Not everything worth reading is hot off the press. In this section, we recommend "something old" that is still well worth reading. "Something Old" can mean anything from a venerable and antique classic to a good book first published year or two ago.
ANTI-MEMOIRS” by Andre Malraux (First published in 1967: English translation by Terence Kilmartin 1968)
In reviewing the literary works of Andre Malraux, I have written on this blog accounts of his first four (and best known) novels, Les Conquerants (1928), La Voie Royale (1930), La Condition Humaine (1933) and L’Espoir (1938) – all produced within ten years. He also wrote a novella called Le Temps du Mepris (1935), basically a piece of propaganda which he later disowned. But the fact was, he began to lose interest in writing novels at all. In 1940 he published a novel called Les Noyers de l’Altenburg [The Walnut-trees of Altenburg] which was intended to be the first volume of a family saga to be called La Lutte avec l’ange [The Struggle with the Angel], but the sequence never appeared. And that was the end of his life as a novelist, even though he had much life ahead of him. From that point on, he wrote only non-fiction books about art, culture and politics; and [in the 1950s] he regularly gave lectures on French television.
In 1967, when he was 66, he produced his Anti-Memoirs, nine years before he died. It was the longest book he ever wrote. What exactly are “Anti-memoirs”? We expect memoirs to be somebody’s account of both personal and public life, preferably presented in some sort of chronological order. Malraux breaks our expectations. In a rather pompous Preface, he explains what anti-memoirs are. He says he will not be giving us a full autobiography, but will deal only with outstanding and interesting things. Among other things, this means [though he does not say so] that he never mentions his two wives, his children and his mistresses. It also means that he does not write in chronological order. He jumps from one era to another, noting each era he is dealing with [presented thus---]. He is very interested in telling us of important people – known world-wide and leaders of countries – whom he met and talked with. Certainly he was, under de Gaulle’s instruction, a sort of ambassador for French culture. But much of what Malraux writes comes across as him telling us how important he is. There is a sort of snobbery here. It is not surprising that Anti-Memoirs is dedicated to [the widowed] “Mrs John Fitzgerald Kennedy”, that is, the glamorous Jackie, wife of the American president. Malraux had escorted her in her visit to Paris and he was making sure we knew it. Malraux introduces each of the five parts of Anti-Memoirs by labelling each with the title of one of his novels. I shall ignore these but note the eras that he notes.
Dear reader, I found it a chore to be ploughing through nearly 500 pages of Malraux’s self-praising work [me using the English language version]. The things I do for you! But – dammit - Malraux does sometimes produce passages of literary brilliance.
Here goes.
Part One begins his memories in [1913], concerning the family he grew up in. His father told him eccentric stories as relayed from his grandfather. Although Malraux and his family lived in Dunkirk, their grandparents came from Alsace whence they had left when the Germans took over Alsace [after the end of the Franco-German War of 1870-71]. One of grandfather’s friends was influenced by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, and part of his ideas of strength, courage and dominance seeped into, or at least was a part of, young Malraux’s beliefs … but Malraux admits that what he remembered of his grandfather was little and much of what he heard were really family fables. Leaping to a group labeled [1934 – 1950 – 1965] he suddenly moves into talking in detail about the meaning of monuments in many different cultures – the Sphinx; the hidden parts of the Versailles palace; the remnants of Nazi monuments that had been destroyed that the Second World War; the pyramids of Mexico; a sacred tree in Senegal that is worshipped. From all this he deduces that all sacred things in all societies are simply a human yearning for something to bind a community together. Malraux was never a professional archaeologist, but he liked to present himself as one. So [1934 – 1965] he writes of his attempts to find the site of the Queen of Sheba as if he were an archaeologist. [He does not note that real archaeologists debunked his ideas.]. So far, we have heard family fables and his desire to examine ancient things, almost in terms of mythology.
Part Two turns to his relationship with General de Gaulle and how later he became an ambassador once de Gaulle was president. First [1923- 1945] he recalls his brief visits to India in the 1920s. He notes that France was not really involved with India and it was only in 1958 that de Gaulle attempted to make an accord with India…. But Malraux, in his non-sequential way, segues into telling us about how, immediately after the Second World War, the Gaullists were able to trump the French Communist Party which was trying to take over all the organisations that had been part of the Resistance. Through many pages, Malraux tells us in detail, word for word, what de Gaulle said to him and what he said to de Gaulle. But is this really verbatim? Immediately there is the suspicion that Malraux is in fact embroidering what he may be vaguely remembering what was said… and this runs through many other conversations that he claims to have had throughout Anti-Memoirs. He goes on to tell us that he and de Gaulle and the veteran politician Leon Blum discussed the nature of what the French parliament should be and in effected shaped the future nature of French democracy. Then [1958 – 1965] he tells us what de Gaulle said about the situation in Algeria and how he was going to outwit the pieds noirs [“black feet” – meaning those French Europeans who had settled in Algeria and were opposed to giving Algeria independence]. It is in this era that de Gaulle stabilises French politics by introducing the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle, says Malraux, sent him to some French possessions such as the Antilles, French Guiana and Martinique as an ambassador to persuade those territories to join the new French Union. Malraux reports that some crowds agreed with this plan while others heckled him. Later, de Gaulle sends him on a “good will” journey to present him to Asian leaders as an expert in French culture… at which point he once again falls into a long conversation with the Indian prime-minister Nehru… as if it were verbatim, which it obviously isn’t. To himself, he speculates on what Indian courage is and he spends many pages considering the courage of Indians suffering poverty, the courage of Indians forbearing British colonialism, the courage of both Hindu and Muslim during the violent partition which separated India from the new state of Pakistan. But [1944-1965] the idea of courage leads him into a long fugue about the courage he saw in the French Resistance, especially the maquis, and how in 1944 he was captured and faced the possibility of being tortured by the Gestapo. He managed to persuade his captors that he was not in the Resistance and ultimately he was let go…. This is a very vivid account of events and, along with his descriptions of life in the prison, it is one of his best pieces of writing. But he also presents some events that are questionable – his derring-do in taking charge of all the prisoners and rallying them to continue the fight after the German warders had fled; or his tale of telling a German General that his cause was lost. It’s moments like these that we fear his chronicle is unreliable.
Part Three returns us [1958 – 1965] to the matter of India. In over 26 pages, Malraux tells us how he reacted to the Hindu religion and how he was impressed by its mysticism. Again, as so often in his prose, there is a vagueness about what he is discussing. Sceptical as a reader, I find much of what he says sounds superficial, as if he has not really absorbed what Hinduism really is. Indeed to me, what he writes here is very like the later hippies who went on pilgrimages to India ‘cos Eastern religions were way cool man. [How dare I say this? Because I have a devout Hindu son-in-law who has taught me much of his religion.] Whereupon, goodness knows why, Malraux turns to [1940] giving us a very vivid account of how he had been part of a tank battalion, and his crew were caught with him when they stumbled into a German trap. As in his writing of action in L’Espoir, this is an excellent example of Malraux’s reportage at his best. There follows [1948-1956] 34 tight pages purporting to be a long conversation Malraux had with the Indian prime-minister Nehru, dealing with religion, art, philosophy and the future of both India and the West. Once again [aren’t I repetitive?] I refuse to believe that this conversation was verbatim. It is highly unlikely that Nehru was mainly interested in Malraux’s theorising. More likely, Nehru was more interested in pragmatic diplomatic things.
Part Four is the strangest and most unhinged section of Anti-Memoirs, being a potpourri of memories Malraux recalls from his experiences in South-East Asia in the 1920s and after the Second World War. This section is 101 pages long. It is an extraordinary fugue i.e. it runs in all directions. It is made up of random conversations as various characters he knew speak of Annam and other parts of once was part of France’s empire. Malraux rakes over the type of things he had written about in his novel La Voie Royale. In these conversations, many of his characters are given fictious names – one being called Baron Clappique (the name of a major character in his novel La Condition Humane). Presumably this was for discretion. Much of these conversations take place in Singapore. In some respects Malraux, to his credit, is criticising what French colonialism was like in South-East Asia as old French buffers twaddle along about how good the old days were in Vietnam. But remember Anti-Memoirs was written at a time when the U.S.A. was involved in Vietnam in a quagmire which the French had started… and lost… and as the U.S.A. ultimately also lost.
Part Five. Looking in detail at the city of Hong Kong, Malraux spends some pages giving us a glamourised version of Mao Tse Tung’s “Long March” etc. Going to Canton he sits his way through the popular Communist propaganda “opera” The East is Red. He talks with a Chinese ambassador who, like other Chinese Communist intellectuals, is aware that Malraux had written two more-or-less pro-Communist novels set in China Les Conquerants and La Condition Humaine. Then he gets to speak with Chou En Lai… and finally he has an audience with Mao Tse Tung himself… And alas, this is yet another case of Malraux writing something that is probably not fully truthful. It is highly unlikely that Mao talked with him at great length, but Malraux presents it as a long philosophical discussion between two wise statesmen. So we have Mao congratulating Malraux for two of his novels about China, and answering at length all Malraux’s questions about how China was prospering and how feudalism was long gone and how he had good will towards France… though [again to his credit] Malraux notes for us that, though a few years earlier Mao had allowed free speech under the name “Let All the Flowers Bloom”, when Chinese citizens did actually spoke freely, Mao Tse Tung had them all persecuted, jailed or shot.
And so, rounding off this long potpourri, we return to France. As Minister of Culture under President de Gaulle, Malraux had the honour of giving, at the Pantheon, the oration for the Resistance hero Jean Moulin [see more about Moulin elsewhere on this blog]. Thinking of this, he then goes into accounts of Nazi atrocities in camps. But in this case he produces a very moving piece of work, once again showing how he could be an excellent reporter when he tried. With his stories of how the maquis were tortured if they were captured, with his understanding how war had turned to barbarism, and with how ordinary people had to cope with it, he tries how to make sense of it all. Here he is at his best.
Having read and reviewed Malraux’s five most significant books, I could make all manner of comments about Malraux as novelist and journalist. But before I do that, you will be given later on this blog a review of what his first wife thought of him and a review of what is regarded as the definitive biography of him
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