Something Old

  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.

“LA VOIE ROYALE” by ANDRE MALRAUX  (published in the original French in 1930; published in English as “The Way of Kings”)

            Why, within the first few chapters of reading La Voie Royale, did I think “This is Joseph Conrad territory!”?  You will see what I mean a few paragraphs on.

            A synopsis: La Voie Royale was Andre Malraux’s second novel, published in 1930. It gained in France a larger audience than his first novel Les Conquerants, perhaps because it was a sort of adventure story albeit a rather perverse one.

            Claude Vannec, a young Frenchman 25-years old, is an architect. He has decided to make money by going into the depths of the South-East Asian forests and sawing off neglected statues from temples. He could then make much money by selling this ancient art-work to wealthy connoisseurs. On the long voyage to what was then known as French Indo-China, Claude meets a fellow passenger, Perken, an older, rough, brutal, experienced Danish explorer, who knows very well the Asian jungles. Indeed he knows how to get through the tangled, half-hidden jungle “la voie royale“ [“the royal way” or “the way of kings”] which is the best route to the hidden temples. He also knows the Khmer Road. Perken agrees to join Claude as guide and comrade on this quest and they discuss money; and techniques for bringing statues down; and how they could get these treasures back to Europe. But Perken has an agenda of his own. He is hunting for a murderous criminal called Grabot who has disappeared into the rain forest. Grabot is somewhere between Laos, Cambodia and Thailand [French colonies at that time]. Perken is apparently trying to buy machine-guns and may intend to set himself up as ruler of a local tribe…

At which point I smell the influence of Joseph Conrad. A European’s quest to find a missing man in the jungle? Think of Marlow going up the river to find the missing Kurtz in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. A man setting himself up as ruler of a tribe? Think Conrad’s Lord Jim. I’m not saying that Malraux’s work is plagiarism, because La Voie Royale is very different from Conrad’s work. But I’d be surprised if Malraux hadn’t read Conrad as one of his inspirations.

Anyway, reaching Saigon [then France’s capital in Indo-China], Claude Vannec is told by an official, the director of the French Institute, that he is permitted to examine the temples hidden by foliage in the jungle, but the statues have to stay in situ. Claude sees this order as unnecessary bureaucratic nonsense and ignores it. So he and Perken set off with saws and tools and other implements and provisions. They buy carts to carry back their loot. And of course they hire porters with bullocks to haul the carts through the dense, sweltering-hot, stifling rain-forests. One of their guides is unreliable. They are infected my nasty spiders, hordes of aggressive ants, viscous large leaves that stick to their clothes and other major discomforts. On the border between Cambodia and Siam [as it then was called], they find what they were looking for. They saw their way through solid-rock statues of gods and dancing girls, load them on their carts, and then want to turn for home…

… But, what with the very heavy load they have stolen, going back is harder than it was when going into the forests. When Claude and Perken are sleeping in a primitive Moi village, their carts are stolen and hidden from them. Most of their porters have deserted them.  This means they have to go to another village to get help and brawn to retrieve their loaded carts… and in doing so, they have to go through areas where the criminal Grabot may be hiding. So they are in what Malraux calls “cette dissidence a demi sauvage” [“this mix half savage rebels”] at which point I can’t help thinking that using the  term “savages” often means simply people who won’t buckle down to colonial power. When they reach another village, they meet a far more savage tribe then the Moi – the Stieng. And there they find the notorious criminal Grabot. The Stieng have captured him, blinded him, tortured him, and tied him up, prolonging his agony before they kill him. Claude and Perken are besieged in a hut, waiting to be killed along with Grabot. Perken tries to bargain with the chief. He and Claude fear that in being tortured they might be castrated. Perken uses a diplomatic stratagem. He tells the tribal chief that if his strong men can help them continue their journey, he will be able to give the chief many “jars” [in other words an endless supply of alcohol]. The chief agrees and Claude and Perken continue on their journey – taking the blind and mutilated Grabot with them.

But Grabot dies, proudly. And Perken, an old man, knows that his knee has become contaminated ( by suppurated arthritis poisoning his body). He is sure he does not have long to live. As they pass through new territory, they can hear machine-guns shooting and a French militia moving into the forest. And then they can hear workers building a new railway line. Is this a sign of “civilisation” moving in? Or does it mean the crushing of a different society? It can be read either way. And in the midst of this, old Perken dies. So the last pages focus on the death of Perken and his defiance of the world and humankind. And Claude goes back to “civilisation” without having made a fortune.

