, arguing that while gods "die" in modern consciousness, preserves their vital force through creative metamorphosis. Subsequent volumes, L'Irréel (1974) and L'Intemporel (1976), deepen this analysis, contending that art's timeless quality—its intemporel dimension—defies civilizational decay by affirming individual creativity against collective , countering mid-20th-century about Western decline. These writings emphasize art's role in forging a universal human dialogue, unbound by national or epochal limits, where masterpieces confront one another in the viewer's mind to reveal shared metaphysical aspirations. Malraux's framework critiques historicist approaches, prioritizing the artist's defiant act over stylistic , as evidenced in his discussions of how reproductions liberate from site-specific cults, fostering a planetary aesthetic . Critics have noted this perspective's , rooted in Malraux's lived experiences of global artifacts, yet it remains empirically grounded in comparative analyses of diverse corpora, avoiding unsubstantiated .

Political and Military Activities

Commitment to Spanish Republicans

In response to the military rebellion that erupted on July 17, 1936, André Malraux traveled to within days to support the Republican government, acting as an intermediary in negotiations between French Prime Minister and Spanish President to facilitate the purchase of aircraft despite France's official non-intervention policy. In August 1936, he organized the Escuadrilla España, an international volunteer squadron based initially in and later , comprising approximately a dozen French pilots and up to 20 aircraft, primarily 54 bombers sourced covertly. Malraux assumed command of the unit, directing it toward bombing and reconnaissance missions against Nationalist forces in central and northern , with the squadron conducting around two dozen operations before disbanding in February 1937 due to aircraft losses and logistical challenges. Malraux personally participated in several combat flights, exposing himself to anti-aircraft fire and enemy fighters, though the squadron's effectiveness was limited by outdated equipment and the superior German-Italian air support aiding Francisco Franco's Nationalists. His efforts reflected a broader anti-fascist commitment, drawing on his prior experiences in revolutionary causes, but he maintained independence from direct control, focusing instead on practical military aid to the Republican cause amid the escalating intervention by . To sustain Republican aviation, Malraux undertook fundraising tours, including visits to the starting in February 1937, where he lectured on behalf of anti-fascist alliances and sought donations for aircraft and supplies. This engagement profoundly shaped Malraux's worldview and literary output; in 1937, he published L'Espoir (translated as Man's Hope), a semi-autobiographical depicting the squadron's struggles and the human dimensions of Republican resistance, emphasizing themes of fraternity and defiance against . He later adapted the work into the film Espoir (also known as Sierra de Teruel), shot on location in Republican-held territory in 1938–1939 with volunteer actors and released posthumously in some markets after Franco's victory in 1939 sealed the Republicans' defeat. Malraux's involvement, while valorized in leftist narratives, has been critiqued for romanticizing a losing effort marred by internal Republican divisions and Soviet influence, yet it underscored his pattern of allying with perceived underdogs in ideological conflicts.

Resistance in World War II

Following the German invasion in , Malraux enlisted in the French Army's tank corps and was captured during the but managed to escape from a . He spent much of the Vichy-era occupation from 1940 to early 1944 living discreetly on the Côte d'Azur, focusing on writing rather than immediate resistance activities, amid the broader context of fragmented underground networks forming across unoccupied . By April 1944, as Allied advances shifted the war's momentum, Malraux actively joined the Resistance in under the Colonel Berger, organizing maquisard groups in the southwest, including coordination with British liaison officers starting in autumn 1943 and support for local units like the Durestal Maquis in late May 1944. His efforts included logistical and intelligence gathering against German forces, though his involvement drew peril, as evidenced by an by the SS Das Reich Division during a mission. In July 1944, Malraux was arrested by the in , subjected to a , and subsequently rescued by fellow resisters, after which he transitioned to combat roles with Free French forces. He then assumed command of the Alsace-Lorraine Independent Brigade, comprising approximately 1,700 men, including former resisters and repatriated Alsatians, tasked with reclaiming border regions. Under Malraux's leadership as colonel, the brigade participated in the defense of following its liberation on November 23, 1944, and engaged in fierce winter fighting during from January 7 to 15, 1945, countering German counteroffensives in amid harsh conditions that included encounters with motorized SS units. These actions contributed to stabilizing the front before the Allied push into , earning Malraux recognition for frontline command despite his literary background, though postwar accounts vary on the brigade's tactical impact relative to regular army units.

