andré Malrauxquotes

1901 - 1976

Photograph of André MalrauxFrench novelist and statesman, André Malraux (1901-1976), wrote beautifully and prolifically on the philosophy and history of art in Museum Without Walls, and meditated on art’s ability to free man from a meaningless existence through creative pursuits in his book The Voices of Silence.

His novels on war (L’Espoir, or Man’s Hope) and communism explore the solitude of the human condition, and the brotherhood that gives meaning and sustenance to life (La Condition humaine or The Human Condition). He wrote gripping adventure tales set in Asia of exploration (La Voie Royale) and revolutions (Les Conquérants), and yet for all his literary genius and recognition in France as a novelist, he had a very politically active life as well.

Malraux flew aerial missions for the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War, and enlisted as a private soldier in WWII. He was captured, formed a resistance movement, and had his execution faked before being liberated by French Forces. Under the appointment of Charles de Gaulle, Malraux became a temporary minister of information, and then France’s first Minister of Cultural Affairs where he was able to campaign for the restoration and preservation of many historic buildings.

His remains are enshrined at the Pantheon in Paris, as a tribute to his esteemed contributions to France’s national heritage, along with Marie Curie, Victor Hugo and Voltaire.

André Malraux

His [Francisco Goya’s] debt to the Christianity of the eighteenth century is contained in the idea that politics was just adopting from the gospels: the conviction that man has a right to justice. Such a statement would seem utterly conceited to a Roman, who would doubtless have looked upon the disasters as we look upon photographs of the amphitheatre. But if Goya thought that man has not come onto the earth to be cut to pieces he thought that he must have come here for something. Is it to live in joy and honour? Not only that; it is to come to terms with the world. And the message he never ceased to preach, a message underlined by war, is that man only comes to terms with the world by blinding himself with childishness.

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André Malraux

The day may come when, contemplating a world given back to the primeval forest, a human survivor will have no means of even guessing how much intelligence man once imposed upon the forms of the earth, when he set up the stones of Florence in the billowing expanse of the Tuscan olive-groves. No trace will be left then of the palaces that saw Michelangelo pass by, nursing his grievances against Raphael; and nothing of the little Paris cafes where Renoir once sat beside Cezanne, Van Gogh beside Gauguin. Solitude, vicegerent of Eternity, vanquishes men’s dreams no less than armies, and men have known this ever since they came into being and realized that they must die.

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André Malraux ,Man’s Fate

For that matter, men are perhaps indifferent to power. What fascinates them in this idea, you see, is not real power, it’s the illusion of being able to do exactly as they please. The king’s power is the power to govern, isn’t it? But man has no urge to govern – he has an urge to compel, as you said. To be more than a man, in a world of men. To escape man’s fate, I was saying. Not powerful – all-powerful. The visionary disease, of which the will to power is only the intellectual justification, is the will to god-head – every man dreams of being god.

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