 

This is a simplified account of the novel, leaving much ambiguity. Is it about the failure of a grandiose idea – a foolish scheme which achieved nothing and hence an example of “the vanity of human wishes”? Or is it a critique of colonialism? After all, there are a few stabs at the French empire. Early in the novel Claude, annoyed at one moment by an old French bureaucrat, says very presciently “Dans trente ans, son Institut ser-t-il encore la, et les Francais en Indochine?” [“Will he still be here in thirty years, and will the French still be in Indochina?”] Yet there is really little focus on colonialism and Malraux spends more time showing us the barbarous behaviour of the rain-forest tribes. So this novel is not really an anti-colonial, protest novel. Or – as many of Malraux’s French seemed to have first read La Voie Royale – is it simply an adventure story with its jungle and wild people and violence?

I don’t think any of these descriptions really fit the bill when you consider the novel as a whole. As I see it, more than anything La Voie Royale it is a tale built on ideas out of Nietzsche – the superior man who is able to act in a way that inferior people cannot [the superman]; the contempt for the weak; the assumption that laws are for cowards; the admiration of the strong; the idea that women are a nuisance; the cult of death, along with a belief that life is meaningless anyway; and all that matters is the assertion of the self. Such ideas are scattered through La Voie Royale. For the record, in her memoirs [which I will examine later on this blog] Malraux’s first wife Clara says that when they were young they mostly admired law-breaking loners and advocates of violence in fact and fiction, such as  “Raskolnikov, Nietzsche, Julien Sorel, the other Sorel, and Rastignac”. Immature rebellious teenagers often think that way.

When Claude and Perken first meet on the ship going to Asia, Perken lectures Claude on his large experience in all the brothels he has visited and suggests that women are things to be discarded once used. Perken wants to carry out his [maniacal?] plan to gather together colonials and natives under a dominion ruled by himself. He sees himself as an autocratic king. When later Claude says that dying is dreadful,  Perken says  “Viellir, c’est tellement plus grave… Accepter son destin, sa fonction, la niche a chien elevee sur sa vie unique… On ne sait pas ce qu’est la mort quand on est jeune…”  [“Decay is the real death… Ageing is much worse than death! Accepting your fate, your function, the dog-house you’re forced to live in… you don’t know what death is when you’re young.”] Claude picks up this idea later and concludes  “L’absence de finalite donne a la vie devenue une condition de I’action.” [“The absence of finality [possibly meaning there is no afterlife], that in itself has become a condition of action.”] And much later, considering the criminal Grabot they are chasing, Perken pontificates “Vous savez aussi bien que moi que la vie n’a aucun sens; a vivre seul on n’echappe guere a la preoccupation de son destin… La mort est la, comprenez-vous, comme… comme l’irrefutable preuve de l’absurdiee de la vie…”  [“You know as well as I do that life has no meaning; even if you live, you can’t really escape from worrying about your fate… Death is always there, you understand, as…as irrefutable evidence of the absurdity of life…”] Ultimately nihilism, mes amis.

This novel has much bravo and machismo, though I don’t think (as some have suggested) that Claude and Perken are homosexual, even if Perken does tutor Claude in misogyny. Their mutual attraction is Platonic. While Claude is the main character in the first part of the novel, the second part is dominated by Perken. Perken’s whole philosophy, such as it is, is built on the idea of defiance in the face of death by showing how you can put up with excruciating pain. Only then are you truly a man. This is why Perken admires the mutilated Grabot who dies without whining about it.

… Or could it be that I am missing the point? After all, both Perken and Grabot fail in what they try to achieve. But then life is absurd…

It is not only the ideas that alienate me from this novel. Far more irritating is Malraux’s prose style. His first novel Les Conquerants was very much a political story and impersonal; but its prose was clear, precise and very readable.  Unfortunately the first half of La Voie Royale is overwhelmed by descriptions of the foliage of the rain forests. Of course there has to be some description of the rain-forests – they are essential to the narrative. But Malraux too often turns his descriptions into tortured, baroque metaphors which are totally irrelevant to the real situation. Worse, there are fugues of vaguely philosphical conversation amounting to sophomoric chatter about the pointless of life, how only the strong are to be admired, and we're all going to die anyway.

 

Essential footnote: La Voie Royale was partly based on a real event. In the early 1920s, Malraux decided to make some money by looting Asian temples and selling statues to the rich. With a team (including his wife Clara) he trudged through the jungles in Cambodia and other French territories. But even so, he wasn’t able to cut down the statues made of solid rock. For all the negative things the French colonial government did, they at least sometimes tried to protect ancient Asian art, although there was much hypocrisy, as the Frrench colonial govermant also often turned a blind eye to such looting.… but as soon as Malraux got back to Saigon, the police charged him for trying to mutilate these treasures, not helped by the fact that Malraux had been aggressifly rude to some colonial officials. He was sent to jail on a sentence for three years.  But he was in the clink only for a few months [and he spent his time in a nice hotel]… because back in France, Clara was able to set up a petition for French intellectuals and authors to plead the importance of this up-coming young writer. It worked and Malraux got back to France.  For the record, Clara was angry that Malraux had written a novel that didn’t mention her part in her husband’s illegal venture. And of course Claude, Perken and Grabot were all completely fictious characters.