MALRAUX AND THE DEMONS OF ACTION
Should we relate
this
to the notion of the "liberal hero" to which
Malraux has made a reference in his conversation with James Bum–
ham? The "liberal hero" is, it seems, the man who unites "strength
of will," energy, decisiveness in action (hence contempt for the op–
portunism of the liberal politician) to a clear consciousness of the
"nobility" of man and a profound respect for cultural values. A
kind of humanized (and humanistic) Garin. Significantly enough,
Malraux sees the prototype of the "liberal Hero" in T. E. Lawrence,
the soldier of fortune and Oxford intellectual who (like Perken of
The Royal Way)
almost succeeded in leaving "a scar on the map."
Lawrence's, however, was a definite dream of political accom–
plishment in the Middle East: "hustling into form the new Asia."
Malraux's own enterprise
is
the most general a modem intellectual
can conceive of. Its themes are not only the dialectics of will and
destiny; the mystery of man; the ambiguity of History; Western
values, but the rescue of
all
this through action: the "restoration
of structure and vigor" to Western culture, and the sense that this
must be accomplished in an extreme situation, hence through a series
of violent acts.
Malraux now attributes such an aim to De Gaulle with respect
to France, which he would not do
if
he had not first thought of it
himself, in a much broader context. Aside from mutual sympathy
and respect, Malraux and De Gaulle find what
is
probably their deep–
est reason for agreement in the fact that they both conceive of con–
temporary politics in terms of the inevitability of the Third World
War or, in any case, of the global struggle between East and West,
and of the role France is called
t?
play in it. The rest, for both of
them,
is
only a function of
this
central fact. Malraux never liked
political liberalism and democracy anyway. On this, no doubt, he
found it easy to agree with the General. On the other hand, since he
has gone through the experience of totalitarian politics, and of its
demand for the unconditional surrender of culture; and since he is
perfectly aware that, after Hitler, people expect something besides
appeals to authoritarian messianism, Malraux now insists on "cultural"
democracy and "cultural" liberalism. "To seek protection for freedom
today through a liberal political structure
is
pure folly," he told
Burnham. The only choice left
is
to trust the "liberal"
will
of the
"man of destiny." Finally Malraux's strongest argument in favor of
919
