THE
WORK OF ART
Andre Malraux
T HIS CoNGRESS OF OURS HAS been held under the worst possible
conditions. Through the cooperation of a few, and with almost no money.
just have a look at the press clippings on the bulletin-board at the door.
From an occasional outburst of wrath, but above all, from the impressive
silence, we are henceforth aware that this Congress exists. Yet, if it held
no more than the possibility of giving as large an audience as possible to
books which in their own countries are no longer able to find one, if it
did no more than cement our union with a host of exiled comrades,-a
sense of solidarity which will be found expressed in its resolutions,-this
gathering would not be in vain.
But it has another meaning than that. You read yesterday the
speeches of the French Fascists. It is for each of us, then, as man and
man, to take his place at the post of combat. But let us not, through an
absurd preoccupation with the military aspect of things, underestimate that
power of thought, which today makes it possible for our Balkan comrades,
banned at home, to return home whether in French or in English, for the
simple reason that this Congress has tak:en it upon itself to have their
works translated. It is in the nature of Fascism to be a nation; it is ours
to be a world.
Much has been said here concerning the defense of culture; but it may
be that the best thing about the Congress is the comprehension borne in
upon us that the question is not to be put that way. Let me explain.
When an artist of the Middle Ages carved a crucifix, when an Egyp–
tian sculptor hewed out a funeral-mask, they were creating what we would
term fetishes or holy images; they did not think of their carvings as art
objects; they would not have been able to conceive of such a thing. A
crucifix stood for the Christ, a funeral-mask for the dead; and the idea of
their being some day brought together in the same museum, in order that
we might study their lines and masses, would have struck their makers
as nothing more or less than a profanation. In a locked case in the museum
of Cairo, there are a number of statuettes. They are the earliest repre–
sentations of man. Up to that time, there had been but the concept, a
good deal easier to grasp, of the spiritual double, who abandoned man m
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