Evening star., 1953-11-22
Voices of Silence
Bv Andre Ma1raux.
Doubleday & Co.; $25J

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Into this massive and chal-
longing history of art, Andre
Malraux, no less a man Of
thought than a man of action,
has poured 20 years of ref1ec-
ton and a lifetime of erudi-
ton. A revolutionary who in
his youth fought with peasant
insurgents in Asia and later
with the Loyalists in Spain, he
wrote out of these experiences
two masterpieces of modern
fiction, Mans Fate" and
Mans Hope" At the end of
World War II. after playing a
valorouS role in the Resist
ance, he emerged, to the ILL
concealed atonishment of his
countrymen, as the first lieu
tenant of Charles de Gaulle.
Now M. MalrauX has sum-
married his reflections on art
and humanity in this dense
ly written. profusely illustrat-
ed book which might be called
Mans Glory" In it he traces
the sacred river" of art as it
has flowed through the world,
and shows the kinship that
unites the artist in the cave
to Michelangelo in the Sistine
Chapel. He is a difficult guide,
plunging deep into the thick
est woods of ethics, esthetics
and philosophy. assuming
throughout that his readers
are armed with an erudition
as formidable as his own.
When he stops to explore the
world of an individual artist
like Giotto. Rembrandt or
Ell Greco, his difficult style
scars to an eloquence that
reaches the sublimity of the
geniuses he describes.
M. Malraux'S thesis is that
through means of reproduce
ton modern man stands in a
museum without walls" in
full possession, for the first
time. of the great artistic her.
itage of the whole world and
his whole past. Thus he can
become aware as no other man
before him of ''art's impas-
stoned quest to remold the
scheme of things"
Art in History
He has taken upon himself
the work of putting art, from
every place and period. back
into its context, not only in
its own time, but in history.
This he has done with the
power and sweep Of the master
historian. He shows Greek art
as a reflection of the Greeks
tireleSs cult of man. The
Byzantines, after the Dark
Ages, showed with hieratic pre-
cision the vast inaccessible
God" before whom man was
nothing. The medieval masters
of Chartres and Rheims began
the reconciliation of man with
God. and Giotto. herald of the
Renaissance. perfected it.
Malraux calls him perhaps
the first Western artist whose
faith gave every Christian his
due of majesty"
To combat the Protestant
Reformation the Jesuits fos-
tered baroque, which made
art the handmaiden of pious
propaganda. The Dutch mas
ters Excluding Rembrandt,
lone of the few biblical poets
Of Western Christendom")
were not the first to paint
fish on a plate. but they were
the first to cease treating it as
food for the Apostles" The
Age of Reason ushered in the
concept of art as delectation,
and the great French painters
Of the 10Th century were. the
first to paint pictures for the
sake of painting. On the sub
ject of modern art M. Malraux
is strangely silent.
In the second half of his
book, the author analyses the
creative process, with a great
trampling of Freudian gods
and popular prejudices. Art
lists do not stem from their
childhood. but from their con-
f1ict with the achievements of
their predecessors; not from a
study OF nature, but from a
study of art. And what differ
entiates the man of genius
from the man of mere talent,
he says. is the fact that "he
alone amongst all those whom
these works Of art delight must
seek by the same token to de-
stroy them"
1t is impossible to convey the
complexity and diversity of M.
Malraux's presentation, his
skillfull pairing of twin but in
dependent drives in Eastern
and Western art, the range and
depth of his conception. What
his book amounts to is a bril-
liant marshaling of all the