!
ISAIAH BERLIN
385
Russian authors didn't talk (at least not on the occasions when I met
them) about the weather or literary earnings or publishers or periodicals
or rival groups; there was no small talk, no obstacle between them and
the object they wished to talk about-Hafiz or Chekhov or Wilde or why
Dr. Cronin but not E.M. Forster had been translated into Russian-and
there was something very direct and fresh and spontaneous. This moved
Malraux greatly, and he returned to it with obvious pleasure and fas–
cination.
I had a feeling about him then that he was in search of some kind of
experience which would take away the patina of the conventional world
and make things look new and fresh. I wondered whether he obtained
some experience of this kind in Indochina, when he went there in the
twenties. He was fascinated by these Soviet writers and their directness
of vision and noncommercialism. He realized that they were living under
very difficult conditions. There was rigid censorship and mounting perse–
cution even then, sometimes very violent; but he talked about Russia
with a degree of eloquence and passion which made me feel that he had
got on to a subject which had laid its spell on him; that we were not simply
having a polite conversation between host and guest on an official occa–
sion, but that I had turned out to know something about a world which
he knew too, that we were fascinated by the same kind of people and by
the same kind of values among these people. And this created an imme–
diate bond of sympathy-at least, I felt it: I don't know if he did ...
Coureel: You
were, as he wrote to
you
on the fly leaf of the
Antimemoires,
.'son complice."
Berlin:
Well, that is perfectly true; after that there was no looking back,
after that it all went marvelously well. I can't remember in detail what
he said about Russia, or particular descriptions that he gave, but he was
literally fascinating.
Coureel:
During that lunch
you
told me also that Malraux needed •
'Piqures,
"
that he first had
la piqure ehinoise,
then
la piqure espagnole
and that
de Gaulle was
I 'ultime piqure.
Berlin:
I think that was a terribly vulgar thing to say,
if
that is what I said.
I hope I didn 't; but if
you
remember it, I probably did. If so, I regret it
and withdraw it.
It
isn't that at all, no, it seems to me there are many
ways in which people become Marxists: sometimes out of social idealism,
because they react acutely to injustice or poverty or exploitation or misery,
because they want social equality, or want to end the oppression of one
human being by another-bullying, slavery, sycophancy, domination.
I didn't think he belonged to that category.
Coureel:
Which one did he belong to?
