ANDRE MALRAUX’S POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
JEANNINE HARRAULT
Saint Mande, France
By
nature Andre Malraux is both an artist and a moralist. He once allowed the
politician within himself to develop only to serve the active idealist he is. In
fact, his political philosophy has universal and timeless roots by far
transcending each event.
The
artist holds the gravest views on art. To Andre Malraux masterpieces offer a
manner of communication between man and man, across time and space, and are the
rediscovery of some hidden higher energy. So the moralist thrives in the heart
of the artist. But the moralist, at the end of his long condemnation of
individual happiness in times of tragedy–also the eminent author desires that
atrocities should not be forgotten in order to serve as warnings–remembers art
and yearns for a richer life. This is particularly apparent in “Man’s Hope,” a
celebrated novel on the Spanish civil war in the nineteen twenties. Between the
storms of gunfire his heroes pause to reflect on post-revolutionary tasks and
the need to give every man his chance of ultimate worldly fulfilment.
It
is essential to remember that each attitude Andre Malraux adopts, however
simple and clear on the surface, is invariably the result of complex
motivations. Each statement is rooted in human psychology in general, history,
philosophies and theology, Eastern or Western, and a close study of the actual
political imbroglio.
His
quest or art as a social link is by no means the sole aspect of his global
hunger for the universal in Man. The impetus to his search was given by the illnesses of civilization he
diagnosed about him, both East and West; the absence of authentic spiritual
drive under certain Western concepts and the cruel rotting and tearing of
Eastern roots under the impact of Western technology. This at an early stage of his life. The politician had to
grow. His hunger remains to this day and came once more to light during Andre
Malraux’s latest experiment, his “Legend of the Century,” a series of TV
presentations with the author himself appearing on the screen and commenting on
the documentaries and film sequences, and on his own texts read by professional
actors. The whole series are an evocation of the foremost events of this
century’s history, the world wars, the Russian and Spanish and Chinese
revolutions~ India and the Gandhian phase of Indian development.
Another
charismatic Frenchman, the famous pilot writer, who died In the war, Antoine de
Saint Exupery once, wrote in his private notebook, “Let us restore the
Universal in Man.”
In
what sense is Andre Malraux a theoretician of politics? Certainly not as an
ideologist or even as an economist, so strong is his sense that economy is made
for man and not man for economy. His allusions to hollow technical development
in our civilization have been unequivocal. His studies of “strategy” be it that
of Julius Caesar leading his armies, that of Napoleon as a man of destiny, or
of Saint Just as an artisan of the French revolution are always undertaken in
context. He remains ever mindful of the fact that each hour of history has its
own specific crying needs.
His
theorizing in the narrowest sense has been reserved to the field of art, and
also, as is clearly perceptible in an early essay he wrote “The Temptations of
the Occident”, an analysis of the working of the human mind, Eastern and
Western, and the consequences of action, at the philosophical level. He has
never offered us a set political system.
As
it was the case for Sir Wilton Churchill, Andre Malraux’s building up of
political attitudes and actions has been entirely pragmatic.
He
undertook his early journeys as an ardent lover of oriental art. His commitment
to political action came about under a shock. The occasion was the sweating
Indo-Chinese peasantry denied their fair share of the crops they had
cultivated. He knew that at home his countrymen lived unaware of the injustices
perpetuated in their name. The workers needed a defensor. Andre Malraux took up
the part, also founding a journal to this effect.
His
enemies have accused Andre Malraux of shifting sides, of having travelled from
left to right. It is barely a fair tribute to his constant concern for the
underdog and his constant endeavour to act as a reformer. It has been pointed
out that he led an anti-colonialist action, subsequently fighting for the
Spanish republicans, and that, following his role as an organiser of the French
internal resistance during the second world war, he became a pillar of
President de Gaulle’s Government. A remark and suggestion may follow. General
de Gaulle was ultra weary of parliamentary instability and convinced that the
strife of French political parties between themselves had contributed to
France’s temporary defeat in 1940. He therefore conceived his party as a
“reassemblement”, a gathering together, of French citizens bound by their
patriotism and bent on reform, to which conception Andre Malraux adhered.
