"IS EUROPE DEAD?"
Malraux, Andre
WRITERS and WRITING THE NEW LEADER LITERARY SECTION From PARIS Andre MALRAUX: "Is Europe Dead?" IOn November 4, 1946. Stephen I Spender introduced Andre Malraux to a crowded audience [in...
...During the periods of the other great invasions our situation was not notably better...
...was bound...
...Malraux served for a long time with General DeGaulle's special staff, and only recently held a position In (he Cabinet as Minisler of Information...
...The same is true of the world of morals...
...It believed in science, in peace, in the future of human dignity...
...The discovery of life in Greek art must be kept aeparate from whatever it was that constituted the essential character of some Greek navigator...
...I recall General deGaulle gazing at the wide horizon' of Colombey, where there was nothing in sight but forest, and remarking: "This' was formerly covered witH farms, arid in this country there were generations of families up to the 4th Century, and from the 4th to the 9th Century there was not a family line which was continued...
...I will cite an example, extreme, it may be, but clear...
...Malraux, taking his cue from Spender, began his discussion of the centrist between our hopes and the .dualities, of The Torments of the European Culture...
...Of the France which had had 20,000,000 of people, only 4,000,000 remained...
...Since the days of dlseeo our civilization has thrown itself against those whom we have called tho gods...
...We all recall the impression made on uh when Churchill declared: "Never since Thermopylal have so few saved the liberty of the world...
...Thus we find that the problem of man in relation to the past is this: Whatever the particular form of a cut- ' ture, however distant it may be from us, in its supreme manifestation it draws us to it...
...Kuropean civilization aces its values where they do not exist...
...The problem of evil was not absent in the Nineteenth Century...
...There nre too many men and women in thia hall who know what it ia that I have in mind...
...Personally," said Spender, "it is s great pleasure to receive Andre Malraux, for the last time that I found myself on s platform with him was in 1937 in Madrid at the International Writers Congress...
...The will to act in accord with conscience and the will to discovery are the fundamental values of European civilization...
...The idea which we cheriahed for a century, the notion which led to the identification of civilization with refinement, would have been eliminated by reference to a well-known fact...
...By the late 19's the political man had became a party man, and his novel of Spain...
...But it is equally doubtful whether the embodiment of cha.itv which we call religion can ever rid us of this curse, for it Ttever has...
...The art of Europe is-something more than a heritage...
...TlIE potency of occidental civilization lies in its acceptance of the unknown...
...For example, the optimistic faith in progress is not actually—you all know it—a European value...
...Man's Hope," was orthodox, dull, not quite honest...
...First, as a permanent rationalism embodying an idea of progress...
...Christianity has not eleminated war, but it has created for man a picture of himself in the face of war which he could endure...
...It lies rather in knowing how the human quality expressed in each of them has arrived te oar time and how it is of valae to us...
...The queation which faces us all today on this old European earth is whether, not God, but man is dead...
...It is possible that we understand little or nothing of the psychic realities of an Egyptian...
...It was thought that theae systems were different, that they were not necessarily continuous...
...As others did at the time of tha decay of Rome and the fall of Byzantium, so we cry alond amidst the immense and menacing shadows which threaten us: "Once again we stand ready to draw man up from tbe depths of defeat...
...And thia idea of man — when it haa finally emerged — againat what forces will It find itself in conflict...
...We have a message for all those who are overcome by contemplation of the present anguish of tho world...
...But now Justice and liberty are threatened...
...What we too often forget is that -thia is not the first time that this haa happened...
...The only real problem is to know, independently of any of these atructurea of thought, in what form we can re-create man...
...The most delicately cultivated persons — even the greatest philosophers—administered the most revolting of tortures...
...Rut it is certain that we see in it something and that something is profoundly different from whst we experience in the presence of a modern work of art or of one produced by the Greeks...
...You have seen them functioning day by day in the domain of science...
...We posses the heritage of European humanism...
...I have no expectation that humanism, however we may be able to reconstruct it, will be able to save us from war...