Post-Liberation Political Maneuvering

Following the in August 1944, Malraux, leveraging his Resistance credentials and pre-war leftist prestige, aligned himself with General to counterbalance communist influence in the . In early 1945, as Allied forces advanced, Malraux delivered a pivotal speech at the Hôtel de Ville in , invoking the unity of the Resistance against totalitarian threats and effectively thwarting communist attempts to seize control of the Ministry of Information, thereby securing it for de Gaulle's faction. This maneuver capitalized on Malraux's reputation as a former fellow traveler with revolutionary causes, positioning him as a bridge to neutralize the French Communist Party's (PCF) postwar momentum, which had grown through its own Resistance networks but was ideologically opposed to de Gaulle's non-partisan authority. De Gaulle appointed Malraux as Minister of Information in November 1945, a role he held until 1946, where he focused on state to promote national reconciliation and anti-totalitarian messaging amid epuration trials and economic reconstruction. Malraux's tenure emphasized radio broadcasts and publications that highlighted France's Gaullist vision, distancing the government from both remnants and Stalinist orthodoxy—a stance informed by his earlier disillusionment with following the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. By 1946, as de Gaulle resigned amid pressures, Malraux withdrew from active but continued informal advocacy, organizing support networks that sustained Gaullist influence until de Gaulle's 1958 return. This period marked Malraux's strategic pivot from revolutionary internationalism to national sovereignty, prioritizing anti-communist realism over partisan ideology.

Ministerial Tenure and Cultural Policies

Appointment Under de Gaulle

In November 1945, following the , appointed André Malraux as Minister of Information in his provisional government, a role Malraux held from 21 November 1945 to 20 January 1946. This position capitalized on Malraux's wartime leadership in the Resistance, including his command of the Alsace-Lorraine independent brigade, which had conducted guerrilla operations against German forces. The appointment signaled de Gaulle's recognition of Malraux's proven loyalty and organizational skills amid postwar reconstruction efforts. After de Gaulle's resignation in 1946 and a in , Malraux maintained close ties with him, supporting the movement. De Gaulle's return to power in June 1958, amid the crisis and the collapse of the Fourth Republic, led to Malraux's re-entry into government as Minister Delegate attached to the for on 1 June 1958, in Michel Debré's initial cabinet. This interim role focused on managing public communications during the transition to the Fifth Republic, reflecting de Gaulle's strategy of deploying trusted non-career figures to stabilize institutions. On 8 January 1959, Malraux transitioned to for Cultural Affairs, becoming the inaugural holder of this cabinet-level post, which he retained through multiple governments until 1969. De Gaulle's decision stemmed from their longstanding personal alliance, forged in Resistance networks, and Malraux's intellectual authority on —evident in works like The Voices of Silence (1951)—which aligned with de Gaulle's vision of as a pillar of national sovereignty and global influence. Unlike conventional administrators, Malraux's adventurer-intellectual profile suited de Gaulle's preference for dynamic appointees capable of embodying France's civilizational aspirations over partisan bureaucracy.