The
Hindu notion of “Dharma” may help us to understand an apparent shift; the good
to be done at one particular moment, an action virtuous in one phase but not
necessarily in the next. A metamorphosis of duty according to circumstances.
Whatever
the strength of the initial shock he received at the sight of human misery (he
was still a very young man who missed serving in the first world war and felt
it almost as a sin) Andre Malraux had kept intact his instinct for “adventure”,
and his reaction of thrill over the unknown. As a historian he feels deeply the
complexity of the evils the revolutionaries were attempting to stem, and of the
good they hoped to accomplish. In other domains also mysteries haunt him. A
much commented “adventure” was his flight over the forbidden lands of Yeman,
between Mareb and Meln over the ruins of the city of the Queen of Sheba, the Mother of Solomon’s son
and thereby the ancestress of the present Emperor of Ethiopia. Andre Malraux
the romantic dreamer, filled with emotion, contemplated from the clouds the
ruins of temples and the enigmatic curves of levelled stones.
The
liberal traits of his political outlook are largely determined by this sense he
has of the approximation of social life and his inborn longing for a deeper
expression of man. To such an extent that Andre Malraux is shy of systems of
politics. He keeps equally attracted to revolutionary tasks and
post-revolutionary tasks, having accomplished both. He has been very officially
a minister.
Also,
he possessed a “leader” personality, no doubt a somewhat rare phenomena among
artists and theoreticians of art. He has always believed in human solidarity
between all races, and frequently exalts the notion of fraternity. As a
historian he has studied particularly the life of Saint Bernard, the Cistercian
monk who moulded Europe in the twelfth century was a protector of the knight
Templars and the preacher of the crusades. He studied the rise and fall of
Napoleon with equal passion, and accepts willingly the rise of men of destiny
and their ascendant over others for necessary historical tasks.
He
himself has given the lead to both men of the East and men of the West. As a
minister he supported and inspired the French Head of State.
One
of the results of Andre
Malraux’s empirical political formation is that his words and actions are one,
a last proof of which was his offer to fight for Bangla Desh, unhesitatingly,
unstintingly. He is both the seer and the doer, and states his case strongly.
During his term as President of the French Republic, General de Gaulle had been
once menaced by rebel generals from Algeria. It was Andre Malraux who promptly
organised each defence of Paris in case of their air-landing.
His
fundamental reaction to the present crisis both East and West, always, has been
a desire to examine different civilizations throughout history in an attempt to
discover some essential traits reappearing in them all and fertilizing them. He
comes back to the subject in the first volume of his biography. From the start
he is a universalist. As a minister he was an ardent patriot who managed to
live the paradox of being intensely a nationalist and none the less intensely
an internationalist, particularly as a decoloniser.
His
personal development between warfaring, his great reverence for advanced
cultures, for literature, for friendship, his longing for the widest possible
experiences express his ideal of complete man.
Heroes
have always fascinated him. So individual action. By the grace of what inner
drive does a man turn into a hero? Andre Malraux himself should know. To him
the hero is a man of destiny, not so much choosing but chosen. The heroic he
feels about in terms of the sacred, although he does not use the word. In a
purely lay context he attaches a spiritual sense to heroic values.
Andre
Malraux is a reformer straining his will with reference to long term
objectives. He is not a man of floating policies. In fact he is inflexible by
temperament, with a streak of romanticism to soften the outline. He stands for
civil liberties and human rights in all places. But the remedy may be different
according to the malady.
Shall
we recall his potently moving open letter of December 19, 1971, addressed to
President Nixon? He reminds the President that his own citizens of America
themselves who have always shown a love for fundamental rights are shocked, and
he pleads for Bangla Desh.
Today
he draws away from politics in the restricted technical sense, yielding to his
philosophical inclinations. Andre Malraux now refuses to harness himself to any
particular party, be they apparent heirs of General de Gaulle, no doubt only to
draw closer to be very core of political problems, the problem of man himself.