ISAIAH BERLIN
387
course , like anyone else's-with absolutely fascinated eyes; exactly what
Pasternak thought was so absurd about me in Russia. I thought that I
understood Malraux's feelings . In fact , I think he is a hero-worshipper,
although none of his heroes, except perhaps De Gaulle , and maybe Mao.
belong to the twentieth century. Lenin, Trotsky, were not figures in his
pantheon imaginaire.
I think he wants to live at the height of experience and seeks fulness of
life . There are people who loathe
Ie juste mzlieu
more than anything else
in the world , who want to be at some extreme-it doesn ' t matter whether
it is the extreme Right or the extreme Left-who want to be on the very
edges of being, who are bored by " everyday life." If I talked about
p/qures,
that was a particularly vulgar and inadequate way of saying that
what he wanted was to be lifted by some unique sensation to an enlarged
and heightened sensibility of some sort, which some find in religious ,
some in artistic experience . In the case of Malraux, his acute visual sensi–
bility plays a central part in this, but above all , I think , contemplation
of heroic people, acts , individuals-s plendor: some unimaginable ideal
of splendor, which he, of course, perfectly well knew, and knows, cannot
literally be realized. If this is romanticism, it is so in a classical framework .
I think that the painter David had something of this-perhaps, David 's
attitude towards Napoleon was not altogether unlike Malraux's attitude
to de Gaulle . Napoleon said to David after he looked at his magnificent
Sacre:
"C'
est tres bien fait, Monsieur David, c' est tres bien fait." I am
sure that if de Gaulle ever said anything like this to Malraux, he must
have experienced similar sensations-which I understand, and sympa–
thize with.
Courcel:
You said that Malraux's problems seemed personal, always re–
mained personal?
Berlin:
Oh, I don't know what I could have meant by that, perhaps that it
was nothing to do with theories. I think that he rather romanticizes him–
self, which is to me another sympathetic characteristic. I don't mean that
he permanently lives in a world of fantasy or illusion, far from it, though
I think that sometimes he may have fantasies , and is glad to do so. But I
think that he does resemble the romantic tradition of the nineteenth
century. I suppose that the most characteristic representative of it is
Baudelaire-the
poete maudit,
the
ame damnee-whose
vision has
in
it
something wild and contemptuous and tragic , intoxication with black
wickedness, the Satanism Mario Praz writes about, which is not bogus,
not counterfeit, which really does respond to something genuine in such
people's natures. I think that Malraux has a touch of that, yes; it is not
decadent and not sentimental ; there is something very dry and realistic