Reforms in Cultural Affairs

As France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs, serving from 1960 to 1969, André Malraux established policies centered on democratizing access to arts and preserving national heritage amid rapid postwar urbanization. His approach emphasized exposing the public—particularly in provincial regions—to high culture, viewing it as essential for national cohesion and humanistic development, rather than confining it to elite urban circles. The ministry, created in 1959 under President de Gaulle, allocated resources to institutionalize cultural outreach, including subsidies for theaters, museums, and archaeological sites, while prioritizing state-led initiatives over purely market-driven ones. A flagship initiative was the development of maisons de la culture, multifunctional centers designed to stimulate contemporary artistic creation and public participation in each département. Launched in the early , these venues hosted performances, exhibitions, and educational programs to bridge urban-rural cultural divides; however, funding constraints limited construction to eight such houses by the decade's end. Malraux envisioned them as hubs for direct engagement with arts, distinct from existing youth centers, to foster a shared national cultural experience beyond transient political ideologies. Malraux also advanced heritage conservation through the Loi Malraux (law no. 62-903 of August 4, 1962), which introduced secteurs sauvegardés—designated historic urban districts eligible for comprehensive protection and restoration. This shifted focus from isolated monuments to entire neighborhoods, countering threats from speculative development and migration-driven decay; targeted areas included Paris's quarter, the quays, and Avignon's intra-muros districts. The law mandated collaborative safeguard plans ratified by decree, involving specialists, municipalities, and private owners, with emphasis on restoration over or expropriation, and incentives for modernization compatible with historical integrity. In a July 23, 1962, Assembly speech introducing , Malraux argued for resurrecting these sectors as living spaces for future generations, critiquing past protections as insufficiently holistic. These efforts extended to broader monument restoration and promotion of , with approximately 40 heritage buildings rehabilitated in the ministry's initial five to six years. Malraux's policies institutionalized cultural administration, influencing subsequent frameworks, though critics noted a top-down imposition of Parisian standards that sometimes distanced local amateur traditions.

Architectural and Museum Initiatives

Malraux introduced the loi Malraux on August 4, 1962, which established "secteurs sauvegardés" in historic urban areas to safeguard architectural heritage from and decay, offering tax deductions up to 30% on restoration costs to encourage private investment in rehabilitating old city centers. This legislation marked a shift from protecting isolated monuments to preserving cohesive urban fabrics, with initial applications in cities like and Paris's district, where it facilitated the salvage of endangered neighborhoods through coordinated public-private efforts. Under his direction, major restoration campaigns targeted landmark sites, including the Grand Trianon at Versailles, where full refurbishment of the South Wing began in 1962 and concluded by 1966, restoring interiors and gardens to their historical state while adapting spaces for contemporary use. He also extended monument historique classifications to 19th- and 20th-century structures, such as industrial buildings and urban ensembles, and launched programs under the July 31, 1962, law prioritizing urgent repairs on priority sites like and other national treasures, funded through dedicated budgets distinguishing maintenance from ambitious reconstructions. These initiatives emphasized revealing original architectural features through cleaning and repair, countering post-war neglect and urban pressures. In museum development, Malraux prioritized modern art institutions, designating the Musée d'art moderne in Le Havre—a project he championed—as a national showcase for Impressionist works, inaugurating it on June 24, 1961, with collections bolstered by key donations like Raoul Dufy's bequest in 1963. He supported the founding of specialized venues, including the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature in Paris's Marais, proposed under his urban salvage efforts to repurpose historic hôtels particuliers for public display of hunting and natural history artifacts starting in the late 1960s. These projects aligned with broader policies to expand museum accessibility, increasing state funding for acquisitions and renovations while promoting international loans, exemplified by the 1962 transport of the Mona Lisa to the United States, which elevated French museums' global profile.

Ideological Evolution

Early Marxist Sympathies and Breaks

In the aftermath of his 1925 trial in Saigon for the theft of Indochinese artifacts—charges he framed as a protest against French colonial exploitation—Malraux returned to Paris with heightened anti-imperialist convictions that aligned him with revolutionary leftist circles. This experience catalyzed his sympathy for Marxist-inspired anti-colonial struggles, evident in his 1928 novel Les Conquérants, which depicted the 1927 Chinese revolutionaries with a focus on individual heroism amid communist tactics, though critiquing bureaucratic rigidity. While never joining the French Communist Party (PCF), Malraux adopted fellow-traveler status, viewing communism as a structured outlet for revolutionary aspiration, as he articulated: "Communism is not hope, but the form of hope." By the early 1930s, Malraux's sympathies deepened amid rising fascism, culminating in his 1933 novel La Condition humaine (Man's Fate), a portrayal of the failed 1927 Shanghai uprising that romanticized Marxist revolutionaries' existential defiance against both capitalists and party dogma. He engaged directly in antifascist efforts, traveling to Berlin in 1934 to advocate for Georgi Dimitrov, the Comintern leader accused in the Reichstag fire trial, and addressing the Soviet Writers' Congress in Moscow that year, where he endorsed emerging Soviet humanism. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), Malraux organized international brigades, self-appointing as colonel of an air squadron for the Republicans, framing the conflict in his 1937 novel L'Espoir as a metaphysical battle against tyranny, though prioritizing anti-fascism over orthodox Marxism. These actions reflected a selective affinity for communism as a bulwark against fascism, tempered by his aversion to Stalinist control over art and intellect. Malraux's rupture with Marxist sympathies accelerated in 1939 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet non-aggression agreement with , which exposed the ideological opportunism of Stalinist foreign policy and eroded his faith in as a universal force. Earlier reservations, including discomfort with the 1930s Moscow show trials—which he initially rationalized—and Soviet cultural authoritarianism, compounded this disillusionment, leading him to reject in any form during . By the war's end, Malraux had pivoted toward anti-communist , critiquing Marxism's materialist reductionism in favor of transcendent human values, a shift rooted in his firsthand observations of revolutionary failures and authoritarian betrayals rather than abstract doctrinal disputes. This break marked the transition from revolutionary romanticism to a broader skeptical of ideological absolutes.

