MALRAUX AND THE DEMONS OF ACTION
hold of him in Indo-China, Malraux went to China in 1920, where
he remained for nearly two years. There, for the first time, he en–
countered history in the making,
.a
"great action": the Chinese
Revolution, or rather the series of insurrections connected with the
rise of Chiang Kai-shek to the head of the Kuomintang, which ended
up on one hand in the Shanghai massacre of April, 1927, and on
the other in the formation of the Communist Army which for twenty
years has been successfully challenging Chiang's power. Without be–
coming a member of the Party, Malraux worked with the Commu–
nist wing of the Kuomintang, first in Canton, then in Shanghai, where
he performed the functions of Propaganda Commissar of the Revo–
lutionary Committee. Out of this experience came
The Conquerors
and
Man's Fate
(1933).
Those who labeled Malraux an "aesthete" or an "egotist" have
also questioned the meaning of the public allegiance he gave for
nearly fourteen years (from 1925 to 1939) to the Communist cause.
The right-wing critics (from Brasillach to Thierry Maulnier) re–
peatedly asserted that he could just as well have been a fascist, since
he finally was only interested in violent action and warlike virtues.
To which Malraux replied that he objected to fascism precisely be–
cause it made of warlike virtues the supreme virtues, while to a Com–
munist they were only the tragic means to an end which was the
opposite of war or domination. From the left, Malraux was often
accused of being kept by "egotistic" reservations from giving a genuine
allegiance to the cause. To this, he answered that if revolutionary
fraternity meant "indulging in First Communion emotions," he
would have none of it. But if it meant to make of human dignity
and of human culture the highest values, then it was his chief con–
cern.
As
for discipline in action, nobody could accuse him of not
being aware of its necessity. But this was definitely not a subject of
speculation or for artistic enthusiasm.
The truth is that Malraux's connection with the revolutionary
cause was of a complex kind. No book of his throws a more direct
light on this complexity, and on the ambiguities it involves, than his
first novel,
The Conquerors.
Here is the hero, Garine, observed from
the outside:
"If
by a bolshevik you mean a revolutionist, Garine is
doubtless a bolshevik. But if you mean ... a particular type of revo–
lutionist, who, among other characteristics, possesses that of believing
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