ISAIAH BERLIN
391
Victor Hugo, who struck him as a terrible, noisy bore, although he thought
he was immensely gifted. But he talked about Delacroix, whom he liked
because he was proud, bitter, and grim, and above all, on his own, a man
by himself,
solitaire:
Hemingway, he thought, was a phony
solitaire,
unconvincing, no good; he knocked him out. He liked uniqueness, if
possible with a
maudit
strain; hostile, doomed figures who despised
accommodation of any kind. Defiance is what he
seemed
to
lik<t best; in
spite of his official position, in spite of being a member of the govern–
ment, in spite of apparently seeming to be a wholly dedicated, conform–
ist Gaullist by this time, the idea of defiance, preferably with an element
of dandyism and swagger-refusal
to
transact, the insistence of self–
expression at the expense of everything-clearly attracted him. I expect
I am painting the wrong picture, because I
seem
to
be simply painting a
picture of a characteristic nineteenth-century romantic-he's not that at
all-I"m afraid I'm not very good at psychological vignettes-I really
must stop.
Coureel:
I remember that conversation about Delacroix, and how
you
tried
to
reconstruct his life, with Malraux handing on a piece and
you
supply–
ing the next, and so on. But I also remember that
you
talked about music.
Berlin:
Yes,
we talked about music a little, and he obviously didn't really
like music much. He offended Stravinsky greatly,
you
remember, by
describing a funeral march by the Belgian composer
Gossec
(at the time
of the French Revolution, or perhaps a little after, but at a time of revolu–
tionary change) . He ordered this to be played at the public funeral-no,
not a funeral , I think it was a commemoration-of the great Resistance
leader Jean Moulin; he was clearly pleased about finding the piece by
Gossec,
with that particular pleasure which amateurs always have when
they discover something which professionals haven't told them about-I
know the feeling all too well.
Coureel:
When "the God failed, " people like Koestler and Stephen Spender
were left in the dark, but for Malraux there was the possibility of salvation
through art.
Berlin:
No, he didn ' t strike
me
as being saved . Stephen Spender was a very
short-lived Communist, for not more, I should say, than three or four
months in all; he was a great friend of mine, and still is. I am very devoted
to him. Communism was an irrelevant episode in his life. After all, every–
body who had any heart at all was attracted to something of the kind in
the terrible thirties. I was only saved from temptation to work for or with
the Party by the accident of witnessing the Russian Revolution in
some
of
its less attractive aspects as a child and later, from a distance, watching
some
of its gloomier consequences. I don't think salvation is what Malraux
