André Malraux

André Malraux (November 3, 1901 - November 23, 1976) was a French author, adventurer and statesman whose preeminence in the world of French politics and culture was as much fact as it was a product of his own imagination.

A 2005 biography by Olivier Todd , "Malraux: A Life," notes that Malraux was a terrific mythomaniac, a man whose life and career were largely opportunistic and whose reputation was often overinflated. As Christopher Hitchens wrote in the New York Times about the book (10 April 2005), "Malraux was such a fantasist that he would have paid handsomely for a forged narrative that was designed to deceive himself. He invented a relationship with Mao. He exaggerated his role in the Spanish Civil War. He fabricated a glorious past in the French Resistance .... Like all supreme con artists, he did possess the knack of being in the right place at the right time, and of scraping acquaintance with the great."

Malraux was born in Paris. His parents separated when he was a child and eventually divorced. He was raised by his mother, Berthe Lamy, and maternal grandmother, Adrienne Lamy. His father, a stockbroker, committed suicide in 1930.

Malraux studied Oriental languages at the École des Langues Orientales but did not graduate. At the age of 21 he left for Cambodia with his new wife, Clara Goldschmidt, a German Jewish heiress whom he married in 1921 and divorced in 1946. (They had a daughter, Florence, born 1933, who married the filmmaker Alain Resnais.) He was arrested and almost imprisoned for stealing a bas relief from the temple at Bantai Srey .

He became highly critical of the French colonial authorities in Indochina and in 1925 helped to organize the Young Annam League and founded the newspaper Indochina in Chains. He may also have worked for Kuomintang in China in 1927.

On his return to France he published his first novel, The Temptation of the West (1926). This was followed by The Conquerors (1928), The Royal Way (1930) and Man's Fate (French: La Condition Humaine) (1934), a powerful novel about the defeat of a communist regime in Shanghai and the choices the losers have to face. He won the 1933 Prix Goncourt of literature for the latter novel.

In the 1930s Malraux also joined archeological expeditions to Iran and Afghanistan. He founded the International Association of Writers for the Defense of Culture with Louis Aragon.

During the Spanish Civil War Malraux served as a pilot for the Republican forces, though recent research indicates that he had little or no training as a pilot. He claimed to have been wounded twice in effort to stop Falangists takeover of Madrid but the much-touted wounds were actually received in a take-off accident of his own making. He also toured the United States in an attempt to raise fund for the Republicans. A novel about his experiences, Man's Hope, appeared in 1938.

On the outbreak of the Second World War Malraux reportedly joined the French Army and served in a tank unit. He was captured in 1940 during the Western Offensive but he escaped and joined the French Resistance. He was captured by the Gestapo in 1944 and even though he underwent a mock execution he was still alive when he was rescued by members of the resistance. He ended up leading Brigade Alsace-Lorraine in defense of Strasbourg and takeover of Stuttgart. How much of all this gallant service is true remains highly debatable. In any case, he was awarded the Médaille de la Résistance, the Croix de Guerre, and the British Distinguished Service Order.

After the war General Charles De Gaulle appointed Malraux as his minister of information (1945-1946). In the 1950s he wrote about art and aesthetics. He again became a minister for information in 1958 and a minister of cultural affairs (1960-1969). During his term he authorized the cleaning of facades of the Louvre and other public buildings, against the public protestations.

In 1948 Malraux married his cousin Marie-Madeleine Lioux, a concert pianist who was the widow of his half-brother, Roland Malraux, and who had been his own mistress since 1945 . They separated in 1966. He had two sons by his mistress Josette Clotis: Pierre-Gauthier (1940-1961) and Vincent (1943-1961). Both young men died in an automobile accident .

An international Malraux Society was founded in the United States in 1968.

He famously saved many artists who were in trouble with Internal Revenue, by getting them pardoned by his friend Charles de Gaulle, including Claire Goll and Sylvia Beach.

Then living with the writer Louise Leveque de Vilmorin, an old girlfriend who had been his mistress since 1967, André Malraux died in Paris on November 23, 1976.

Bibliography includes

• La Tentation de l'Occident , 1926 (The Temptation of the West, 1926)
• Les Conquérants , 1928 (The Conquerors, 1928)
• La Voie royale , 1930 (The Royal Way, 1930)
• La Condition humaine , 1933 (Man's Fate, 1934)
• Le Temps du mépris , 1935 (Days of Wrath)
• L'Espoir , 1937 (Man's Hope, 1938)
• La Psychologie de l'art , 1947-1949 (The Psychology of Art)
• Les Voix du silence , 1951 (The Voices of Silence, 1953)
• Antimémoires , 1967 (Anti-Memoirs - autobiography)
• Des Chênes qu'on abat , 1971 (Felled Oaks / The Fallen Oaks)

External link

• a biography

• an article describing Malraux as something of a fabulist

Book

• Andre Malraux: A Biography(1997) by Curtis Cate (ISBN 208066795)
• Malraux : A Life(2005) by Oliver Todd (ISBN 0375407022)