Alignment with Gaullism and Anti-Communism

Malraux's disillusionment with , which had roots in the Comintern's purges during the and the French Communist Party's policy of following France's 1940 armistice, culminated in an open break by the war's end. He viewed as degrading the rather than liberating it, declaring that " is not to our left, it is to the east." This stance positioned him against communist efforts to transform Resistance networks into parallel power structures poised for postwar seizure, a threat he actively countered in the immediate liberation period. His alignment with Gaullism began with a 1945 meeting with General , whom Malraux admired as an embodiment of national destiny and heroic leadership. Appointed Minister of Information in de Gaulle's from November 1945 to 1946, Malraux promoted a vision of as self-reliant, republican, and resistant to both communist expansion and parliamentary paralysis. In April 1947, he emerged as the chief ideologist of the Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF), de Gaulle's movement to restore French sovereignty, economic independence, and moral order against Soviet-influenced leftism. Gaullism resonated with Malraux's rejection of ideological dogmas in favor of pragmatic nationalism and anti-totalitarianism, seeing de Gaulle as a Caesar-like figure capable of transcending partisan divides. His anti-communism extended beyond domestic politics, as evidenced by critiques of regimes like Mao's China during the mid-1960s Cultural Revolution, which he detailed in Anti-Memoirs (1967) as a perversion of revolutionary ideals. This fidelity endured; Malraux never publicly challenged de Gaulle's decisions, including the 1962 Algerian settlement, reinforcing his role as a bridge from leftist adventurism to Gaullist realism.

Critiques of Leftist Intellectualism

Malraux's disillusionment with communism, forged during the where he witnessed internal purges and factional betrayals among Republican forces, evolved into broader critiques of leftist intellectuals whom he saw as complicit in dogmatic obedience to despite evident . By the late , he rejected Marxist orthodoxy, viewing it as subordinating human agency to rigid ideology, a theme echoed in his novel L'Espoir (1937), which portrayed revolutionary commitment without endorsing communist fetishization of discipline. His wartime experiences further intensified this stance; he condemned the French Communist Party's initial under the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and their postwar efforts to transform Resistance networks into partisan power structures, interpreting these as cynical bids for rather than genuine . Post-1945, Malraux targeted prominent leftist thinkers for their perceived detachment from reality. He repeatedly contrasted his active Resistance leadership—organizing the Brigade Alsace-Lorraine in 1944—with the inaction of figures like , who remained in occupied , publishing works and avoiding combat, which Malraux dismissed as intellectual posturing amid existential threats. This rivalry underscored Malraux's charge that such intellectuals prioritized abstract or Marxist dialectics over concrete moral engagement, enabling apologias for Stalinist crimes while evading personal risk. The events of crystallized Malraux's opposition to the French left's cultural dominance. As Minister of Cultural Affairs, he joined a massive pro-government march on , , alongside hundreds of thousands, framing the student-led protests and general strikes—not as emancipatory but as anarchic eruptions signaling the "end of a civilization," rooted in the nihilistic void left by the "death of " and the erosion of transcendent purpose. He rebuked leftist intellectuals for romanticizing disruption over institutional reform, arguing their influence fostered disorder that undermined France's republican order, a view aligning with his Gaullist emphasis on national destiny over ideological fragmentation. In interviews, Malraux lamented the left's post-liberation subservience to Soviet narratives, which he believed blinded writers and thinkers to communism's causal role in mass repression, prioritizing partisan loyalty over empirical reckoning with events like the or Hungarian uprising of 1956.

