Signed, Malraux Also by Jean-Frarn;Ois Lyotard
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signed, Malraux Also by Jean-Frarn;ois Lyotard The Differend: Phrases in Dispute Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele Heidegger and "the jews" Translated by Andreas Michel and Mark S. Roberts Introduction by David Carroll Just Gaming (with Jean-Loup Thebaud) Translated by Wlad Godzich Afterword by Samuel Weber Political Writings Translated by Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman Foreword by Bill Readings The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Translated by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi Foreword by Fredric Jameson The Postmodern Explained Afterword by Wlad Godzich Postmodern Fables Translated by Georges Van Den Abbeele Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard signed, Ma rau X -------- ··• r\ Translated b~ert' Harvey University of Minnesota Press II Minneapolis The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial assistance provided by the French Ministry of Culture for the translation of this book. The publication of this book was assisted by a bequest from Josiah H. Chase to honor his parents, Ellen Rankin Chase and Josiah Hook Chase, Minnesota territorial pioneers. Copyright 1999 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Originally published as Signe Malraux, copyright 1996 Societe des Editions Grasset & Fasquelle, Paris. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lyotard, Jean Fran<;ois. [Signe Malraux. English] Signed, Malraux/ Jean-Fran<;ois Lyotard; translated by Robert Harvey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8166-3106-9. - ISBN 0-8166-3107-7 (pbk.) 1. Malraux, Andre, 1901-1976. 2. Novelists, French-20th century Biography. 3. Art historians- France-Biography. 4. Statesmen France-Biography. I. Title. PQ2625.A716Z696613 1999 843'.912-dc21 [B] 98-53762 Printed in the United States on acid-free paper The University of Minnesota Press is an equal-opportunity educator and employer. 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents List of Abbreviations vii 1. Berthe, or the Spider 1 2. The Malraux 15 3. Dealer in Wonders 23 4. On Cubes 33 5. Manufacturing Secret 45 6. Clara's Entrance 61 7. Writing or Life? 75 8. Raid in Asia 91 9. Exit Clara 111 10. The Breaker 131 11. Platforms 155 12. Black Skies of Spain 177 13. Womanstruck 191 14. Entrechats 217 15. Berger as Colonel 241 16. Witness 263 17. Limbo 289 Notes 307 Bibliography 317 Index 321 Abbreviations * Published translation modified t Translation by Robert Harvey; no extant English translation Works by Malraux AM Anti-Memoirs CH La Condition humaine (OC) Co/E The Conquerors Co/F Les Conquerants (OC) DA Le Demon de l'absolu DW Days of Wrath E L'Espoir PO Felled Oaks HPL L'Homme precaire et la litterature Int. L'Intemporel Ir. L'Irreel JE "D'une jeunesse europeenne" Laz. Lazarus LP Lunes en papier (OC) MF Man's Fate MH Man's Hope MISM Le Musee imaginaire de la sculpture mondiale ML Le Miroir des limbes (Translations from this work that appear in the main text are mine. In ML, Malraux made many emendations and added many passages to the original texts that he included in that work.) NA Les Noyers de ['Altenburg oc CEuvres completes PM Picasso's Mask RF Le Royaume farfelu (OC) RW The Royal Way Surnat. Le Surnaturel VII VIII ABBREVIATIONS TM Le Temps du mepris (OC) TN Le Triangle noir TO La Tentation de ['Occident (OC) TW The Temptation of the West VR La Voie royale (OC) VSIE The Voices of Silence VS!F Les Voix du silence WTA The Walnut Trees ofAltenburg Works about Malraux Bevan David Bevan, Andre Malraux: Towards the Expression of Transcendence Cate Curtis Cate, Andre Malraux Chantal Suzanne Chantal, Le Cceur battant Clara Clara Malraux, Le Bruit de nos pas ( Citations that do not include a volume number refer to the English translation, Memoirs.) CPD Maria Saint-Clair Van Rysselberghe, Cahiers de la Petite Dame Desanti Dominique Desanti, Drieu la Rochelle Friang Brigitte Friang, Un Autre Malraux Girafe Jacques Poirier, La Girafe a un long cou Grover Frederic Grover, Six Entretiens avec Andre Malraux Lacouture Jean Lacouture, Malraux, une vie dans le siecle Langlois Walter Langlois, Andre Malraux: L' aventure indochinoise Louise Jean Bothorel, Louise, ou la vie de Louise de Vilmorin Marronniers Alain Malraux, Les Marronniers de Boulogne Mercadet Leon Mercadet, La Brigade Alsace-Lorraine MMM Melanges Malraux Miscellany Mossuz Janine Mossuz, Andre Malraux et le gaullisme Owl Gustav Regler, The Owl of Minerva Penaud Guy Penaud, Andre Malraux et la Resistance Peyrefitte Alain Peyrefitte, C' eta it de Gaulle Picon Gaetan Picon, Malraux par lui-meme PPP Guy Suares, Malraux: Past Present