Volume 24, Number 20 · December 8, 1977
Malraux and Death
By Jean-Marie Domenach, Translated by Peter France
Lazarus
by André Malraux, translated by Terence Kilmartin
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 149 pp., $7.95
'Death is a recent and as yet incomplete discovery,' Malraux writes in Lazarus, but he was already talking about death long before it became fashionable as a subject. For whatever we may think of him as a writer, we must recognize that he was always ten or twenty years ahead of his contemporaries. As early as 1926, in The Temptation of the West, he had written about the fascination of the religions and drugs of Asia. The rise of China, torture, and partisan warfare form the canvas of his early books, written in the Thirties. But behind these various subjects, linking them all together, stand death and the fascination it had at that time for young people who could sense the imminence of a great tragedy.
Review, 3161 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |