ANDRE MALRAUX
399
of that insistence with which so many betray that their great zeal in
convincing others is only a desire to convince themselves; the absence
of the will to seduce. Most great men have in common a heaviness of
expression, this confusion, this mysterious center of the spirit which
appears to spring from doctrine and exceeds it in every sense, and
which produces the habit of considering thought as something that
must be conquered and not as something which repeats itself. In the
domain of the spirit, this man had forged his own world, and in it he
lived. I remember the form in which we spoke of Pasternak:
L
T:
Almost the entire Russian youth follows him in actuality, but
to me he does not appeal very much. I do not care for the art of
technicians, art for specialists.
AM:
For me, art is, above all, the highest or the most intense ex–
pression of a legitimate human experience.
LT:
I think that this art will be reborn in all of Europe. In Russia
revolutionary literature has not yet produced great work.
AM:
The true expression of revolutionary art has not been produced
by literature but by the cinema, isn't that so? As much before as
after, the cinema; before, Potemkin, and afterwards the Mother.
L T :
Lenin thought that communism would express itself artistically
through the cinema. With reference to Potemkin and the Mother,
many have spoken to me in the same way in which you do. But I
am going to tell you something: I have never seen those films.
When they were first shown, I was at the front. Later others were
shown, and when they returned to the earlier ones, I was already
in exile.
This art of the first fruit of the revolutionary cinema, this art
which in so many concepts corresponds to his life and which forms a
part of his legend, Trotsky has never seen.
AM:
Why is not literature to disappear and make room for another
art genre, just as the dance, which expressed the art of primitive
tribes, has been replaced by the arts of our own epoch. We
separate the cinema from painting, but I think that is of little
significance.
It
is writing that has killed the dance: there is in the
cinema a way of writing that is not created with words, which
could very easily kill writing itself: the word killing the dance, the
image killing the word.
Trotsky smiles.
L
T:
It
is difficult for me to answer about the effects on the dance.
Bear in mind that I know very little about this thing technically .