Controversies and Criticisms

Exaggerations in Personal Narrative

Biographers, including Olivier Todd in his 2005 biography Malraux: A Life, have identified a pattern of self-aggrandizement in Malraux's autobiographical writings, particularly the 1967 Anti-Memoirs, where he conflated personal exploits with fictionalized grandeur to craft a mythic persona as an eternal adventurer and intellectual revolutionary. Todd documents how Malraux routinely amplified mundane or limited experiences into tales of heroic daring, such as portraying his 1923–1925 Indochina sojourn as a bold anti-colonial quest to salvage Khmer artifacts from destruction, whereas French colonial records reveal it culminated in his 1924 arrest alongside his wife Clara for stealing bas-reliefs from the temple, resulting in a brief , fine, and restitution after they claimed the pieces were abandoned. This episode, rather than a pure act of cultural preservation, involved commercial intent for his gallery, as evidenced by correspondence and trial documents. Malraux's accounts of his involvement (1936–1937) similarly involved exaggeration; he claimed to have commanded the España squadron of Republican aircraft, inspiring his Man's Hope (1938), but archival and eyewitness testimonies indicate his was logistical and propagandistic, limited to a few weeks of non-combat organization rather than frontline piloting or sustained leadership. In Anti-Memoirs, he further invented a personal rapport with during 1920s visits, fabricating dialogues and influences absent from Mao's records or Malraux's contemporaries' accounts, a fabrication Todd attributes to Malraux's need to align himself with global revolutionary icons. His narrative was likewise burnished: Malraux joined the network only in spring 1944 after earlier draft deferrals and neutral stances, yet he later depicted himself as a central, risk-taking figure, downplaying arrests as heroic captures rather than brief, opportunistic detentions. Such embellishments, critiqued by earlier biographers like Jean Lacouture (1973), served Malraux's ideological , transforming personal ambiguities into emblems of anti-fascist and existential commitment, though they eroded among historians who prioritize verifiable records over narrative flair. Todd, drawing on unpublished letters and interviews, argues this habit stemmed from Malraux's early psychological need for transcendence amid familial , blending verifiable events with invented to sustain a "Malrucian " that influenced his post-war political ascent under de Gaulle. While not outright forgery, these distortions reflect a cavalier approach to veracity, as Malraux himself implied in Anti-Memoirs by framing it as "anti-" traditional memoir, prioritizing metaphysical truth over empirical detail.

Debates Over Indochina Actions

In December 1923, André Malraux, then 22 years old, along with his wife Clara and an associate, attempted to remove two bas-reliefs from the 10th-century Khmer temple of in , part of . Posing as tourists or scholars with initial permission to visit the site, they damaged the sculptures in the process of extraction, intending to sell them to Western art collectors or museums. Authorities, alerted by curator George Groslier, arrested Malraux on December 24, 1923, in as he sought to ship the artifacts out of the colony. Malraux was tried in Phnom Penh on July 16-17, 1924, on charges of theft and damage to a historic monument, receiving a sentence of three years' imprisonment and five years' banishment. On appeal, the sentence was reduced to a one-year suspended term, allowing his release without incarceration; he remained in Indochina under restrictions until late 1925. During this period, Malraux shifted to journalistic activities, co-founding the anti-colonial newspaper L'Indochine in Saigon in February 1925, which was soon suppressed and renamed L'Indochine enchainée, where he critiqued French colonial practices such as land expropriations and prison conditions. Debates over Malraux's motivations center on whether the Banteay Srei raid was opportunistic theft for personal profit or an ideological challenge to colonial cultural policies. Primary evidence, including Clara Malraux's memoirs, indicates a mercantile intent to profit from sales, consistent with the era's widespread artifact smuggling amid lax enforcement. Malraux later framed the act as a against France's monopoly on exporting Indochinese , arguing that such treasures belonged to universal humanity rather than being hoarded under colonial administration—a view that gained traction in French intellectual circles but lacked substantiation at the time of the incident. Critics, particularly from Cambodian perspectives, emphasize the irreversible damage to national heritage and dismiss subsequent activism as insufficient justification, with curator Groslier derisively labeling Malraux "le petit voleur" (the little thief). Scholars like those revisiting the case argue his actions reflected personal solipsism rather than principled anti-colonialism, noting interactions with École française d'Extrême-Orient scholars yielded no prior advocacy for Khmer preservation. Proponents, such as historian Raoul-Marc Jennar, contend the experience catalyzed genuine political awakening, influencing Malraux's later writings like La voie royale (1930) and his broader critique of imperialism, though this transition occurred post-arrest amid legal pressures. The artifacts remain unreturned, fueling ongoing Cambodian resentment toward French-era looting narratives.

