lectuals, he may picture the people's front as a revolutionary body
hidingbehind conservative slogans in order "not to alarm the middle
classes."And
L'
Espoir
is plainly addressed to leftist intellectuals. As
a writer who enjoys literary distinction among radicals of all shades,
but more particularly as a writer who was himself close to
Ie trot-
skysme,
Malraux can be most effective by pointing his work, with its
elaboraterationalizations of the left-wing
status quo,
towards the ever-
growinganti-Stalinist movement. So his characters are allowed to
as-
sume
the revolution; and instead of calling the opposition "mad dogs"
or "agents of Franco" -official terminology rt:pellent to the genteel at-
mosphereof the novel-he simply drops them out of the picture.
But a totality, however sacred, makes poor material for dramatic
literature. So Malraux, obscuring the real nature of the struggle over
coOrdination,ignoring the whole revolutionary opposition, finds in
the Anarchists a politically harmless equivalent for the element of
dramatic conflict. And it turns out that the Anarchists are the lineal
descendantsof Ch' en and Kyo. They have absorbed, that is, the death
obsession,the "cult of sacrifice," the passion for lonely heroics-all the
futilitythat goes with an historically obsolete individualism. We en-
counterseveral examples of the species libertarian. We have, first, the
intellectual,who debates with Communists the meaning of the revolu-
tion,the issue of ethical as against political action, and emerges as a
sympatheticbut obviously forlorn Christ of the revolution. (There is
goodreason to suspect that, in these passages, Gide, Silone and other
anti-Stalinistintellectuals are being treated to a vicarious lecture on
"Bolshevism"). The libertarian identifies Marxism with Stalinism, and
hisStalinist opponents appeal to Marxist doctrine to justify the very
symptomsof bureaucratic degeneration which the libertarian deplores.
Livelyand inventive, filled with the ghosts of ideas if not their sub-
stance, these conversations are nevertheless as abstract as the
charactersthemselves; they seldom involve any of the real issues in
Spain;they take place in an atmosphere of sentimental conviviality
whichhides the actual core of antagonisms-they are, in short, "set
pieces,"chessboard manouvers with Malraux working from both ends
ofthe board at once; and their aim is to give an intimate reflective
appearance,a sense of values weighed and tested, to a narrative which
i
in essence a monolith of factional reportage.
The illusion of moral freedom for the characters is further im-
pairedby the fact that the various philosophical alternatives are con-
stantlyconfronted by their political equivalents, and so "exposed" on
thepractical plane as well. Indeed, it seems to be the conscious object
of
L'Espoir
to disinfect the world of all alternatives to the drill-squad
amolutesof Stalinism. And just as the Comintern politicos try to
ANDRE MALRAU X
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