MALRAUX AND THE DEMONS OF ACTION
for a meaningful issue, intellectual evidence becomes irrelevant. His–
tory, the event, the occasion, transcend all truth. The humiliation of
the intellect, in fact, makes Malraux gamble on the deed even as
the weakness of the human. condition made Pascal gamble on God.
"To tie oneself to a great action of some kind, not to let go of it,
to be haunted and intoxicated by
it"
(The Conquerors,
1928) is the
only issue. A man of any magnanimity cannot do less. And it is
Malraux's contention that in our time a "great action" can mean
only one thing:
a battle,
and a reason for it.
When he described Fabrizio searching for the battle of
Vl
aterloo
and not being able to find it, Stendhal was expressing, in his own
nimble way, one of the great insights of nineteenth-century sensibility.
It was a flash of pure wonder at the utterly paradoxical relation be–
tween an individual destiny and whatever general significance might
be attached to a "historical event." In fact, it was the splendid illus–
tration of a myth which no historical venture, and no amount of
sophistry, has thereafter been able to obliterate from our conscious–
ness. The "epic" moments of
War and Peace:
Prince Andre lying on
the battlefield of Austerlitz; Alapatych at Smolensk; Pierre among
the prisoners, comprise a most vigorous apprehension of the same
meaning, and of the same myth. The myth is about man and history:
the more naively, and genuinely, man experiences a historical event,
the more the event disappears, and something else takes its place: the
starry sky, the other man, or the utterly ironical detail. That is, the
unhistorical: Karataiev and his footgear appear infinitely more sig–
nificant than .Napoleon or Mother Russia. Yet man is inside the
event as in a trap. History does not reveal its meaning, but gives way
to destiny. We have the paradox of an irretrievable disproportion.
For Stendhal, as for Tolstoy, the revelation brings with it an instant
of catharsis. Something might or might not follow from it, but the
moment of illumination and wonder has a value of its own, and can
never be forgotten, or explained away: a stark question has been
addressed by the living individual to the historical whirlwind, how–
ever mighty or majestic.
Now Andre Malraux is perfectly well aware of the ambiguity of
history. Yet, he depends on the historical to give clarity and form
to human action. He is a Stendhalian character determined to have
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