Accusations of Political Opportunism

Malraux encountered accusations of political opportunism primarily from leftist intellectuals and the (PCF), who viewed his post-World War II alignment with as a betrayal of his earlier anti-fascist and anti-colonial engagements. These critics argued that his shift from supporting initiatives in the —such as organizing anti-fascist committees and participating in the Spanish Republican cause—to founding the anti-communist Rassemblement du Peuple Français (RPF) with de Gaulle in April 1947 represented a pragmatic pursuit of power rather than principled conviction. Such claims often emanated from PCF-affiliated publications like La Nouvelle Critique, which portrayed Malraux's Gaullist loyalty as ideological apostasy, likening him to discredited figures while overlooking his consistent rejection of Stalinist orthodoxy as early as the late following disillusionment with Soviet policies in and . The intensity of these charges escalated upon Malraux's appointment as Minister of Cultural Affairs in June 1959, a role he held until , where detractors from the left, including former fellow travelers, alleged that his ministerial position was a reward for unwavering Gaullist fidelity amid France's Fourth Republic instability, rather than merit based on cultural expertise. Critics such as those in communist circles framed this as "trahison politique" (political betrayal), asserting incoherence between his novels' revolutionary themes—evident in works like La Condition humaine (1933), which critiqued both bourgeois and communist dogmatism—and his defense of de Gaulle's authoritarian tendencies, including during the . However, these accusations frequently originated from sources ideologically committed to Marxist-Leninist orthodoxy, which systematically vilified anti-communist intellectuals as renegades, a pattern observable in PCF rhetoric against figures diverging from the Soviet line post-1945. Malraux rebutted such claims by emphasizing his breaks with communism stemmed from empirical observations of its totalitarian practices, such as the 1927 and Stalin's purges, which he deemed incompatible with human dignity—a stance articulated in his 1947 speech denouncing as a "metaphysics of the absolute" subordinating individuals to the party. His Gaullist commitment, in this view, reflected admiration for de Gaulle's resistance leadership during the war, where Malraux himself fought under the alias "Colonel Berger" in the , rather than careerist maneuvering; de Gaulle's 1944 provisional government had initially included communists, but Malraux's alignment solidified amid the Cold War's causal pressures, including PCF-led strikes threatening French stability in 1947. Leftist critiques, while highlighting perceived inconsistencies, often neglected these contextual factors, prioritizing narrative of opportunism over Malraux's documented risks in Indochina (1923–1925), (1936–1937), and occupied (1944–1945), which contradicted self-serving motives.

Later Years, Death, and Legacy

Final Literary and Public Efforts

Following his resignation as Minister of Cultural Affairs in 1969, André Malraux largely withdrew from formal political roles to concentrate on writing, producing works that extended his memoiristic and philosophical explorations. In 1971, he published Les Chênes qu'on abat, the second volume of Le Miroir des limbes, which chronicled Charles de Gaulle's final days and emphasized themes of leadership amid national crisis. This text, drawing on Malraux's close association with de Gaulle, critiqued the fragility of political authority in the face of revolutionary upheavals like those of May 1968. Malraux completed the Le Miroir des limbes series with La Corde et les Souris in 1976, a fragmented reflection blending autobiographical elements with meditations on mortality, art, and historical destiny, influenced by his declining . These later writings shifted from novelistic toward essayistic forms, interrogating the human confrontation with chaos and the redemptive potential of . His final unpublished , L'Homme précaire et la littérature, released posthumously in 1977, posited literature as a bulwark against existential precariousness, synthesizing his lifelong concerns with metaphysics and artistic . Publicly, Malraux maintained selective engagements, notably participating in the Gaullist counter-demonstration on May 30, 1968, amid student unrest, underscoring his enduring alignment with anti-communist . In the ensuing years, he offered sporadic commentaries on global threats, including and cultural erosion, through interviews and addresses that echoed his resistance-era . These efforts reinforced his role as a public vigilant against ideological , though constrained by age and illness by the mid-1970s.