...And even at that fateful time, did anyone in England or France raise a question with regard to European values...
...But this refined land had th" moat atrocious of laws...
...We must distinguish between some Jew, back in the time of David, and the matter of the discovery of justice...
...But from eentury to century, in this place called Europe—and in this place alone—men shackled by death have resumed tirelessly their" march into the night with the high purpose of rendering intelligible the immense confusion of (he world and passing on their discoveries...
...It ia well-known that it originated in Germany...
...How does thia heritage appear to ua...
...During the past twentyfive years we have developed the idea of pluralism...
...If—which I do not believe— the British Empire were doomed, let u* hope that all the countries which fought on our side may have a equally beautiful death I The day when we speak of the Thermopylae of history is not the time when one believes in death...
...Not tbe Venuses, the Apollos, bat ths real powers, the figures of destiny...
...And until a new order has been created, the quest is our supreme task...
...Was it too good before TimourT Were things pleasant on the morrow of Nicopolis or even after Mohacs...
...At present we mast guard ourselves againat the concept that the cultures which have disappeared lack meaning for ns, that they ware mere passing hypotheses...
...We have created a certain number of images which are worthy of consideration, not merely in the realm of the arts, but in that great world which man baa drawn from his inner being in order to realise himself, to deny himself, to aggrandize and eternalize himself...
...There is nowhere evidence to show that refinement and civilization are equatable terms...
...We face an unknown world...
...Its structure has only a subordinate importance...
...Against the gods and against the devil...
...The Europe Which the world thought of in terms of liberty now thinks of itself only in terms of destiny...
...I tell you that the quest for these precious values will go on...
...It is, far mors a fundamentally American value aad a fundamentally Russian one...
...The Egyptians, it was thought, had a measure of valuea quite different from ours...
...Columbus understood better whence he came than whither he...
...For Europe, ravaged and bloody, is not more ravaged and bloody than the picture of mankind which in the prewar days it hoped to create Torture has meant for ns much more thsn pain...
...No matter how difficult things seem now, I feel sore that Malraux woaM agree with me that aetae of the torments of those days have disappeared—even if skies are not as clear aa wc hoped they would be after the defeat of Fascism...
...The first and most important thing which came to us from the Jewish world was the Bible, and from this we derived the hitherto unformulated idea of justice...
...We, however, will have to go much further before we shsll be able to create a man who, in face of the tragio social and military problems of our time, can look himself in the face...
...the party man broke with Communism, and tempered his political apirit with new philosophical tendenciea...
...And Europe itself must be more than a heritage...
...In that period his work was the brilliant product of an Independent heretlcsl Communist mind...
...And as to dignity...
...Everyone understood that the death of the deity meant the liberation' and deification of man...
...When the Mongol army ot Gengis Khan marched up to the gates of Vienna, did the future of Europe look especially rosy...
...We must begin by determining whether we shall carry on these ideas or whether European culture is something altogether different...
...At the end of the Nineteenth Century the voiop of Nietzsche took up the classical refrain, "God is dead," and gave to it a hew and tragic aense...
...It emerged like a glowing shadow from the immensities of Egyptian darkness, from tho obliteration of man by the Babylonian gods...
...It is Europe which created them and in Europe that they are endangered...
...We are forced to base our attitude on tragedy, for we know not whither we are going, and on humanism, for we know well where we make our start and what is our desire...
...The Fate of Man The tone, temper and substance ef Andre Malraux' thought haa undergone profound transformations since his celebrated novel "Man's Fate" (La Condition Hnmains) wss published almost two decades ago...
...liiis a manifestation of the will...
...Humanism is still possible, but it is s tragic humanism...
...It haa, too, its metaphysical character...
...The forms of the spirit define themselves in the present crucial time by their point of departure and the natnre of their quest...
...The Nineteenth Century haa a great hope, a great faith...
...It came to be taken for granted that Egyptian ' culture, tor example, was completely aeparate from ours...
...W K must separate the problem of detail from the problem of form...