Future RAMR Revue Andre Malraux Review RLM Revue des Lettres Modernes Sauvageot Marcelle Sauvageot, Commentaire Stephane Roger Stephane, Andre Malraux: Entretiens et precisions Thornberry Robert Thornberry, Andre Malraux et l'Espagne Vandegans Andre Vandegans, La Jeunesse litteraire d'Andre Malraux Berthe, or the Spider 1 THE SLIM YOUNG WOMAN with violet eyes veiled be neath a capeline had enveloped him in her own bereave ment on that day in March 1903. And, from the hearse heading down by way of Place Clichy, the little guy could look out with his big peepers and see a hackney coach going by, a bearded man in a derby, an omnibus, bare headed errand girls with their basket on their arm, a white percheron hauling milk cans, ditch-diggers with their trousers held up by Zouave's sashes, steaming piles of horse manure, a cabriolet automobile, quarry stone facades decorated with nymphs, haberdashery signs and those of cafe concerts. All these sights were bounced about by the conveyance, and he felt that none of this agitation was real, that all was but decor, farfelu 1 cin ema. Maman's bosom smelled sweet of quality soap. She spoke to him of things bleak. Sunken in dolefulness, he sat with his nose crushed up against the window. Beyond the bourgeois apartment buildings were the low stucco houses with their mansard pulley windows: the hearse was presently passing through the Charen ton gateway. The toddler could feel the "passing-of things," that mixture of well-being and ill-being "which has no name in the West," as he would put it shortly before his own death (Laz., ll5)-a passing that does not pass, one that a tollhouse can stamp but not stop. 1 2 BERTHE, OR THE SPIDER In his fifties, Malraux wrote that the same indescribable feeling procured from the works of "the Primitives" emanates from L'Octroi de plaisance, the painting that Rousseau (alias the Customs Officer) was making around 1903. It is a feeling both of the spectacle of the monotonous Re dundant One,2 the "eternal cycle of the Seasons," and of the "escape from the Wheel of history, giving us, too, a sense of liberation" ( VS/E, 512 *). He had barely begun to walk when Maman placed him on the ground for a moment at the entrance of a deserted Saint-Maur-des-Fosses cemetery to catch her breath. The casket was placed atop others already inside the ample grave. Things startled by the light were moving in there: earthworms, ghastly larvae, arachnids. A blind fauna that he couldn't see but that saw him: "the earth was peopled with hands, and perhaps they could have lived alone, acted alone, without men" (DW, 140). Berthe sat him on a chair in the caretaker's stifling loge. His legs dangling, he kept an eye on the tomb-granter's hairy hand: "simple, natural, yet alive like an eye: death was this" (RW, 284*; VR, 503). She inscribed into the register that having died this 18 March "at his brother and mother's house," Raymond-Fernand Malraux, born 25 De cember (sweet Jesus) 1902, had just been inhumed here, in this ceme tery, in the Lamy family vault, before Berthe, married name Malraux, his mother, and Georges-Andre, aged eighteen months, the brother of the deceased. Andre understood nothing of all this: that his father was absent from the ceremony, that the bereavement his young mother bore was overwhelming, that the little three-month-old brother was gone for ever, and that by his mute presence at this very instant of farewell he himself had just countersigned the first exploit of his own life. His world would remain colonized by women veiled in black, by moth ers lamenting dead children, by widows. In an instant he conjured up forever the picture of women silently weeping over graves, waiting for men lost and then returned when it was too late, and laughing up their sleeves. Such is the scene that the minister, at his desk in 1968, sketches for himself: "While attending the national funeral held for Anatole France, I imagined what one for Verlaine, born the same year, might have been like. But I could only think of the terrible funeral he had in actuality with his mistress screaming over the grave, 'Paul, all your friends are here!'" (ML, 589t). The bell of failure impressed itself upon him from this be ginning. His entire work would strive to toll this knell. In one stroke, the vision of his mother prostrated over the little casket determined the bad timing of a son never present at rendezvous. Still, why did they persist in giving birth, only to find themselves making the sign of the cross over BERTHE, OR THE SPIDER 3 graves? Spouses, lovers, sons all gone off to measure themselves against an idiotic destiny, to wrest some meaning from it, only to return the only present they could offer to the women: their remains.