Death and Immediate Aftermath

André Malraux died on November 23, 1976, at the age of 75 in Hospital near , succumbing to a amid ongoing treatment for , a condition exacerbated by his lifelong heavy smoking. His body was cremated and interred the following day, November 24, 1976, at the Verrières-le-Buisson cemetery without any religious or ceremonial ritual, in accordance with his expressed wishes to avoid formal observances. The modest funeral drew close family, friends, and notable figures from French intellectual and political circles, reflecting his enduring status as a despite personal controversies. Public reactions emphasized Malraux's multifaceted legacy as a , Resistance fighter, and de Gaulle's Minister of Culture, with widespread tributes portraying him as a heroic figure of 20th-century . Notably, the sent a red wreath to the gravesite—a interpreted by observers as an acknowledgment of his early leftist engagements, even as his later anti-communist stance had positioned him in opposition to such groups. Media coverage, including extensive newsreels and memoirs, underscored his adventurous life but also prompted reflections on the embellishments in his autobiographical accounts, though immediate eulogies focused primarily on his contributions to literature and national identity.

Long-Term Influence and Reassessments

Malraux's literary oeuvre, particularly novels such as La Condition humaine (1933), exerted a lasting influence on existentialist and humanist thought by portraying human action as essential to confronting metaphysical voids and ideological failures, themes that resonated in post-World War II European literature. His art theory, notably the "museum without walls" (musée imaginaire) articulated in Les Voix du silence (1951), proposed decontextualizing artworks through reproductions to foster universal appreciation, profoundly shaping modern curatorial practices, including influences on filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard in Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–1998). As France's first Minister of Cultural Affairs from 1959 to 1969, Malraux implemented policies that decentralized cultural access, founding maisons de la culture in provincial cities to bring theater, art exhibitions, and lectures to broader audiences, thereby challenging elitist traditions and expanding public engagement with high culture. These initiatives, including the creation of the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens in 1960—which later informed the Musée du Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac opened in 2006—and the restoration of the Louvre's facades, established precedents for state-sponsored cultural democratization that persist in France's network of regional institutions, despite subsequent shifts toward liberalization under successors like Jack Lang. Empirical outcomes included increased attendance at cultural events outside Paris, validating Malraux's causal emphasis on state intervention to preserve national heritage amid modernization. Politically, Malraux's evolution from early leftist sympathies to staunch reinforced anti-communist intellectual currents, making opposition to Soviet respectable among former fellow travelers and bolstering de Gaulle's appeal against Communist influence. His advocacy for French grandeur through cultural symbolism influenced Gaullist notions of republican order and , with later adherents viewing his warnings of civilizational decline—tied to the loss of de Gaulle's unifying presence—as prescient amid France's post-1969 ideological fragmentation. Scholarly reassessments, such as Geoffrey Harris's 1996 analysis, dismantle binary narratives of Malraux as either revolutionary leftist or opportunistic Gaullist, portraying him instead as a non-ideological elitist whose anti-totalitarian commitments integrated personal adventure with broader critiques of ideological absolutes, transcending partisan eulogies. While French academia, influenced by lingering leftist dominance, has marginalized his later works, international evaluations affirm his heroic persona and early novels' endurance, crediting his break from as a realistic response to historical evidence of its degradations, such as Comintern purges and Stalinist policies. These reevaluations highlight causal realism in his trajectory: empirical disillusionments, from the to betrayals, drove his pivot toward cultural and national preservation over utopian fantasies.

References

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