„Eine Kultur kann nur an ihrer eigenen Schwäche sterben.“
La tentation de l'Occident, 1926, S. 103
Original franz.: "Une culture ne meurt que de sa propre faiblesse."
Zitate von André Malraux
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André Malraux
Geburtstag: 3. November 1901
Todesdatum: 23. November 1976
Andere Namen: André-Georges Malraux
André Malraux war ein französischer Schriftsteller, Drehbuchautor, Filmregisseur, Abenteurer und Politiker. Wikipedia
Photo: Roger Pic, Bibliothèque nationale de France / Public domain
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Zitate André Malraux
„Die Wahrheit eines Menschen liegt hauptsächlich in dem, was er verschweigt.“
— André Malraux, buch Antimémoires
Antimémoires, 1967
Original franz.: "La vérité d'un homme, c'est d'abord ce qu'il cache."
„What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets.“
— André Malraux, buch Antimémoires
Antimémoires, preface (1967)
„It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation.“
Part IV, Chapter I
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
Kontext: An individualism which has got beyond the stage of hedonism tends to yield to the lure of the grandiose. It was not man, the individual, nor even the Supreme Being, that Robespierre set up against Christ; it was that Leviathan, the Nation.
„Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.“
Part 2, Section 2, Chapter 12
L'espoir [Man's Hope] (1938)
Kontext: There are not fifty ways of fighting, there is only one, and that is to win. Neither revolution nor war consists in doing what one pleases.
„The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety.“
André Malraux, Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951) Part IV, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
Kontext: The great Christian art did not die because all possible forms had been used up; it died because faith was being transformed into piety. Now, the same conquest of the outside world that brought in our modern individualism, so different from that of the Renaissance, is by way of relativizing the individual. It is plain to see that man's faculty of transformation, which began by a remaking of the natural world, has ended by calling man himself into question.
„Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it — Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism.“
Part IV, Chapter VII
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
Kontext: Our characteristic response to the mutilated statue, the bronze dug up from the earth, is revealing. It is not that we prefer time-worn bas-reliefs, or rusted statuettes as such, nor is it the vestiges of death that grip us in them, but those of life. Mutilation is the scar left by the struggle with Time, and a reminder of it — Time which is as much a part of ancient works of art as the material they are made of, and thrusts up through the fissures, from a dark underworld, where all is at once chaos and determinism.
„Once the masterpiece has emerged, the lesser works surrounding it fall into place; and it then gives the impression of having been led up to and foreseeable, though actually it is inconceivable — or, rather, it can only be conceived of once it is there for us to see it.“
Part III, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
Kontext: Once the masterpiece has emerged, the lesser works surrounding it fall into place; and it then gives the impression of having been led up to and foreseeable, though actually it is inconceivable — or, rather, it can only be conceived of once it is there for us to see it. It is not a scene that has come alive, but a latent potentiality that has materialized. Suppose that one of the world's masterpieces were to disappear, leaving no trace behind it, not even a reproduction; even the completest knowledge of its maker's other works would not enable the next generation to visualize it. All the rest of Leonardo's oeuvre would not enable us to visualize the Mona Lisa; all Rembrandt's, the Three Crosses or The Prodigal Son; all Vermeer's, The Love Letter; all Titian's, the Venice Pietà; all medieval sculpture, the Chartres Kings or the Naumburg Uta. What would another picture by the Master of Villeneuve look like? How could even the most careful study of The Embarkation for Cythera, or indeed that of all Watteau's other works conjure up L'Enseigne de Gersaint, had it disappeared?
„The attempt to force human beings to despise themselves… is what I call hell.“
Section 2
La condition humaine [Man's Fate] (1933)
„On this earth of ours where everything is subject to the passing of time, one thing only is both subject to time and yet victorious over it: the work of art.“
André Malraux, TV program: Promenades imaginaires dans Florence, 1975.
„Chanel, General De Gaulle and Picasso are the three most important figures of our time.“
As quoted in Paris, Paris : Journey Into the City of Light (2005) by David Downie, p. 87
„The present age delights in unearthing a great man's secrets; for one thing because we like to temper our admiration and also perhaps we have a vague hope of finding a clue to genius in such "revelations."“
Part III, Chapter VI
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
„The ordinary man puts up a struggle against all that is not himself, whereas it is against himself, in a limited but all-essential field, that the artist has to battle.“
Part III, Chapter III
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
„One cannot create an art that speaks to me when one has nothing to say.“
L'espoir [Man's Hope] (1938)
„A large share of our art heritage is now derived from peoples whose idea of art was quite other than ours, and even from peoples to whom the very idea of art meant nothing.“
Part I, Chapter V
Les voix du silence [Voices of Silence] (1951)