...The traditional idea of civilization was that it involved progress in thought, in customs, in the arte...
...But France remained...
...A hundred years ago it was taken for granted that the hope of humanity would inevitably lead to an ensemble of developments which would be beneficial to mankind, would lead to universal peace and make poasible the leading of a dignified and worthy life by the individual...
...With the Resistance period of World War II...
...It is the posing in dramatic form of tho question of the destiny of man...
...We freely recognize that from century to century men labor under the restrictions imposed by death...
...Greek tragedy deceived us...
...This idea of cultures as closed systems was accepted by the majority of Europeans between the two wars...
...From the loftiest solitudes, even that of God himself, we have drawn our harvest...
...Not one among us knowa with what thoughts or emotions a fellah regarded an Egyptian statue in the third millennium...
...of somehow conquering death by mastering the ephemeral quality of the world, of comprehending that the destiny of man is to place in question the nature of the universe...
...But when memories of it pass before us, we see not only those obscure and tragic marionettes manipulated by the fingers of the psychoanalysts—we perceive, also, the sombre Dostoievskian archangel who reappears on earth and proclaims: "I refuse to play my part if the destruction of a aingle child by a brute is accepted as a ransom for the world...
...Above all that we see, the spectral towns, the cities in ruin, there stretches serosa Europe something even more terrible...
...He csn no longer go on with existence poised against the weight of destiny except by taking up a position of his own choosing...
...It is the Idea of man alone, of /nan escaping human conditions by drawing froni within himself forces which ho formerly sought on the outside...
...What the past haa left to us is actually nothing but tragic humanism...
...We confront it with conscience alert...
...In such a moment one lives...
...But what we do know is that these past cultures have bequeathed to us certain values and that, working from these as a base, we must continuously strive to create a whole...
...There is no need of laboring the point...
...It ia profoundly unimportant to all of us whether we are Communists, anti-Communists, liberals or anything else...
...We have all been face to face with a suffering which has something more thsn ita dramatic quality...
...And what we discover in the nncient work, moreover, has a value for us which we try to integrate in what we call our culture...
...On these occasions tbe question was of life and death and not of the revival of a culture...
...Waa tbe outlook favorable at the time of the battle of London...
...For this was substituted the concept that each civilization has created its own system of values...
...There is not in the idea of culture a structure of thought that goes deeper than that which is born of this necessity of man to manage himself in accord with what he recognizes as his divine part...
...We are not In the shadow of death...
...Aa to science, Bikini, has given the answer...
...Today a human being must face, not only what he wished to do or should have done, but what be believes himself to be...
...For a long time China has been known as a refined country, perhaps the most refined in all the world...
...Are we dying...
...I\ all the discussions from one end of Europe to the other there is one question which haunts the minds of all of us...
...The cultures never have mastered the whole of human nature...
...it ia either the will, or it is death...
...We are rather, at the focal point where Europe has disregarded or destroyed Its heritage and has nothing loft but intelligence and energy...
...So far aa peace is concerned, it is unnecessary to enter into a discussion...
...Stephen I Spender introduced Andre Malraux to a crowded audience [in the great hall of the Peris Sorbonne 'aa the first speaker la a series or cultural discussions 1 a a 111 n t e d by UNESCO...
...Obviously vulnerable aa it is, it csme in the confused course of time to replace the traditional idea that man had created civilization by continuous and more or leas linear efforts...
...Perhaps there is nothing in common between the way in which we regard such a work of art now when we observe it in the Louvre and the way in which it was viewed at the time of ita creation...
...In the presence of the unknown, and of the tortures not yet forgotten, it must still go on...
...But they have enabled man to reach an accord with himself- This accord has enabled him to deepen the sense of his destiny...
...What man began, fate concluded...
...The real problem ia not that of the transmission of cultures...
...The justice of the Bible and the ancient liberty of the cities—who created them and won for them a place in the world...
...I spoke a moment ago of the Battle of London...
...Who, if not we, has invented the fertile concepts of the saint and the hero...
Vol. 30 • January 1947 • No. 3
