Simon Leys - The Hall of Uselessness - Collected Essays

On the Spanish Civil War, who, after having read Orwell, could still take seriously Malraux’s histrionic amphigory? Next to the stark truth of Homage to Catalonia , the misty and flatulent speeches of L’Espoir have a hollow ring of café eloquence. As to the Musée imaginaire —a shrewd imitation of the work of the art critic and historian Élie Faure (whose name Malraux always took great care never to mention) — Georges Duthuit demonstrated long ago in his ferocious and scholarly Musée inimaginable (in three volumes) that Malraux’s foray into art history had probably been his boldest work of fiction.[4]

In his old age, Malraux confided to Bruce Chatwin (another seductive mythmaker — a lesser prophet perhaps, but a better writer): “In France, intellectuals are usually incapable of opening an umbrella.”[5] If this observation is true, it may well explain the puzzling and enduring prestige that Malraux always commanded among these same intellectuals: people who are too clumsy to handle their own umbrellas must naturally look with awe at a man who can fire machine-guns, drive tanks and pilot aeroplanes. (In actual fact, though Malraux organised an air squadron in the Spanish war, and styled himself a colonel when he led an armoured brigade of French partisans at the end of the Second World War, his only experience of aeroplanes was that of a passenger; and he never even learned to drive a car — which I find quite endearing, actually, but then, I myself often find it difficult to open my umbrella.)

Once you discard the heroic and colourful paraphernalia of the warrior and the adventurer, and confine your scrutiny to the more austere field of literature and criticism, where stage props and other gimmicks are of little support — in the end, what remains of Malraux’s self-built legend?

Nabokov, who considered Malraux “quite a third-rate writer” and was puzzled by Edmund Wilson’s professed admiration for him (“I am at a loss to understand your liking Malraux’s books — or are you just kidding me?”) commented on La Condition humaine : “From childhood, I remember a golden inscription that fascinated me: Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-lits et des Grands Express Européens . Malraux’s work belongs to the Compagnie Internationale des Grands Clichés .” And then he pursued and produced a hilarious list of rhetorical questions, asking Wilson to tell him, for instance, “What is this ‘great silence of the Chinese night’? Try and substitute ‘the American night,’ ‘the Belgian night’ etc., and see what happens…”[6]

Even in France there were a number of connoisseurs who privately expressed similar reservations. Sartre detected the trouble quite early: “Yes, Malraux has got a style — but it is not a good one.” In a letter to Simone de Beauvoir, he confessed: “ La Condition humaine is plagued, by turns, with ridiculous passages and with deadly boring pages.” Exactly like Nabokov, he found Malraux’s narrative technique old-fashioned and dismally reminiscent of the worst Soviet fiction. As to Le Temps du mépris , he simply considered it “deeply abject.” (Nabokov called it “one solid mass of clichés.”) Plodding through L’Espoir , Sartre added: “I am dragging myself through this book which may be full of ideas, but it is so boring! This chap seems to be lacking a little something, but, good God! he is lacking it badly!”[7]

The novelist and essayist Jacques Chardonne, who had questionable views in some other matters but who unquestionably knew about the subtle art of writing French prose, identified the root of the problem of Malraux’s mumbo-jumbo (his “ galimatias ”): “I have attempted to read Malraux, and I became angry. I am not going to do his work for him. Let him first sort out his own ideas. Once he finds out what he is actually thinking, he will become able to express it better and quicker.”[8]

An ancient Greek philosopher remarked that if horses had gods, these gods would look like horses. Every society puts in its pantheon the icons it deserves and in which it can recognise its own features. Our age has proved so far to be the age of Sham and Amnesia. But at this point you may suspect that the acrimony with which I have deplored Malraux’s entry into the Pantheon in Paris conceals some grudge — well, you would have guessed right.

What irks me is this: in 1935, Boris Souvarine, a former secretary of the Third International who had escaped from Moscow back to Paris, wrote the first documented analysis of Stalin’s murderous political career. This monumental and courageous work remains to this day a landmark in the unmasking of Stalinist crimes. The book was reissued in 1977, not long before Souvarine’s death. In the foreword which he wrote for this new edition, Souvarine recalled the vile and sinister obstacles he had to overcome when, forty years earlier, he first attempted to publish his historical masterpiece in Paris. At the time, the leading figures of the French intelligentsia avoided him as if he had the plague. Malraux, who could have had the book published by Gallimard, flatly refused to support it; but at least he was straightforward and said: “Souvarine, I believe that you and your friends are right. However, at this stage, do not count on me to support you. I shall be on your side when you make it to the top.” ( Je serai avec vous quand vous serez les plus forts .)[9]

And yet…

Einstein (who ought to know something on this subject) once observed that good ideas are rare. It seems to me that Malraux hit upon two important truths — which, after all, still represents a respectable record, well above the average that can be expected from most literary men.

1. Malraux, who worshipped T.E. Lawrence and dreamed all his life of imitating him, perceived accurately what made this ambiguous hero truly inimitable. He confided to Roger Stéphane: “In reality, Lawrence desired nothing at all. It is prodigiously hard to be a man who wants nothing .”[10]

2. On the very first page of his Antimémoires , he noted one simple reflection that should stand forever as a glorious counterweight to all the heavy and endless trains of the Compagnie Internationale des Grands Clichés . When he asked an old priest what he had learned about human nature after having spent a lifetime hearing people’s confessions, the man replied: “Fundamentally, there are no grown-ups .”

CURTIS CATE’S BIOGRAPHY OF MALRAUX[11]

Tristan Bernard said that he never read the books he was supposed to review: he was afraid he might become biased. He certainly had a point: the acquisition of knowledge can needlessly complicate many enterprises.

After reading Curtis Cate’s biography of Malraux — a remarkable work, well-researched, perceptive and informative — I realised that, in what I had just written, I had overlooked one aspect of our subject.

The simple fact is: Malraux was obviously a genius. What exactly he was a genius at, however, is not quite clear.

Nearly all those who came in direct contact with him fell under his spell — and I am not talking here of naïve schoolboys but of famous writers, some of whom were twice his age, as well as eminent thinkers, statesmen, leaders of men, saintly monks, cunning old politicians, glamorous socialites, cynical journalists, unworldly priests. When young, he appeared to them as a prodigy; in middle age, he was their hero; old, he became a prophet. At every stage in his life, he mesmerised and dazzled a vast and diverse audience. The old Trotsky in exile was so impressed after meeting the feverish and voluble young adventurer that he wrote at once to his New York publishers, urging them to bring out an American edition of La Condition humaine . André Gide — whom the French literati believed to be the twentieth-century Goethe, and who was thirty years Malraux’s senior — was overwhelmed by his conversation and privately complained that he could not keep up with such uninterrupted intellectual fireworks.